Young Writers Society

To start off this post, I am a straight-passing, cis, white female -- a very privileged person. However, this doesn't mean I ALWAYS want to write about cis, white, straight characters. In fact, sometimes I want to write about the exact opposite...

The book I'm writing will feature exclusively people of color (POC), with a ton of LGBT representation. In this world, there is no such thing as racism, sexism, or homophobia, despite being set in a time period similar to our medieval times.

The world, however, is tiny. The livable area is roughly the size of Europe, give or take. Therefore, I recognize I can't represent every ethnicity there is on our planet, and not all of them will exist in my book. (I'm focusing on a few to accurately portray them, rather than focusing on a ton and not portraying them correctly.)

The idea of the book is that none of this happened on Earth, so while the races aren't the same as ours, they're comparable to ours. (Meaning, if there were characters that'd live in Saudi Arabia in our timeline, their names will be Arabic, as will their sayings, even though they're obviously not from Saudi Arabia, as there is no Saudi Arabia on this planet.) It's supposed to be like, I translated it to a comparable source so that readers can understand and relate to the alien characters.

The characters are all humanoid, and will contain physical appearances that match those of the races they're being represented by. Each of them will be called after a certain moon, due to lore on my planet that each of the ancient tribes got to name a moon. Therefore, they'll be like, "Oh, yeah, my moon was _______" to signify which tribe they originally hailed from (as everyone moves around a lot, so doing it by location is difficult).

I will be working hard to fight stigmas in the book. In no way will I make anyone matter or mean less to the plot due to their ethnicity, nor will anyone be teased about religion or the way they look. All characters will be accepting of all others at all times. HOWEVER, as the culture is different on this planet (because the situations of the planet are different), I'm frightened I may be being insensitive. (To follow my earlier example, there is no Allah on this planet, but there is a god that is worshipped.) Characters will wear religious dress at times, and I will fight to follow as much of the original culture as possible, but obviously, it will not be exactly the same in my book as it is in real life.

If there are any questions, please let me know. But mostly -- please check my privilege. If you think anything I'm doing is insensitive or downright racist, let me know. If you think a premise presented here could be problematic, PLEASE let me know. I want to make sure I'm making an inclusive, whole, beautiful story, not one that further shuts POC out of the narrative.

Okay, so I'm not the best person to comment on privilege, as I'm straight/white/cis female. But something about this seems off to me.

A world where there is no sort of discrimination? It sounds great, but unrealistic. It seems like throughout all of human history, there's been hierarchies and people declared "other". I have trouble believing that a humanoid society wouldn't also be the same way. Maybe not about race/gender/orientation, but maybe class or something else?

What might be more realistic is if there's some sort of history where there was discrimination that has been overcome by laws/cultural shifts. You could also have characters respecting each other and being accepting in spite of societal rules that are discriminatory in some way.

Not sure if I'm making much sense, as I've been writing all night haha.

Hey @GoldenQuill! I like your thoughts.

Like niteowl, I think the issue is that if everyone is living harmoniously, where's the conflict? Not that you need racism/sexism/bigotry for a story to function, but a totally peaceful society, where everyone respects each other, seems a little boring. Purely because that's not how society works. There has always been, and will always be, "us & them" thinking. It doesn't have to be to do with race/nationality/sex/gender identity/orientation/religion/disability/age/Traveller or Roma identity or any similar. But for instance, class and caste, geographical location, or in this case - tribe?

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer has an interesting twist on this, set so far in the future that races don't really exist anymore. But in that case, cyborgs are still hated for being not-entirely-human. Or Harry Potter - the Death Eaters and Muggles. Or Terry Pratchett - the ongoing trolls vs dwarves conflict.

I don't think you necessarily need your privilege checked as you're writing in a fantasy world where people have not experienced hardships the same way they do here. If you were writing a story of purely LGBT POC in the real world, then maybe you would. But it's not a story that involves privilege or a lack thereof.

Hey @StellaThomas and @niteowl! I've been giving your above words a long thought.

First of all, of course, I wanted to thank you guys for the new perspective. I put a lot of thought into your responses, until finally I thought I could accurately portray what's going on in my head. The easiest comparison I found was Moana (and no, not because of your icon, Stella, hehe).

Moana was a flippin' fantastic movie. And it was the first movie in a long time -- possibly, ever -- that didn't "break the fantasy" for me.
Let me explain.

Another lovely movie came out called The Book of Life a while back. In my first viewing, I didn't enjoy it too much. It was rife with sexism. Sexism that was overcome, of course, but still. It added nothing to the plot to me, and though now it sits among the few movies I own, it broke me out of the fantasy. Whenever someone said something sexist, I was taken out of the world -- shocked, surprised, my mind whispering, "Wow, that's sexist."

This happens to me a lot in books, movies, television, etc. I'm always taken out of the fantasy because I'm being reminded too much of real life.

Moana wasn't like that. In Moana, characters were defined by their actions. Maui never thought less of Moana because she was a girl, nor was she kept from the throne or defined by her village as a 'girl' -- she was the next heir to the throne. Her father wasn't often mad at her because he had a daughter instead of a son, he was mad because she would shirk her duties and sneak off to the ocean. Gramma Tala wasn't made fun of or thought less of for being a woman, she was made fun of for her "crazy" theories.
Because of this, I was never taken out of the fantasy. The movie ended and I was still waiting to be jolted out, brought back into the real world.
But I never was.

In this book, I am trying not to "break the fantasy". I want to create something new, different, unique. In a world where there are no white people, only people of color; in a world where people are forced to move around often due to availability of work; in a world where the original tribes used to live in close vicinity to help each other survive on such a small (and often barren) planet... no, there is no racism. The people of this world are part of a close-knit community. The central conflict focuses on a "lost city" finally re-emerging with this close-knit community. It brings other lost societies out of the works. All would be fine, if only one of the main characters played well with others.
But she doesn't. I'm not going to blatantly destroy the story, here, but the central conflicts focus more around who the people are and their choices, rather than: what they look like, who they like, what their gender is, etc.
It's hard to explain fully without giving too much away.

My question was, more specifically -- I am using things from the real world to describe things in the book. Is this erasing, racist, or problematic in a way I don't currently see?
The idea, as stated before, is supposed to be that I translated it to the closest possible comparison in our world.
FOR EXAMPLE...
There is a character in my book named Na'imah. (An Arabic name.) She wears a head-covering. She worships a moon god (by the name of Hilal, another Arabic name).
Obviously, this character is similar Islamic people, but the culture is NOT identical. (There is no Allah, there is no radical Islam, etc. etc. etc.)
Is this erasing, mean, and degrading to people who are Muslim, or even just all Arabs in general? I think it can be.

My thoughts are, in order:
1. YES this is so degrading! I'm reducing people to their appearance and culture, taking the outside appearance of these cultures, and changing the inside significance, and making comparisons! It's genuinely terrible.
2. It can't be the identical culture, as the planet isn't Earth, and I don't want to have cultures that CLEARLY RESEMBLE AN EARTH CULTURE (as it's a bit unavoidable, obviously) and not make a nod. And is it erasing to portray people who look a certain way and give them a whole different culture? I don't know!

SO YES. Any thoughts on any of the above?

@GoldenQuill - you're right on the button about Moana there! You're right, there was no racism or sexism involved even though in the real world there may certainly have been sexism.

I think I have a story idea very similar to yours - an earth-that-isn't-earth, with all races represented from around the world, but it's not Earth, and it's set in a cosmopolitan city in the desert where cultural/racial divides don't really serve anyone any good.

Regarding your character - I don't think so? I mean, your character is Na'imah and is of Arabic origin, that's not too different to calling her Niamh and making her of Irish origin. (Also remember that Arabic people are technically Caucasian, though not white-European).

Regarding not having Allah - remember that Allah and the Christian/Jewish God are very much the same entity. None of these exist in your world. So while you're erasing Islam, you're also erasing the other Abrahamic faiths. If you were writing that Prophet Muhammad wasn't around in this world, but Jesus was, but this lady still wore a headscarf but worshipped a moon god instead, then that would definitely be erasure and would not be respectful. But there's no Jesus, no Moses, no Abraham. You've taken a monotheistic religion out of context, and kept it as a monotheistic religion, and I don't feel that there's anything inherently bad about that.

If you're worried that you're going to make her a shell of her culture, maybe include some central tenets of that. With Islam this is actually easy and beautiful, because you have the Five Pillars of Islam to work with - faith, prayer, charity, fasting and pilgrimage. So you could incorporate some of these into her lunar religion - maybe they fast on the day of a new moon. Maybe there's a huge emphasis on alms-giving in her culture like there is in Islam. Maybe there's even a pilgrimage. You don't have to do any of these things, but it might help you feel a little more robust in your using this character and creating a culture based around one that isn't your own.

I think overall my main advice about this would be this: European culture does not have to be the default. That is, you don't need to take a base of European culture and then add on. Does that make sense? Maybe not. But basically, it's not like you should just say "I'm going to take these two bits of a culture, and add them to this character, to make her that culture". Just build the character from the ground up as a member of that culture. Obviously that's very difficult, when you haven't grown up in a particular culture itself. But then, you aren't representing a real culture, you're representing an imaginary one, and it doesn't matter if things are slightly different. But it could help if you take the central core beliefs of that culture and focus on those over the default-European ones. Like questions you could consider:

- in each culture, is the nuclear family the standard family unit, or are there more extended families and communities?
- is there a class/caste/rank system?
- what core values do they hold dearest: love, honour etc.
- is their folklore tradition oral, spoken or sung, or written? Does this change their views on education?

And also, if this is a medieval world, don't most of the ladies wear head coverings anyway? Maybe there's even some surprise at ladies who don't wear them?

Sorry, that got very rambling.

Hmm. I'm all for alternative worlds, POC and LGBTQ casts, and conflicts driven by choices and consequences. But the way you're describing it, this sounds to me like more of an experimental, utopian twist on classic stories than actual representation.

A world with all the POC people sounds interesting — but are they really POC, then? In comparison to what?
If no one is discriminative against anyone, and neither race, gender, nor anything else is grounds for people to see each other differently, does that really represent the minorities you're trying to include?

Don't get me wrong, I do think there are POC and LGBTQ people out there who would love your story. But, as one of those two myself, I don't find it to be something I'd read if I wanted to see characters such as myself, whom I can identify with or feel represented by — I'd read it if I wanted to escape to a utopian world where many problems I face disappear, like a pillow fort I can hide in when the actual world just gets too much.

Which, you know, is totally okay — if that's the kind of effect you want your story to have.

As for taking real religions and tweaking them into similar fantasy versions... I mean, fantasy books do that, and if you're not going to base any conflicts on those or anything, you're free to do it if you wish. Where I have a problem with such things is when real world's conflicts and problems are being "represented" through those tweaked, fantasy versions. For example, take the problems POC face, translated into so many fantasy novels as elves hating dwarves, or mages keeping humans as slaves, or whatever combination you want — in so many of those books, you don't see a single actually POC character, just fantasy races that replaced them; if you ask me, that is not representation either. It may show that the author understands that it's a problem in the real world, it may be an allegory for something in the real world, but it's not necessarily something a POC person can look at and go "oh, this character is exactly like me!". Same goes if such fantasy conflicts are based on religions, or gender identity, or orientation, or whathaveyou.
But. I don't feel like that's what you're going for, so I'm not attacking your idea here — just noting it's something to be careful with.

And while I'm talking, I just want to add that your concern over these things is a giant positive step that many writers don't bother taking.

Okay, the worldbuilding of "small tribes help each other survive" works fairly well. Many indigenous cultures are like that because survival > fear, but there are lines drawn between different groups (like, the Cree and Blackfoot are neighbours, but because one is a mountain people and one is a plains people, they are traditionally enemies).

PoC are xenophobic/colourist against each other. Japan, Persia, Ottoman Turkey, China, Egypt, Nubia, Babylon, the list goes on and on and on. There was colourism and/or xenophobia happening. My Cree/Blackfoot example is one. You can grab Huron and Iroquois. Iroquois were really the enemy of everyone, lol Their in group was tight knit and closely banded (six nations), but heaven help you if you crossed into their territory, or they decided they wanted yours.

While you might not have racism, xenophobia/colourism are very much alive and well, as Stella and Nite said. Xenophobia is "dislike of the other", while colourism is "paler is better."

Colourism can happen within a culture and is closer tied to classism than racism. Basically, for most of human history, the nobility would spend most of their time inside and the common folk would spend most of their time outside. This resulted in a class difference based on colour, even if everybody is part of the same race. So if you have these types of situations, colourism is likely.

Xenophobia is what drives empires to expand out and put up walls. It states that one group is better, needs to maintain purity, and/or needs to establish dominance. It's what fear of immigrants is based on. If you have wildly different groups that are prone to misunderstandings, this will happen.

Both of these have indeed existed for most of human history.

Is it racism? Not necessarily. Racism as North America understands it is something very North American, because we had such a long slave trade. Europe has different racial biases, and it looks closer to xenophobia than what North Americans would recognize as "racism."

So from an anthropological perspective, the whole "Everyone is loved all the time" just... doesn't. Hold up on a large scale. You can have it get to be pretty large, like the entirety of the rainforest on the Pacific coast, but once the rainforest stops so does the unity. The bordering cultures are just too different to be all buddy buddy with the other.

Look up groups like the Ju'//Hoasi and cultures that participated in the Potlatch. Both of those have very low-bias societies that are extremely socialist, but they also have their limits.

Also look up Writing With Colour, a blog run by PoC who give their opinions on plots. Their ask box is closed right now, but they have tons of previously-written content.

I wanted to take a moment and thank everyone here for their comments, advice, and helpful insights! I'm having many conversations with POC I know in my life about this, and have been making some minor tweaks and adjustments. Basically, however, I'm very appreciative of all of your thoughts and would love to hear more if anyone wants to contribute (either more, or for the first time, or even for the first time many months or years later). Thank you all so much again!