- Joined
- Apr 18, 2011
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- kimnflowers.blogspot.com
Wow, this turned out to be a very tantalizing discussion! A lot of interesting points were made and I agree with all of them honestly. It's funny how it works. There is this assumption that being biracial is more accepting to society, but biracial people tend to be rejected by both heritages. They are caught in a world in between. I guess that is why I wanted to write my lead character as one.
To answer the question of who told me those things: it's family and friends. Not agents or publishing houses, thank God! Over the years they have give me a lot of good criticism, but that was when I was still developing my skills. Now as I have found my writing style and I am more matured, their criticism doesn't focus on my writing anymore, but trivial things such as my characters' races.
So I should probably find a beta reader or readers, but I wouldn't even know where to go with that! Plus, do you have to have a the whole story complete or can you submit what you have to beta readers as you go along?
Depends on your beta readers. I say multiple areas of diversity should be more common in the future. All my stories feature characters with diverse races/sexualities, and in The Divide everyone is multi-racial and it's 200 years in the future, and not just white/PoC. I want to make sure I'm not putting myself into some kind of bad trope with that! This discussion has helped me to see that in the sequel, some of my multi-racial characters will have some more focus put on their different family cultures. For example, I have a lesbian character who is part native American and wears a mohawk, and I don't explain why in book one. But that's because the MC in book one sees things from her government brainwashed perspective. But there is a reason, so I will tell it. And there are other things I'm going to expand on as well.
From what I have read, I think the stories with biracial characters who are completely whitewashed or seem to have none of the problems you mentioned are the ones that are causing a problem overall. Like Jem in Clockwork Angel. It is good to see a white/Chinese character, but he is always treated as if he is white, really. I still like him. But I see where the conflict could lie. And Cassandra Clare is awesome. The MC is a white girl who seems very unused to being around what she refers to as "foreign" people but has no problem accepting Jem and doesn't think of him as "foreign".
I think there is still a struggle with diversity in characters but the more of us who keep putting our work out there, the more likely we should see a revolution!