I only wanted ostriches.

[melissajm]

I'll be honest; all this "Writing the Other" controversy is making me hesitant to write at all! At least in my current WIP. I set it in an "Africanish" fantasy world because I wanted to have ostriches in it, so I needed a climate where they lived. Now I'm finding myself second-guessing everything for fear that someone with think I'm being racist/insensitive/ignorant/all of the above.

Of course I'm racist, and sexist, and whatever -ists apply, at least by one definition. My perceptions are all colored through the view of a white, female, Northeastern US living 40-something Special-Ed schooled bookish... Ok, this could go on until we run out of applicable adjectives. Anyway, the point is that we all have only one POV. We're obligated to realize that everyone else has a different POV. And if we don't want to hurt each other, we do our imperfect human best to understand where other people are coming from.

I write Fantasy and SF because I like the freedom to imagine worlds and populate them with all kinds of characters. I don't want to create a million paper suburbs filled with clones of me. I'm not that exciting, or that important. I want to create forests and deserts and cities and afterlives, castles and caves and homes of all kinds. I want to fill my worlds with men and women of all sizes, shapes and colors (plus imps, serpent-demons, mermaids...)

So how do I do this and say "Welcome to my made-up world. I've made it from what I am and what I know, what I've experienced and what I've learned, all reflected back in words. It's not the same as anybody else's world real or fictional, because no two people live the same life.

If my reflection of you, or your world, or parts of it is wrong because my mirror is too small or dusty with ignorance to show a true image, please don't assume I'm using a mocking funhouse mirror on purpose. Help me to clarify the image. We all know our own worlds the most intimately. But if we take "write what we know" literally, and only write about our own little corner of the universe, we defeat the whole purpose of speculative fiction.

A person's first steps into a new environment will usually be halting and imperfect. Writing is the same way. The more I think about this, the more I think that the best an author can do is to learn as much as they can about people and places similar to their made-up ones, treat their characters like real people, and remember that somebody else always has a bigger, clearer mirror and no one ever captures the whole true image.

What do you think? How can writers explore their imaginations without poking at real-world people?

Comments

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

I think that's very good advice. You can only do the best you can do. You can spend a lot of time second-guessing yourself. Basically, as it comes down to people are people. We all have feelings, we all have hopes and dreams, we all have bodies that grow and change and feel pain. The only time I was so offended by cultural elitism that I put a book down and did not pick it up again was when the author said (I'm paraphrasing here) something to the effect of, "she didn't cry at the death of her father, because among her people, family ties were not important." *Excuse me?!* In fact, the character (a twelve-year old girl, yet) doesn't pause or grieve at all.

The culture in question was Roman-era Britain. Aside from the fact that I do not believe there has been any culture throughout human history in which people feel nothing at the death of a close family member. And since we are talking here about a people who lived in close quarters with relatives, extended family, etc...

It's true, there are going to be people who will be upset if characters are wearing the wrong clothing, or performing the wrong ritual, but as long as you don't have your characters acting inhuman, it's stuff you can fix. For instance, you could say, "Well, yes, Basawra don't do that, but she has a Motswana mother, and learned it from her."

I doubt most of us need to worry about sinking so low that as dad dies, we shrug and walk on.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

That COULD be an interesting character, but the behavior would scream that there's something strange about HER, not her culture.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

That was the problem. The author did not imply that the character was a sociopath, but that it was her culture that made her not react.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Yep. That doesn't work.