Young Writers Society

In this current project/story I'm working on, one of the characters come from an ethnic minority group. Granted, the story focuses on other aspects but the fact that he comes from an ethnic minority group would have a significant impact on how he interacts with the rest of society, and so on.

The ethnic minority group in question is Manchu, an ethnic minority group in China. Apart from the research into their daily lives, culture, language etc. Any advice or tips on how to portray a character such as this would be appreciated. <3

You need to figure out how they mesh with the world around them.

- Social support. A person in a marginalized group who is alone will often behave differently from somebody who has a community outside of family. It can be harder to practice traditions (especially group-centric ones, or ones that rely on a supply chain of sorts, like a certain cut of meat that is only produced within the community) depending on the region.

- Proximity to culture, both physical and emotional. Some individuals are more assimilated into mainstream culture, while others maintain their traditions very closely. They could also be far away from homelands, which makes practicing traditions harder.

- Attitudes of the surrounding area. Some pockets of dominant groups are wonderfully accepting and promote a mosaic type existence, while others are very pro assimilation and will alienate the individual(s) through various means, from segregation to cultural genocide to physical genocide.

Pretty sure there are more, but it's hard to give those details without knowing more of the context of the story. But the basics are you've got to characterize the marginalized person's interactions with everyone else just as much as you have to characterize the person themselves.