It’s no secret that I like historicals. No, change that. I love historicals. Yeah, I complain about the proliferation of Regencies. But when all’s said and done, I look at my list of treasured books, and the vast majority are historicals.
My second preference would be for paranormals and fantasy. Contemporaries, I’m afraid, are a very, very distant third. I used to think this was due to several reasons, like the fact that historicals are my first love and that I love the escape into a separate world. And those are still true. But the other day, I had an epiphany, which, frankly, I should have had a long time ago: One of the main reasons I don’t read as many contemporaries as I do historicals is that 99.9% of contemporary characters are white and Christian.
My issue isn’t that I don’t qualify as either white or Christian. After all, human emotions are the same all around the world. And heck, I’m 100% Chinese, and I identify more with Eve Dallas than characters in The Joy Luck Club. (Not an exaggeration.)
No, I’m talking about the disparity between what I see and what I read, particularly in urban-set contemporaries. Where are skins of all colors sweating on the subway? Symbols of all creed and faith pouring out of office buildings? Schoolchildren from a multitude of cultures? Groups of friends that are ethnically, racially, culturally, linguistically and religiously diverse? Do I read about any of this in contemporaries? Nope. And considering what a melting pot North America is (which is where the majority of contemporaries take place), I find that odd. No, actually I find it a problem.
The question is why this phenomenon, as I perceive it, exists. Do I blame the old horse about authors writing what they know? That couldn’t be the case, because then no one would get anywhere; it’s called imagination. And anyway, some authors do write racially diverse characters, and for proof I can submit Suzanne Brockmann’s Alyssa from the Troubleshooters series, Marjorie M. Liu’s Mirabelle Lee from The Red Heart of Jade, two heroes from Anne Stuart’s Ice series, some of Jade Lee’s Blaze titles, quite a few of Susan Fox/Lyons’ contemporaries, and a Singaporean heroine in Kelly Hunter’s Her Singapore Fling. Are there more? Sure. Are they the exception? Yes.
There are also authors and lines like Harlequin’s Kimani Press that specialize in African-American characters. However, I think these books exist in part because blacks weren’t anywhere to be found in the first place. As far as I’m concerned, not much has changed.
So it’s not authors, at least, that I know of. Is it the romance readers, then? Are we all just a bunch of pathetic 50-year-old white Christian spinsters who wear gloves and yearn for true love? Am I a Mars Bar who wants to be deep-fried and sprinkled with peanuts? The answer to both is no. Is the racial status quo all we want to read about? There’s the rub.
Mostly though, I’m back to blaming the old enemy, the vertex of the publishing triumvirate that invariably ends up on top: Publishers. Books are a business: People want to make money, ergo, publishers will put out what they hope people will buy; ergo, this is what they think readers want.
For the record, I don’t want a token Asian girlfriend or black buddy. And I’m not asking authors to pander to political correctness by writing about a small town in northern Manitoba with a population that’s 25% Caucasian, 25% African-Canadian, 25% Aboriginal and 25% Asian because that would be hugely unlikely. But geez, if you’re writing about four absolute bestest pals who get together and start a flower shop/knitting circle/wedding business, would it absolutely kill the story to make one of them Jewish? Or black? Or Korean? Or (and here’s another can of worms) Muslim?
I think publishers ultimately want safe. Writing a historical or paranormal with racially diverse characters, that’s risky, but hey, if you have to transport yourself back 300 years, or imagine a vampires and demons roaming the world, an Asian police detective paired with a Southern werewolf gentleman is a mild stretch. (This, by the way, actually is the pairing in Eileen Wilks’ Lupi series.)
But take away the distractions of vampires and historical distance, and I’d bet most publishers would rear in shock. “Wait, your hero’s last name is Tanenbaum? I must have misheard – did you just say your heroine’s family comes from Sri Lanka? Well, I applaud your, ahem, imagination, but I’m afraid your characters just aren’t viable in this economic climate. They’re just not what readers want. Where would Judith McNaught be if Julie Mathison (Perfect) were an orphaned black girl? After all, you’re not trying to be Amy Tan; you’re only writing a romance novel.”
Okay, I made that whole thing up. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s close to the truth.
Now it’s your turn. Do you agree that contemporaries lack racial diversity, and do you think it’s a problem?
– Jean AAR
Such an interesting discussion. As a writer, I find your comments very helpful in clarifying my own thinking.
My discomfort with writing a principal character from another race or culture is not simply a factor of not being from that race or culture myself. For example, in that discussion with a black classmate, I actually did feel like I understood how she felt while she was telling me I couldn’t understand what it’s like to be black. That’s because I frequently feel that no one could understand what it was like growing up in my statistically unusual circumstances. So, ironically, I think I could write a character who has that degree of anger and perceived isolation.
The problem is, I don’t know enough black people, or Asians, or Hispanics, or…well, frankly, the only “”culture”” other than my own that I know at all well is British. I know a lot about British people, partly because I’ve lived there a lot, I’ve married two Brits, and I have relatives there. Unfortunately, adding a Brit to one of my books is hardly going to ameliorate Jean’s wish for more diversity in contemporary romances.
But what if I’d had all that experience of another nationality or culture, one more diverse than “”northern European””? I could feel more comfortable writing about someone of another race if I’d had more experience with people of that race.
So it’s not an inherent barrier, but a circumstantial one. Under other circumstances, another writer might feel very comfortable writing about a person of a different race.
And yes, I do write about characters of a different gender. Again, I have a lot more experience with men to draw on. But two other things play into the question of cross-gender identification. One is that I’ve consumed a LOT of media portraying men. Yes, mostly white men, but not exclusively. (I actually think I could write a black hero with more confidence than a black heroine.)
The other factor is wish-fulfillment. The heroes in my stories are in many ways idealized. They’re the way I want men to be as much as they reflect how I think men really are.
If I write about a black, Asian, indigenous, or Hispanic character, I risk “”making”” them what I think they ought to be–and that’s where Kathryn Stockett got into trouble. I’m entitled to some wish fulfillment about men because of the nature of romance as a genre. But if I start tinkering with a set of cultural cues or racial experiences–and particularly without any real experience (which Stockett did have)–I’m heading down a road almost certain to end with some readers being deeply offended.
I’m not afraid of readers, but I think I’m exercising common sense when I decide to avoid making too many assumptions about characters of a different ethnic group. I can (and do) have secondary characters with some diversity, but Jean’s post specifically calls for main characters to be diverse.
Like Jean, I hope this divide narrows. I just know that I’d have a hard time writing a black or Asian heroine, and I’d worry the whole time that I’d written something too pretty or too easy.
I don’t know why, but romantic suspense generally has much more cultural diversity than “”straight”” contemporary romance. There are generally Hispanic characters, often the leads, in romantic suspense, especially the non-SEAL variety. Asian and African-American characters are also more common. Maybe it’s because the RS I read is often law-enforcement based and minorities are well represented in those careers, especially in urban areas.
Gigi,
As much as I’d like to say they are hypothetical complaints, I have seen it over and over again here on the internet. So, no, the complaints are real and they can have a chilling effect.
As to your “”default””, I disagree. I think that “”that an African-American or Korean-American or Indian Muslim romance writer”” would have this issue. They write from what they know the same as white authors write from what they know.
The fact is that race and ethnicity are flashpoints for our society. It’s risky to bring them up.
Ultimately, as much as I think authors might worry about this, I think the answer lies with the publishers. They control what gets published, or at least have for a long time. Now, with self-publishing taking off the way it has, we might see more diversity in that realm and if people go and buy it, the publishers will follow suit and publish it.
I get what you are saying – that the fear of backlash should not stop people from writing those stories. You see it as an excuse. That’s a valid way of looking at it. I just don’t have the same view.
I very much agree with Jean. I grew up in a urban California setting, where my classmates and now colleagues where/are a mix of Hispanic, black, variety of Asian and middle eastern people. I have Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Shinto and Bahai friends. I myself come from mixed race. I do get annoyed that it seems most characters in romance novels do not reflect the world of race around me. Maybe most romance authors are from middle America, where there is little diversity.
I actually have recently fell in love with Nalini Singh’s books. To be honest I started reading her books because her name was Indian. It was so nice to see some diversity in a romance author. Her characters are of mixed race (eg half Russian, half Asian) and her characters come from all over the world.
Because authors get flak for not making the character “”ethnic”” enough. Your example of a “”a black heroine who is a geek working at a tech start-up”” is great, and I could write her with my own “”white”” experiences and simply change the color of her skin, but then reviewers and readers (and I’ve seen it done) will argue that there should have been more shown about how her race affected how others saw her and how she dealt with that. The point is that even in today’s society, much as I might wish it otherwise, these things matter. If you write a non-white character you are expected to highlight those differences in the story, especially if you are a white author.
Disclaimer: I am not an author, I was just using myself as a white woman as an example for experiences in life.
To answer your question about “”How is this different or “harder” than writing a white character who was raised in a foster home and becomes an international assassin for the US government?”” Very simply, almost no one who reads romance is a “”white [character] who was raised in a foster home and becomes an international assassin for the US government”” but there are many readers of romance who are Asian, are African-American and when reading romance want to see their life experiences properly reflected there. So, an author has more leeway for making things up in the foster child turns assassin that she does in writing an authentic “”ethnic”” character.
If that fear keeps an author from writing characters of color, then all of these authors should tremble and quake whenever people begin to argue about wallpaper historical romances or unrealistic romantic suspense scenarios or the number of secret pregnancies in category romances, and so on and so forth.
Plus, this alleged fear does not keep romance authors from using superficial and borderline offensive stereotypes about particular ethnicities as shorthand for “”alpha male””. Nor do most American authors of British-set historicals care that they are imposing their modern American views onto 19th century English characters (not to mention the hack job that’s done in Scottish historicals). So nope, I refuse to accept this as an excuse, regardless of your non authorial status.
All this does is reinforce the notion that whiteness is a “”default”” that any one of any background, culture, or ethnic group can “”identify”” with, but stick a character of color into the main role and only people of that particular ethnic group/race can identify with them. How much sense does that make?
First, they should tremble and quake at those things. I stopped reading almost all historicals for exactly the reason you mention and when you consider that I used to read historicals almost exclusively, that is pretty major.
This is true, and I noticed it recently and commented on it on a totally different website.
Another reason I stopped reading historicals.
My non-authorial status was only mentioned because I said “”I could write…”” It has no bearing whatsoever on the arguments.
I am not saying it makes sense, Gigi. I happen to read a number of authors who have Asian characters (those authors are also all Asian, btw) and I can identify with them with no problems. I’m sure I miss some of the more subtle things that a Chinese person or Japanese person might pick up on, but the characters themselves are very engaging.
The argument is not that white people can’t identify with characters of another ethnic group or race. The argument is that people of that particular ethnic group or race say that they can’t identify with the character of their own ethnic group or race – that the character is “”too white”” or alternatively does not accurately reflect the prejudice the reader sees in the world.
The reason, imo, that some authors tend not to tread there is that they don’t want to offend. In the end, as others here have said “”You can’t win for losing””. If you do it, people get upset with how you did it and if you didn’t do it, people are upset you didn’t.
I just don’t buy this argument because it’s a hypothetical fear, and unless you pulled out a bunch of racist stereotypes, a few (hypothetical) complaints about “”authenticity”” should not be a major deterrent to creating a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural “”world”” in contemporary romance. And IMO, this stance seems to say that an African-American or Korean-American or Indian Muslim romance writer would never have this quibble over writing white middle-class “”Christian”” characters (aka the “”default””).
One of the posters commented that she didn’t read romance fiction for cultural diversity. I concur. Why should romance authors feel obligated to include culturally or ethnically diverse character in what they write any more than they should have an obligation to write historicals rather than contemporaries? Just as authors should not try to impose their political or moral views on readers, I don’t think readers should insist that authors should write about anything they don’t wish to.