 |
|
|
|
Reviews of books by some of the hottest writers working today, exclusive author interviews, literary news and criticism.
 |
|
|
|
|
Fill out your email address
to receive our newsletter!
|
|
|
|
|
 Get new reviews the instant they are posted to the site with RSS
What is RSS?
|
|
| Search Box (type in author's last name or one key word) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Many concepts are examined. The writers truly understand their topic. Some concepts include The Liberal Perception Fallacy, in which a liberal writer creates certain characters with his own liberal views, who –when examined in the light of history, geographic location and other factors– turn out to be characters who strike a false note with certain readers.
Reviewed by Carole McDonnell
Writing the Other: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward
Conversational Pieces Series
Aqueduct Press
www.aqueductpress.com
ISBN 1-933500-00X, US $9.00, 112 pages
Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, feminist speculative fiction writers, is a book directed to writers, but people in other professions including doctors, lawyers and teachers will also benefit from reading it. It is a book which challenges the reader to examine preconceived notions about people in cultures other than his own.
The authors begin their book with the premise that when writers create characters, they often write about people like themselves: people who share their religion, worldview, culture, geography, sexual philosophy/orientation, abilities, class, and race. Shawl and Ward state that some writers have misguided caution that prevents them from writing about "the Other" ---people unlike themselves. This misguided caution often leads writers to exclude whole ethnic groups from their works for fear their stories will be riddled with "horrible stereotypes and racist slurs." But writers who wish to do transracial writing often fall into many errors or are simply oblivious to the social implications and unintended ramifications of their depiction of the "Other."
The authors use the phrase "dominant paradigm" to describe a character whose traits are typical of the American culture. It is very like the literary term "the unmarked state," which describes a character readers can easily identify with because the "unmarked state" character doesn't have any traits that distance the reader from the character. The "unmarked state" character is a character with dominant paradigm traits. This means that in the United States, the dominant paradigm character is generally white, able-bodied, without mental illness, not too old, not too young, Protestant and in a heterosexual same-race relationship. Any deviation from this "unmarked state" character creates fictional characters the reader may dislike, or may be unable to identify with. Or it may simply create a character riddled with stereotypes, hence the possibility of falling into unexamined writing. In insightful essays, the authors show the presumptions, priveleges, unfounded beliefs, and judgements of fiction written by authors who do not examine these presumptions.
In order to show the effect of dominant paradigm, the authors create an acronym: "ROAARS" Race/(sexual)Orientation/Age/Ability/Religion/Sex. In the first of three essays, an essay entitled "Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction," Shawl and Ward give examples from books and their own lives which show that the average dominant paradigm writer often writes about the "other" in a flawed manner. This leads to accidental offenses, hurt feelings, and wrong ideas because a fictional character might seem 'believable' to one writer yet be totally unbelievable to a reader from another culture.
Many concepts are examined. The writers truly understand their topic. Some concepts include The Liberal Perception Fallacy, in which a liberal writer creates certain characters with his own liberal views, who –when examined in the light of history, geographic location and other factors– turn out to be characters who strike a false note with certain readers. They tell an anecdote about Ward's reading a story about a Maine lobsterman who befriends a gay New Yorker. Something that is not likely to happen, but which --if it did happen– would have to be addressed in the story. Ward states that the author of the abovementioned story "doesn't show that the lobsterman is conscious of doing anything unusual...not even in the character's thoughts."
Another concept the writers discuss is the Glory Syndrome. This occurs when a story is a good one but fails because it concerns itself with the wrong characters. Another neat concept is called Sidekicks-R-Us, which deals with minority characters who are created simply to help the main character. A chapter that many writers will like --and many "dominant-paradigm" writers will find enlightening-- is a chapter about stories with unintended resonances. (What a writer writes is not necessarily what a reader will see.) And intended resonances – not always a good idea as in the case when an author called a black character "Uretha" as both an homage to Aretha Franklin and an allusion to fertility. This, the authors declare, was not a good idea. Other chapters entitled Subtle Victimization, Patronizing Romanticizations, Disrespectful Dialect, and Saintly Victim also help to enlighten writers who wish to "write the other."
The book is passionate, insightful, systematic and clear and it is a good tool for writers and sociologists. The book has three minor flaws, however and the flaws arise from its passion. Writing the Other is a guide to self-examination and contains writing exercises and of necessity it seems to be written particularly to the dominant-paradigm writers. This is not a problem because most writers belong to the "dominant paradigm" category and they do need to know how to write truthfully about minority "Others." There are moments, however, when an obvious assumption about the assumed reader slips in. For instance, the writers state, "If you're a white liberal, one of your great fears – possibly your greatest– is that of discovering you are a racist." I truly doubt that. While it is true that many white conservatives are prejudice, it is also equally true that many white liberals are also racist. The smug implication that if a person is white and believes in liberal causes such as abortion or atheism, they will be more apt to want to be fair to their black or brown neighbor is plain untrue.
The authors' omit class, stating that "You may notice that one profound difference has been left out of this acronym: class. This is a deliberate omission. As we've said, the focus is on those differences that are generally presumed to be important. While class is arguably as important as race in terms of categorization, and is certainly more scientifically quantifiable, on this continent it's not a difference majority culture recognizes as significant." In a world where the black mayor of New Orleans didn't really understand how poverty would affect the evacuation plans of blacks, where writers and journalists blamed poor people for "not leaving in time" such a mis-step is cowardly at best or misdirected at worse. For example, the authors describe an incident one of them experienced as she walked through a working-class neighborhood in Washington state. Formerly, when she lived in San Jose, she had not been afraid of huddled Hispanics near an apartment complex. The authors blame her new-found fear more on race than on class. But this reasoning rings false, because this reader could clearly see that if those dark-skinned Hispanics had been in a wealthier neighborhood, there would have been no fear. It strikes a false note. Certainly a white American reader would be more inclined to accept and give "honorary white" status to a rich black doctor to than a poor black prostitute.
The last nit is that the book is unbalanced in a purely artistic way. It has two authors, yet most of the entries are written by Nisi Shawl. It feels odd. Collaboration is an odd thing and one never really knows what is happening behind the scenes, but an additional essay or two by Cynthia Ward might have added even more edges to this challenging book.
The book is excellent. I highly recommend it. It should be read by every "dominant paradigm" writer for that is its true audience. Recommended also for schools, colleges, and creativity workshops, and sociology classes.
About the reviewer: Carole McDonnell's essay, Oreo Blues is included in the W.W. Norton Anthology, LIFENOTES: Personal Writings By Black Women. She has won several writing awards and is the author of "Lingua Franca" - So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonialism in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Arsenal Pulp Press www.arsenalpulp.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
