The Hubris of Color

Topic: Writing Ethnic or Culture Fiction

Culture Source: the movie, The Visitor, written by Thomas McCarthy

I admit it. I have been self-indulgent. I started this blog with the best intentions. This blog is based on a class that I taught at the Loft Writer’s Center in Minneapolis, so it’s not as if I have to dig for material or even for inspiration. Yet, blog topics have been consumed by politics and off-subject musings. Such preoccupation ends now. As a consumer of media in many forms, I genuinely believe this topic to be timely. While the rapidly aging Baby Boomer generation was homogeneous in culture and ethnic makeup, Gen-X, Gen- Y, and Generation Millennials, are far more diverse ethnically, culturally, and ideologically. If you’re trying to build or maintain a career in writing, this is important because it will impact what agents and editors are buying.
So, as a reminder, this blog examines methods and techniques for writing ethnic and culture stories. The methodology is a result of opinion and of research. I will use examples from books, movies, and other aspects of pop culture to provide support for the viewpoints. However, the views and critiques expressed are opinion only. Please feel free to share your own views and opinions.

With our purpose firmly in mind, this week’s topic is the 5 deadly sins in writing Ethnic and Culture Fiction. While I don’t have the space to cover everything in this posting, over the next five weeks we will examine each of the sins. So, to begin at the beginning, the 5 Deadly Sins in writing ethnic or culture fiction are:

1. The Hubris of Color
2. Ethnicity as character
3. Outdated message models
4. Co-opted culture
5. And finally, incongruent touch points.

This week, we’ll examine the Hubris of Color. This particular deadly writing sin is one of the most difficult to conquer because it comes from a place deep within. Linda Seger, author of Making a Good Writer Great, calls this place the writer’s shadow. The writer’s shadow can act as powerful force either for good or bad in our writing. In essence, the writer’s shadow is personal perspective. That perspective may be accurate or inaccurate, but it is always shaped by a writer’s personal world view. Some of the best writers harness the writer’s shadow to deliver compelling, dramatic stories that connect with readers or audience members. However, the only way to use this force effectively is to understand your shadow. Understanding your writer’s shadow is even more important in writing ethnic and culture fiction. Why? Well, let’s just be clear about the tools we writers draw from to shape our stories. One of the strongest influences in our imagination arsenal is the real world. Writers use elements from the real world to construct a fictional world. In matters dealing with ethnicity and culture, we all know that in the real world, fairly or unfairly, skin color carries implications. What kind of implications? That’s the hard part. In the real world, the “implications” of color arise from complicated layers of thought and emotion both of which are influenced by transmitted culture (transmitted culture meaning what we are taught). In a fictional world, it is the author’s responsibility to determine the implications of color or culture and to transmit that meaning to the reader. This responsibility should not be taken lightly because using care in creating a fictional world with well-conceived ethnic touch points or authentic culture markers gives your story an edge that other stories won’t necessarily have. Using care also prevents you from inadvertently sending a negative or dismissive message to your reader or audience.

Let’s take a look at our culture source to examine the Hubris of Color idea more thoroughly. In the movie, The Visitor, written by Tom McCarthy, the story protagonist Walter Vale is a white male widower. Walter lives the comfortable, if bland life, of an academic in Connecticut. A teacher of economic theory, he seems to have a connection and interest in music. Still, at the beginning of his character arc, Walter lacks both passion and purpose. This changes when he interacts with an illegal immigrant couple he discovers squatting in his New York apartment (they are victims of a real estate scam). Friendship grows between Walter and the young Syrian man Tarek Khalil. It turns out that Tarek is a musician, as was Walter’s deceased wife. Tarek’s instrument of choice is the doumbek, or African drum. McCarthy uses the drum as a leitmotif. It provides the rhythm and energy that Walter lacks in his bland, colorless life. Tarek teaches Walter how to play the doumbek, taking Walter with him around the city to those places that, presumably, white academics do not go. This sharing of a new and different way of life enables Walter to regain passion for his own life. By the way, that’s one of the reasons this story is a culture story. It shows Walter interacting with a culture that is unfamiliar to him. One of the primary ideas of a culture story is that we can learn from others. I’d also like to point out that Tarek has apparently taken this culture journey, as he has mastered the doumbek, an African drum. Tarek is not African, he is Syrian. However, Zainab, Tarek’s girlfriend, is from the African country of Senegal. When Tarek’s mother, Mouna, sees Zainab for the first time, she makes a remark about the darkness of Zainab’s skin. This seems incongruent with the rest of the thematic sensibility of the story. After all, Mouna is Syrian. She has been living illegally in America for many years. Has she never seen a dark-complexioned person of African heritage? Is her comment based on color prejudice? If so, why is she presented as a possible love interest to a man who benefits from the talents and energies of two people, Zainab and Tarek, with skin colors that are darker than his. This mistake reflects the fifth deadly sin, incongruent touch points, but we’ll examine that sin later.

Back to Walter, it is his story upon which the plot builds, and yet, as Walter’s story continues, it is Walter’s lack as a character that prevents the story from soaring beyond mediocrity. The reason for this failing has nothing to do with the acting, the setting, or the movie direction. The story is leeched of vitality because it is told from the viewpoint of the wrong character. Without Tarek, without Mouna, without Zainab, Walter Vale will go back to his boring life as a professor. At the end of the story, at the end of the movie, Walter is happier, but for how long? He achieved . . . scratch that, Walter didn’t really achieve anything. He didn’t work for his happiness. He didn’t really even have the goal of achieving happiness. Moments of happiness fall into his lap and Walter’s only grace is that he doesn’t resist them. Contrast this marshmallow heroism with the drama inherent in Tarek’s situation. He is in the country illegally. He wants to avoid deportation. He doesn’t want to be separated from Zainab, or cause her to be deported. He doesn’t want to bring trouble to his mother, or cause her to be deported. Tarek has the most to gain or lose. Tarek’s goals affect other characters in the story. While the movie presents Tarek as a little irresponsible, Tarek’s character has goals, yielding to motivations, which could have been explored in a truly evocative manner. Walter’s goal, if you can call it that, only affects himself. Remove Walter from the story and you still have a story. Remove Tarek from the story and you do not. Tarek is essential to this story. He provides a flash point, an intersection of goal, motivation, and conflict necessary to the main character and to the building of drama. Despite Tarek’s value in this story, midway through, he is sidelined, placed in a detention center. Tarek’s arrest gives Walter the opportunity to become a hero, but instead, Walter, true to his character, mills around and does nothing more than shout a bit. After that, he turns his attention back to his own life. With the loss of Tarek, the plot falters and must be angled in another direction. Tarek is in a detention center. Zainab leaves Walter’s apartment, disappearing almost completely from the story, and Walter, renewed by what he has learned from Tarek, now engages in a mild flirtation with Tarek’s mother. Walter the character is like a slowly opening bud. He is once again reaching for what life has to offer him, but, with the imminent deportation of Tarek, and with Mouna following her son back to Syria, the best life has to offer Walter Vale is a return to his drone-like existence, still devoid of color, character, and interest.

Don’t get me wrong, McCarthy is an able storyteller. He deserves credit for his ability to force interest around an only mildly interesting character. The problem for McCarthy and The Visitor is that the very interesting visitor is axed from the movie leaving us with a resident who is boring. Walter teaches us little because he has little to teach. If Walter could express his character arc in words, it might go something like: My wife died. I lost interest in life. I was forced to go to New York. There were some people living in my apartment without my knowledge or consent, but hey, I’m a nice guy. I let them stay. I learned how to play African drums. Learning to play the drums made me feel better. End of story.

Perhaps the The Visitor was meant to be lyrical, a sort of American Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, but inserting the unbridled energy of Tarek into such lyricism made me want more. That’s always true of audiences and culture stories. We watch movies like The Visitor for the same reason that Walter finds Tarek and Zainab interesting. We want to experience more than the banality of our own, sometimes bland lives. We’re eager for the rhythm and vibrancy inherent in the beat of the drums and the swirling color of the new and different. Walter can’t give that to us. He is as much of an audience to that energy and vibrancy as we are because he does not really learn what Tarek has to teach. He experiences Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna, as a tourist experiences a trip to a far-flung exotic locale. There is a trip, but no journey. Walter merely exists within the framework of a culture story. He is a beneficiary of characters with real journeys. Their stories are human stories. Their stories come from being Syrian or Senegalese in America. Their stories come from being in America illegally. Their stories come from what they have learned, how they are treated, and how they cope. Their stories can teach us about life. Yet McCarthy places the character without the story in the primary role. This isn’t the case of Walter being a narrator who relates what another character learns. Walter’s viewpoint is all that we get. In a movie teeming with human stories, the guy without anything to teach is the main character. Perhaps that’s why McCarthy made Walter a teacher. It’s an honorary title. McCarthy isn’t alone in using WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) characters to tell the stories of others. Many writers, especially screenwriters, seem to believe that audiences will only be interested in the lives of non-WASPs if their story is framed by a WASP. Examples of this conceit abound: We are All Welcome Here, The Secret Life of Bees, The Last Samurai, Outsourced, and even Hairspray (though Hairspray handles the culture elements far better than the stories cited).

Because of its Hubris of Color, The Visitor colonizes Tarek, Mouna, and Zainab, thieving their cultural value and unashamedly transferring their treasure to an undeserving Walter. Ultimately, as much as it is a culture story, The Visitor only respects one culture, the WASP culture. Had McCarthy chosen to tell The Visitor from Tarek’s point of view, he might have had a Slumdog Millionaire on his hands, rather than just another small, but well-received independent film.

Ancient Writer Wisdom
1. Ancient wisdom says to make your protagonist the character with the most compelling story.

2. Ancient wisdom says in a fictional world, it is the author’s responsibility to determine the implications of color or culture and to transmit that meaning to the reader.

3. Ancient wisdom says in a culture story, do not transfer cultural value to undeserving characters

May the wisdom of the Ancients carry you forward in your writing journey.


References:
www.thevisitorfilm.com

www.ehow.com/video_2372574_origins-doumbek-african-drum.html

www.mechelleavey.com
www.lindaseger.com/index.html

It's Over!

It's Over! The election, I mean. Of course, I know that the election has been over for some time, but this past election has caused me to be riveted to the TV. I have spent all of my free time scouring the internet for credible sources of information. After all of the angst, worry, and fear, I'm finally coming to believe. It's over. Obama won. Yes, we still have an inauguration to get past. There is still the work of governing to be done. And, there is the fear of another election to come four years from now, but one thing at a time. Until the inauguration, I am reading Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It is a fascinating study of the American culture which led Lincoln to the White House. Much has been made of Obama, the constitutional lawyer from Springfield, and his similarities with Lincoln. Both Illinois men, both tall, lanky, with unusual backgrounds to the electorate. When Abraham Lincoln won the nomination of his party, there was much confusion over his name. It is to be hoped that the fates of these two men will be different, but other similarities are fun to note. For example, William Henry Seward the senator from New York was all but assured the Republican nomination for president, but Lincoln was canny enough to place himself second, just in case something happened to derail Seward's nomination. Lincoln then went on to nominate the senator from New York as secretary of state. Sound familiar? The world has changed dramatically over the past 148 years, but as we prepare to celebrate the election of the first bi-racial, post racial, whatever label one wants to give him, president, many of the racial attitudes hardened by this country's participation in the institution of slavery remain. Only time will tell if Obama can make a difference to those attitudes, or if prejudice remains powerful enough to diminish his accomplishments and sour the competency he brings to the White House. America is a country that often fights over the baby steps before making a giant leap forward. And despite making a leap forward, Americans are often guilty of running back to the comforts of familiarity when we are afraid. My hope is that Barack Obama leads this country to a permanent leap forward, and that 148 years from now Americans will look back and think, what mighty men and women were these who finally realized that color is nothing but a shield of evolution.

3 Important Things

I'm looking for excuses as to why I have only posted one entry since I began this blog. There are no excuses. I've come to see that blogging, at least in my life, is akin to getting pregnant and then changing your mind after labor starts. You can't go back, even if you want to. Your blog hangs out here like a flag shouting abandonment. For those of you who actually read this, and I’ve heard from a few of you, my apologies. If there is any excuse for my lack of consistency, it is that I have been busy. I've been working on setting up the new website for the teen writers group that I host. You can find us at www.aswrittenby.com. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about encouraging writers to write more diversely, is that when I go into the public schools to work with students -- I work with several hundred kids from 4th grade through high school, coordinating education programs for students -- these kids come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Yet, when you look at the lists of books put out by publishers (see our myspace page: www.myspace.com/teenswrite) it's the same old story, very little diversity. I understand some of the difficulties publishers face with this. Last year, I went to the Loft Literary’s Festival of Children's Writers, I was the only black American present (that's the p.c. term). The only other diversity represented was a Chinese woman, who spoke English poorly, but who monopolized a part of a session that I attended; my critique buddy Aleli, who is both an extraordinary writer and Filipino; and another young woman of Japanese ethnic heritage. This young woman had been adopted child by a family of Scandinavian heritage (a common background in Minnesota). For those of you who believe that culture is a result of ethnicity, adoption has shown us that culture and attitudes are largely a result of upbringing. As writers, this is an important distinction to make when crafting a character from a non-WASP background. Anyway, back to the festival, Minnesota is one of the few remaining majority WASP states, so I look at my "lone black chick in the room" as par. Then again, I've gone to many writer events where I am one of only a few tans in the crowd. With that in mind, I'm talking to authors who are not part of recognized minority groups: black, Latin, Asian, Native American. I am begging you, as a peer, a reader, and someone who mentors young writers, please think of diversity as an added value to the stories that you write. Sadly, I don't know why such an idea would even be considered revolutionary or unusual. Writers should be able to embody the spirit of the characters they present in stories. Yet, most books on writing leave out what writers need to know about writing diversity. The purpose of this blog is to open the topic up for discussion.

So, with my intended audience very much in mind, let's talk about adding diversity to your stories. When you diversify your character cast, you have to be aware of three very important things:

1. Your character's humanity is not up for condescension and/or judgment. I talked about this with my teens in terms of villains at our last AWB meeting. We all know that one-dimensional villains, the villains that are evil because they are evil, don't work in novel-length books. These villains might work in comics, maybe even in graphic novels, but novel-length requires more exploration of character goals and motivation. This also holds true in writing diverse characters. One of the great things about writing novels is that writers can avoid the tendency that we see in television to label and stereotype. I've worked in television. In this medium, the equivalent of showing not telling is the visual cue. It has been 143 years since the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery. Since that time, black men, despite many brave acts of valor, have been characterized in such as way that simply showing a picture of a man with dark skin brings up associations in our minds, those associations can be either positive or negative, but they exist. Is television the culprit for stereotypes? No . . . and yes. No because television programs merely employ the simplest form of storytelling—the blonde bombshell, the smart brunette, the rich white guy...they're all stereotypes. And yes, because the television executives who make the story telling decisions often don't want to go deeper or try harder. They prefer to reinforce stereotypes. It makes their jobs a bit easier. So, like it or not, laugh tracks, smart and caring white people, black pimps, Latino gang members, Asian brainiacs, all go hand in hand on television. If you want a more accurate vision of truth in America, watch the commercials. They must appeal to the demographics they're trying to reach. To connect, they must use marketplace affinity, an ability to show that they understand our real lives; they’ve got the solution to make things better. Anyway, as writers we don't have the luxury of visual cues. It is our responsibility to communicate using words to create mental images.
I've read many writers who believe that the following words: black, Latino, Asian...are characterizations. They are not. Black, to describe Africans brought to this country during slavery (or who were here before European settlement as some records suggest), is a term applied by people of Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, Gaelic, Gallic, and Spanish heritage. Of course, other terms have been used and were more prevalent during the period after reconstruction when new immigrants from Ireland and other parts of Europe could at least say that though they didn’t come in on the Mayflower, they were not black, they were white. The term black American has seen resurgence over the past ten years as a new wave of immigrants from Somalia, Eritrea, and other war-torn African countries, have created a desire for Americans of African heritage with the equivalent of "Mayflower" roots to differentiate themselves from the new immigrants. And Latin America covers a wide range of geographic regions and ethnic peoples, as does Asia. The terms mentioned above are really geographic classifications, leftovers from a period of history when it did matter whether you were Polish, Scottish, Irish, or African, Chinese, etc. It mattered because it defined your place in American life. Yet, the reality is that geographic heritage offers a wide range of cultural diversity. Writers writing for the new American marketplace should just dispense with ethnic stereotypes. It is culture, rather than ethnic heritage, that defines a character's world view. Culture, that is where a writer must focus to understand how a person who may be from a particular ethnic heritage views the world. In other words, culture affects character.

2. If you don't have familiarity with anyone from a heritage that you know well enough to ask stupid, and maybe even offensive, questions then perhaps you shouldn't include diverse characters. Yes, it's catch-22. Okay, include the Japanese cosplay girl, just think very carefully about the purpose behind the character's inclusion in your story. Diversity is a value, but your character should also have a purpose to the story. We are not trying to create token diversity in stories. If you want to be successful for the under 40 crowd, however, a narrowly ethnic perspective is not acceptable. Research shows that teens and young adults prefer a more diverse cast. It’s a part of the fabric of their culture. They're post Civil Rights. They're used to diversity and many feel uncomfortable with too much homogeneity. Obama anyone? This demographic shift has played a huge role in the political climate. If it can affect what many thought to be a sure win candidate for the democrats -- Hilary Clinton, how much more is it at play in other areas of popular culture?

3. Finally, be aware that you are communicating your world view when you write. It is inevitable. We all have shadow beliefs. The best way to explore our shadow beliefs is to write. Writing, even fiction writing, reveals so much more than we want to admit. Yes, you can plot out a story to the inth degree, but how you plot, the choices you make, the through line, beats, perspective, etc, all come from inside you. Facing our shadows is a responsibility that we as writers must take seriously because ultimately, we are creating and communicating culture. For understanding to grow between human beings, our communication to human beings must contain that element of respect. This is not to say that we hold harmless just because we are purposefully communicating something that is a part of a character's culture, but we must understand the culture, the character, and the culture's effect upon our character. There's so much more to write...and now that I've gotten the first iteration of the As Written By website up and running, I will write it.

Happy writing to all. If you have a book with has a cast of diverse characters, please let me know about it. I want my teens to see these books are out there.

Are U my Mammy?

For the life of me, I cannot understand why publishers love books in which a lonely white kid befriends an eccentric, older black woman. Or maybe the black woman isn't eccentric, she's just black and she needs a kid to care for because her kids have disappeared into the ether. Look, this isn't about ethncity. People are people are people. Ethnic heritage doesn't matter. That's why these types of stories are disturbing. What are the authors really trying to say when they put outsider white kids with what I call a "mammy." You know what I'm talking about. Sue Monk Kidd got lots of press for The Secret Life of Bees. Elizabeth Berg, a favorite author of mine, penned, "We Are All Welcome Here." I'm a prolific reader. I've tried to read these "best seller" books, but I couldn't get in to them. Frankly, as a black woman, I found the viewpoints insulting. Both the authors I've mentioned are fine writers, but it seems that they're aiming for a multicultural style using outmoded models. Many "white" authors see multiculturalism as black and white. They are the ones most likely to fall into the "Mammy Syndrome." Demographics have changed publishing dramatically over the last ten years. Many established authors have been "encouraged" read pushed to include more diverse casts, so these writers rewrite Gone With The Wind. Why? I don't believe they're being racist. I think it's more a result of the shadows. All writers have shadows. These shadows are beliefs, some of these beliefs are deeply held. Some of the beliefs would horrify us if we took them out and examined them in the light of day; but these beliefs come out when we write. Perhaps we heed the warning of our editor about the lack of diversity in a story and we throw in a stock character -- a secretary, a security guard. Many authors have almost no interaction with people of color. If this is the case, the stock character can easily be crafted from a stereotype lifted from television or music, two industries that crank stereotypes out like Hershey's makes chocolate bars. More disheartening than the authors who write these stories, are the publishers who green-light them. So what am I trying to say here? Simply this: if you're a white writer, carefully examine your worldview before writing a culture story. In her book, Letting Go, author Pamela Morsi does a fine job of inclusion. In the story, she has a secondary character who is bi-racial. Morsi does employ race as a tension device, but she doesn't rely too heavily on it. She also has some things to say that make sense. Morsi is a writer who gets it. Writers have a responsibility to the reader to examine their prejudices before broadcasting them to the world. If you're lucky enough to write a future classic, history will judge you. And the future looks increasingly multicultural. Oh, and for the record, black women are more than caregivers. We are lawyers, doctors, educators, business owners, friends, and lovers. Expand your storylines to include us in these ways and then you'll be saying something.