Authenticity and Appropriation

In the interest of full disclosure, I am whiter than albino almond meringue. I come from an upperish middle class white Texas protestant liberal household, though my income over the last decade has danced coyly around the poverty line. I speak two languages besides English with varying degrees of competence, and I've done my best to get out and see the world, and hopefully bring home a better understanding of it.

The catalyst for this post is a gentleman named Tom MacMaster, who spent several months blogging under the guise of a Syrian lesbian activist named Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari. I'd been following the blog for a while, and when MacMaster wrote that Amina had been abducted, I put links up, bugged people I knew, wrote e-mails, and added my signature to things. In his apology for the hoax- which notably put real activists on the ground in Syria who tried to speak up for Amina at serious risk- MacMaster said that he wanted to draw attention to the story of what was happening in Syria. Actual middle-eastern women responded with a completely understandable "we don't need you speaking for us."

The thing is, and I'd like to say this, if I can, without sounding truly douchey, I understand MacMaster's position as well. Obviously he lied about who he was, and got the world all riled up about a fake problem that looked like but eclipsed in our consciousness ten thousand very really problems. It did succeed in drawing attention to the region, but it also had the assumably unforseen consequence of superceding the real voices of people on the ground. I don't think he ever meant for it to get as far as it did, and he made some truly stupid decisions, but I don't think he ever did it maliciously.

But.

Even if it had always been presented as a work of fiction (and I believe this whole thing started because he intended to write a book), there's still this dangerous water of being a white, Western man, defining, inventing, exoticizing, and romanticizing a middle eastern woman, isn't there? Even without any malice at all, there's that unspoken assumption that it's his place to speak, and that he's just as good a candidate to represent Syrian lesbians as any lesbian in Syria. Better even.

I bring this up because I would love to write about Syrian lesbians, if I thought I knew enough about the matter to do it well. (At the risk of being grossly reductionist, immediately after reading 1001 Arabian Nights and again after reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, I dashed off middle east inspired shorts- second world stuff in general, but trying to catch the flavor those works had for me.) I'd love to write about the Congolese, or the Zapatistas down in Chiapas. I'd like to write about Sumatra and Papua New Guinea. I've often thought when I get a bit better at crafting whole novels, I'd like to submit myself as a ghost writer for one of the abolitionist NGOs or something like the Somaly Mam foundation- to be able to take issues I think are genuinely important, and bring the stories of real people to the public eye.

There's a legitimate question of how much we can ever understand the inner workings of people from vastly disparate circumstances. Even when we're speaking the same language, it's almost impossible that all the connotations of the words- the years of memories, emotions, experiences, and arguments that shape our understanding of what "money", "shameful", "family", "God", and "love" mean, for example- will really jive. It's often different enough to cause misunderstandings even when you're speaking to someone raised in the same style, even within the same family. Ideally, as authors, our job is to be able to put on another person's skin and have a feel for what it means to walk in it, but I know I'm not the only one who's seen truly cringe-worthy examples of a writer who's said "yeah, I totally know how people from this group think."

So how does a white, middle-ish class, American from the bible belt walk that line with grace and respect?

Honestly, damned if I know. I do my best to understand what prejudices and privileges I bring to the table. While my writing tends toward the baroque and exaggerated, I do my best to make sure characters are never set pieces, just there for the exoticism of it. I try to paint worlds, whether imaginary or in imitation of this one, where people reflect a spectrum and either people get to say their piece, or have their enforced silence as a point of contention. It's hard to get a perspective on how well I've actually done.

I know there are times I'm terrified. I worry I've stepped all over somebody else's sandbox, or I've made some unforgivable error, overlooked something truly basic. Made a sock puppet out of a character who ought to have been real. I'm shy with some of these stories.

I guess what I want to be is a global citizen, but I'm terrified I'll always only be American.

Edit: As is so often the case, Benjamin Rosenbaum said it so much better.

Cross-gender and Multicultural Writing

I have been going through the archives of Mur Lafferty's "I Should be Writing" and there was a discussion on writing for the other gender, which seems to baffle people. I want to say something on that, and extend this advice to every politically loaded axis of personal identity.

I believe people's traits are not particularly inherent to their social class, race, gender, nation, or sexuality, but what those axises do change is people's relationships with those traits, and what society in general expects of them.

So here is a process.

1. Pick the traits you want for your character. I don't mean black, straight, and moneyed, I mean like they're recalcitrant, competitive, intensely focussed on personal hygiene, and they compete in dog shows. It doesn't have to be anything wild or "different", just however you would normally make a character. Don't think about how to write a woman, or an Asian American, or a post-operative transexual. Just think about who they are as an individual right now.

2. Determine how fixated they are on the political axis of their identity and what they think they're "supposed to be" based on that (note, this may not be the standard, this is their personal thing). You'll hear people say things like "people like me don't go to college" or "that's fine for them, but I don't think it's appropriate for someone like me". Does your male character shop alone for fabric because he loves sewing, but feels like it might make him a little less of a man? Does your black character feel guilty about liking Tarantino more than Spike Lee? Does your lesbian feel a little vain about how many men's head she turns, even though she has no interest in them? Is your quiet domestic female proud of herself for doing so well at being the perfect wife?

Conflicts and double standards of identity are great for character development.

3. Once you've determined how they feel about the places they deviate or conform with their idea of their axis, think about the social pressures this axis brings on them and how they react to that. Say you have a very aggressive woman who loves to fight and is pretty proud of how well she does- what does she do when people whisper behind her back, or when her friends ask her why she just won't settle down and be normal? How does your shy young black man who loves to compose waltzes react to his classmates and his relatives trying to engage him in verbal sparring, or get him to play music that they think of as less white? Does your character hide and try to blend? Do they dig in their heels in resentment and be what they are more visibly? Do they lose confidence in themselves because deep down they feel everyone around them is right?

Conversely, how does that shy young black man feel when a white professor congratulates him on not confining himself to "the ghetto of black music"?

Society is no more uniform than people are, but statistics do come into play. If your character deviates, they will eventually catch flack from one side or another (or from many sides. You can't please everyone, but sometimes it feels like you CAN displease them all). If your character conforms but feels ambivalent, they're eventually going to be rewarded for something they're not sure they feel good about. If they naturally conform, they may internalize the expectations so thoroughly they have trouble believing anyone COULD deviate ("oh that's just silly! All women are inherently nurturing!") and get flustered when they run across it.

Not only do these scenarios help you round out a character, they make for great scenes.

So, that's my thought process on it, and I hope it's something I do right by. I also highly recommend Nisi Williams' "Transracial Writing for the Sincere" for people who want to be more multicultural with their characters, but are scared of doing it wrong.