Photo:Ā mixetto [Getty Images]
Dear Sara:
Youāre an author, and I want to be an author, so I figure youāre a good person to ask about this.Ā I wrote a novel that I like, butĀ Iām concerned about the book being problematic because of the subject matter. Since Iāve been a white, straight man my whole life, I know Iāve got more privilege than a lot of people. And my character does not.
My main character is a morbidly obese guy who has one Mexican-American parent of color and one white parent of European descent. Iāve built his character to more or less satirize entitled, monstrous, awful men who are so close to getting the point but donāt.
He gets his comeuppance for all his faults and ends up in prison, where he definitely belongs. Heās a dangerous guy. Itās supposed to be satire. But I donāt know if my intent comes across. What if people think I affirm or admire his actions? What if people think I think heās a hero?
What do you think? Iām worried and maybe I shouldnāt try to get it published.
Sincerely,
A Worried Writer
Dear AWW:
It honestly depends in large part on how good of a writer you are. Iām not someone who believes that an author or director or content creator must have lived in the same shoes as all his characters ā that wouldnāt make sense. But I do think that the most important aspect of writing is authenticity. So you better be able to get inside the head of your main character and live there and create a real experience for your readers.
What that means to me is this: if Iāve never lived life as a 15-year-old Black girl who gets a scholarship to Harvard, maybe I can write about that, but I canāt write about it with as much authority and real, lived experience as I could if she were a white girl.
First of all, I donāt know what itās like to experience racism. And at some point, my theoretical character probably would. Weāre spending at least 50,000 words with this young woman, who was raised in a world in which white supremacy is the norm. At some point, she will most likely at least run into racially-tinged condescension, if not outright hate.
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Iām not saying her story has to be shitty or tragic ā and thatās one embarrassing and annoying aspect of too many stories about characters of color told by white creators. The Black girl has to experience tragedy to be worth our attention, because often times noble sacrifice is the price a Black character has to pay to merit praise from the white critical establishment. Often, white artists get a ton of praise for creating tales in which characters of color meet tragic ends. Itās tiresome. Itās hacky. Itās been done.
The easy thing is to say, āSo now all writers have to have lived exactly what their characters did to get it? George Lucas has never been a rebel warrior in space but he created Luke Skywalker.ā Sure, but Lucas has been a dude, and a white dude, and a white dude with some power. He grew up in a world in which most of the heroes in art were white, in which most of the powerful people in real life were white. Itās not a huge leap.
The follow-up would be, āWell he created Lando, what about Lando? Landoās Black! Heās definitely a Black man!ā Lando is great, but in the original Star Wars trilogy heās a minor (yet pivotal) character. And in the films in which he appears, his race is not so pressing an issue as it would be in our real world here on Earth. Lucas built a different world with different rules.
Letās return to my example of me, a white woman, attempting to spend 120 pages or more inside the head of a Black girl genius who goes to Harvard. I know what itās like to be a woman, and Iāve been a teenage girl who did reasonably well in school. I can make certain leaps to figure out certain elements of what this young woman might experience. I can do the research about Harvard first-year students, and about how they might handle the presence of a young teen. But in my judgment, this young womanās experience is so far outside my own that the risk of fucking up the narrative and the truth of the character is too great for me to take on.
Thatās my take on my abilities and my skill set. Somebody else might disagree. Thatās fine too.
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The worst sin in writing is inauthenticity. If I donāt believe you really know your character, and I donāt believe your character is real, Iām not going to take that ride with you.
So the question isnāt about political correctness or offending anyone. You seem to be worried about offending somebody. That shouldnāt be your concern. People are going to think whatever they want to think about you and your book. Your concern should be, āIs my work good enough to make this man real?ā And if it isnāt, youāre better off editing and rewriting. If it is, send it out into the world and see what happens. Best wishes to you on it ā and if this book isnāt the one you send out into the world, the next one very well may be. Keep writing, and keep reading. Donāt give up.
Ā
Ā
If you have a question and need some advice, email Sara atĀ prettydecentadvice@gmail.com