Tropical Blond
Jul. 21st, 2006 04:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseMany of the blog entries I've been reading on the whole racism thing are about the arts. No surprise there; I move in artistic crowds, predominantly writers, but also others.
(While near the subject, I'd like to recommend that any Winnipeggers looking for a good show, by the way, try and track down one of the i_rose Productions. Primrose Madayag Knazan is one of the best writers/directors to come out of the local scene. Period. Two of her first two shows were about being Filipino in Canada, about not fitting in, and about the best things in their respective venues in their respective years. Fat Tuesday was inspired by her Honeymoon in New Orleans (Obviously Pre-Katrina) -- her husband told me a bit about the encounter that prompted it -- and it was a lot of fun, too. I haven't seen her this year, but she's on my must list, and she has two shows, one serious, one light and for tweens to teens.)
I don't have a lot to say about music and racism. I don't know the industry, or whether anyone feels excluded due to colour, rather than due to business practices that make the publishing industry look pitfall free. Rachel Manija Brown covered the TV/film industry nicely, I thought.
There's been a whole load of posts not long in the past about cultural appropriation in writing, especially in SF/F. A lot of it seemed to me to be a retread of old ground. The prime exception I can't find a link to right now (Argh!) because I can't remember the name of the man whose log it was in, and he isn't in LJ.
But the best initial take on this subject is here anyhow.
This whole subject got me started on thinking about my own writing.
Most of my fantasy writing that doesn't take place here-and-now-but-with-magic takes place on one particular world. But I'm hoping people can no longer tell looking at two different stories.
The story I started writing now always took place on islands, because it was based on two dreams where swimming was prominent. And of course, with Fiji sitting in the back of my mind (the nine-year-old child running after lizards, and away from snails, won out there), those islands did get describesd as tropical, in spite of some weird stuff (I wasn't all that clear on worldbuilding or realistic ecology and culture. I'm better, though I may still not be any good.)
But the main character of the time, in the dream, was blond, because the face of that person was that of a classmate (albeit behaving out of character.) So the character stayed blond, and was surrounded by redheads, and a handful with black hair because I think black hair is teh pretty. But still green eyed or pale skinned or both.
I didn't think about this for years. This story's been with me a while.
After a while, it occurred to me that this made no sense, that there's no good reason the island population should be all blonds and redheads and brunettes of Caucasian look. People in tropical zones are darker-skinned for good physiological reasons as well. Sure, I was stealing bits from English folklore, and a lot from naturalist writing on seals, but I was also borrowing half-remembered details about the South Pacific and New Zealand, picking and choosing tidbits from further reading about Polynesia, and my drawings of more than one minor character made this blatant. But my mental pictures were behind the times, and seemed to be missing my own inclusionary ethics in other areas.
My growing awareness of this problem didn't, of course, come to me out of nowhere. Left to my own devices, it might never have occurred to me. I liked movies with mixes, or set in odd historic times and places I'd never get to see. My list of film starts I thought were gorgeous was "Johnny Depp, Denzel Washington and Ryan Black". I wasn't unaware of cultural diversity.
As to writing, I'd read occasional fantasies set in Japan, or India, or in our world but with characters of more than one colour. I loved Charles de Lint's books full of Native mythology as well as Celtica, and I was at one point a rabid Tom Deitz fan, though now I see him as trying, but not entirely succeeding. I admit freely I was imitating many of their better qualities in trying to write my own, now possibly trunked, here-and-now-but-with-magic. And in said here-and-now-but-with-magic trunk novel, I'd included a school that was my own thinly veiled, in a city that is not Winnipeg but had parts of the same history, including the Metis Rebellion as a key part of its history. That all demanded the inclusion of other races -- First Nations in particular, but mainland Asian next. All this stuff *was* in my mind.
So you'd think I'd have thought about the blond in the tropics, but no.
That was the real world. Even the historical fantasies set in India or Japan were set in this world, if not here and now. The otherworld fantasies I read seemed pale overall. If people weren't white, they might as well be. If race issues came up, it was mostly via dwarves or elves or dragons. It hadn't occurred to me that an otherworld fantasy might be something other than "white".* And it probably wouldn't have, left to my own devices.
What brought it to my attention, what made me think about it, was Tobias S. Buckell. Well before he sold Crystal Rain, he'd talked about inclusion in fantasy and SF, and about his own childhood in the Caribbean, and about how there was not more, but even less reason to assume a uniform whiteness in another world than there was in a story set here and now. (He also pointed me to Nalo Hopkinson, by his more general recommendations of her wherever anyone might hear. Since then, he gave me one of my most useful critiques of the first half of this same story, though he didn't discuss race or culture at all. I didn't tell him that his influence on me was part of the reason, though.)
So I started to change things. I decided that the people on the islands are supposed to be East Asian / Filipino looking, since that actually fit with how I'd drawn a couple of minor characters (My descriptions tend to imply that, but I admit it, I still see my 'foreigner', Gaitann, as if he were from the Indian Subcontinent, and since he's supposed to look enough like the islanders to "pass", the islanders as I see them in my mind have been shifting to match him -- instead of the other way around.) And I slipped in more and still more bits of Polynesia, along with more bits of different history and perspective unique to my fantasy islands, and fought very hard to neither dismiss the "more primitive" OR overdo it and paint them as more noble than the "more civilized".
But I *still* instisted on coming up with a historic reason my main character could have blond hair.
Sometime later, I decided that wasn't enough, and that since it wasn't a plot point that he be a particular colour, using a blond with a nice backdrop of people of darker hue was, well, missing the point. Especially in a story where learning to get along across racial and cultural gaps is in theory the ultimate goal.
And yet the history I'd built for him was convoluted and complicated enough to make it a plot point that he's biracial (Er... so to speak. His family history includes 4 different racial groups, one of which is further divided into 2 cultural ones, although this is made odder because this is a world where humans are a subspecies -- or a few subspecies' -- of the original selkies.) So while I made him more visibly mixed, I also decided that to remove the mix of races and make him all something would actually be a step backwards, and less meaningful.
The rest of the world went much the same way, some sooner**, but most later, and many of those did so specifically because of something happening on these islands, or something said in passing by a traveller in the course of this book. What's most important, and gives me the most reason to encourage others (As I have, when appropriate) to think about the question of including diversity even in an otherworld fantasy, is that almost every time my assumption went from "Of course they're white and have a medieval/renaissance society" to "What else can they be?", the culture grew more depth -- even the ones that stayed pale-skinned or kept their medieval trappings. Because it was a considered choice, not a presumed default.
Anyhow, I'm glad that the concept was hammered home to me, in time for me to make a whole other world much richer.
____________________________________________________
*
Mercedes Lackey started on the path of adding colour to the countries South of Valdemar, then backed out by the fact that magic bleaches her characters -- that the Jody Lee covers mostly showed characters of other ethnicities as "really tanned Caucasions" didn't help, though in theory one can't blame Misty. Of course, Misty is also a writer guilty of having all her good characters have the same progressive notions, so many of her other ethnic groups felt like white people in different costumes, and didn't really blip on my radar. When they didn't share the progressive attitudes, it was only because they were even *more* noble and accepting than the people around them, though their ethics still coincided point by point.
I might have felt differently about her mere mention of these groups, of darker skin, if I were from a First Nations family.
And yes, she's improved over time, and she continues to include non-white characters, even if she does fail at fully allowing them to *be* culturally different. Points for effort.
**
About the same time I started to wrestle with having to justify keeping my character blond among non-whites, I decided (based on seeing someone in a restaurant and saying, "That looks just like my character, Z_____, should!") to turn Fauconarans into an East-Indian look -- except for a handful of unfortunate blondes who are either exoticized and assumed to have a certain foreign sexual magnetism, or treated as near to subhuman as the culture allows. Because yes, exact role reveral was my brave venture into the world of diversity. Ugh.
Alas, since I did role-reversal too literally, their culture remained very European for a long time. It's meant to be Fauconaran, which isn't much like Indian -- but shouldn't be much like European. Basically, my first attempt started as a Mercedes Lackey skin-deep-only change. Caucasians with a really strong tan. Whoops.
(While near the subject, I'd like to recommend that any Winnipeggers looking for a good show, by the way, try and track down one of the i_rose Productions. Primrose Madayag Knazan is one of the best writers/directors to come out of the local scene. Period. Two of her first two shows were about being Filipino in Canada, about not fitting in, and about the best things in their respective venues in their respective years. Fat Tuesday was inspired by her Honeymoon in New Orleans (Obviously Pre-Katrina) -- her husband told me a bit about the encounter that prompted it -- and it was a lot of fun, too. I haven't seen her this year, but she's on my must list, and she has two shows, one serious, one light and for tweens to teens.)
I don't have a lot to say about music and racism. I don't know the industry, or whether anyone feels excluded due to colour, rather than due to business practices that make the publishing industry look pitfall free. Rachel Manija Brown covered the TV/film industry nicely, I thought.
There's been a whole load of posts not long in the past about cultural appropriation in writing, especially in SF/F. A lot of it seemed to me to be a retread of old ground. The prime exception I can't find a link to right now (Argh!) because I can't remember the name of the man whose log it was in, and he isn't in LJ.
But the best initial take on this subject is here anyhow.
This whole subject got me started on thinking about my own writing.
Most of my fantasy writing that doesn't take place here-and-now-but-with-magic takes place on one particular world. But I'm hoping people can no longer tell looking at two different stories.
The story I started writing now always took place on islands, because it was based on two dreams where swimming was prominent. And of course, with Fiji sitting in the back of my mind (the nine-year-old child running after lizards, and away from snails, won out there), those islands did get describesd as tropical, in spite of some weird stuff (I wasn't all that clear on worldbuilding or realistic ecology and culture. I'm better, though I may still not be any good.)
But the main character of the time, in the dream, was blond, because the face of that person was that of a classmate (albeit behaving out of character.) So the character stayed blond, and was surrounded by redheads, and a handful with black hair because I think black hair is teh pretty. But still green eyed or pale skinned or both.
I didn't think about this for years. This story's been with me a while.
After a while, it occurred to me that this made no sense, that there's no good reason the island population should be all blonds and redheads and brunettes of Caucasian look. People in tropical zones are darker-skinned for good physiological reasons as well. Sure, I was stealing bits from English folklore, and a lot from naturalist writing on seals, but I was also borrowing half-remembered details about the South Pacific and New Zealand, picking and choosing tidbits from further reading about Polynesia, and my drawings of more than one minor character made this blatant. But my mental pictures were behind the times, and seemed to be missing my own inclusionary ethics in other areas.
My growing awareness of this problem didn't, of course, come to me out of nowhere. Left to my own devices, it might never have occurred to me. I liked movies with mixes, or set in odd historic times and places I'd never get to see. My list of film starts I thought were gorgeous was "Johnny Depp, Denzel Washington and Ryan Black". I wasn't unaware of cultural diversity.
As to writing, I'd read occasional fantasies set in Japan, or India, or in our world but with characters of more than one colour. I loved Charles de Lint's books full of Native mythology as well as Celtica, and I was at one point a rabid Tom Deitz fan, though now I see him as trying, but not entirely succeeding. I admit freely I was imitating many of their better qualities in trying to write my own, now possibly trunked, here-and-now-but-with-magic. And in said here-and-now-but-with-magic trunk novel, I'd included a school that was my own thinly veiled, in a city that is not Winnipeg but had parts of the same history, including the Metis Rebellion as a key part of its history. That all demanded the inclusion of other races -- First Nations in particular, but mainland Asian next. All this stuff *was* in my mind.
So you'd think I'd have thought about the blond in the tropics, but no.
That was the real world. Even the historical fantasies set in India or Japan were set in this world, if not here and now. The otherworld fantasies I read seemed pale overall. If people weren't white, they might as well be. If race issues came up, it was mostly via dwarves or elves or dragons. It hadn't occurred to me that an otherworld fantasy might be something other than "white".* And it probably wouldn't have, left to my own devices.
What brought it to my attention, what made me think about it, was Tobias S. Buckell. Well before he sold Crystal Rain, he'd talked about inclusion in fantasy and SF, and about his own childhood in the Caribbean, and about how there was not more, but even less reason to assume a uniform whiteness in another world than there was in a story set here and now. (He also pointed me to Nalo Hopkinson, by his more general recommendations of her wherever anyone might hear. Since then, he gave me one of my most useful critiques of the first half of this same story, though he didn't discuss race or culture at all. I didn't tell him that his influence on me was part of the reason, though.)
So I started to change things. I decided that the people on the islands are supposed to be East Asian / Filipino looking, since that actually fit with how I'd drawn a couple of minor characters (My descriptions tend to imply that, but I admit it, I still see my 'foreigner', Gaitann, as if he were from the Indian Subcontinent, and since he's supposed to look enough like the islanders to "pass", the islanders as I see them in my mind have been shifting to match him -- instead of the other way around.) And I slipped in more and still more bits of Polynesia, along with more bits of different history and perspective unique to my fantasy islands, and fought very hard to neither dismiss the "more primitive" OR overdo it and paint them as more noble than the "more civilized".
But I *still* instisted on coming up with a historic reason my main character could have blond hair.
Sometime later, I decided that wasn't enough, and that since it wasn't a plot point that he be a particular colour, using a blond with a nice backdrop of people of darker hue was, well, missing the point. Especially in a story where learning to get along across racial and cultural gaps is in theory the ultimate goal.
And yet the history I'd built for him was convoluted and complicated enough to make it a plot point that he's biracial (Er... so to speak. His family history includes 4 different racial groups, one of which is further divided into 2 cultural ones, although this is made odder because this is a world where humans are a subspecies -- or a few subspecies' -- of the original selkies.) So while I made him more visibly mixed, I also decided that to remove the mix of races and make him all something would actually be a step backwards, and less meaningful.
The rest of the world went much the same way, some sooner**, but most later, and many of those did so specifically because of something happening on these islands, or something said in passing by a traveller in the course of this book. What's most important, and gives me the most reason to encourage others (As I have, when appropriate) to think about the question of including diversity even in an otherworld fantasy, is that almost every time my assumption went from "Of course they're white and have a medieval/renaissance society" to "What else can they be?", the culture grew more depth -- even the ones that stayed pale-skinned or kept their medieval trappings. Because it was a considered choice, not a presumed default.
Anyhow, I'm glad that the concept was hammered home to me, in time for me to make a whole other world much richer.
____________________________________________________
*
Mercedes Lackey started on the path of adding colour to the countries South of Valdemar, then backed out by the fact that magic bleaches her characters -- that the Jody Lee covers mostly showed characters of other ethnicities as "really tanned Caucasions" didn't help, though in theory one can't blame Misty. Of course, Misty is also a writer guilty of having all her good characters have the same progressive notions, so many of her other ethnic groups felt like white people in different costumes, and didn't really blip on my radar. When they didn't share the progressive attitudes, it was only because they were even *more* noble and accepting than the people around them, though their ethics still coincided point by point.
I might have felt differently about her mere mention of these groups, of darker skin, if I were from a First Nations family.
And yes, she's improved over time, and she continues to include non-white characters, even if she does fail at fully allowing them to *be* culturally different. Points for effort.
**
About the same time I started to wrestle with having to justify keeping my character blond among non-whites, I decided (based on seeing someone in a restaurant and saying, "That looks just like my character, Z_____, should!") to turn Fauconarans into an East-Indian look -- except for a handful of unfortunate blondes who are either exoticized and assumed to have a certain foreign sexual magnetism, or treated as near to subhuman as the culture allows. Because yes, exact role reveral was my brave venture into the world of diversity. Ugh.
Alas, since I did role-reversal too literally, their culture remained very European for a long time. It's meant to be Fauconaran, which isn't much like Indian -- but shouldn't be much like European. Basically, my first attempt started as a Mercedes Lackey skin-deep-only change. Caucasians with a really strong tan. Whoops.
