Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46912
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Three good examples of this I can think of, all with very different starting points, are Miss Marvel (a comic book series with a Muslim protagonist), Ready Player One (a book about 70s nerd nostalgia), and Keys to the Kingdom (a series that I thought was based on Christian symbolism, but I'm no longer sure). I'm not a member of any of these groups, but the stories are some of my favorites.

All of these series use a few of the same tricks.

**1. Start with symbols of your minority group well known to people outside your group.**

The Miss Marvel series starts with Kamala Kahn smelling but not eating pork, while her friend talks about hijabs. In the Keys to the Kingdom series none of the characters are religious, but the symbols of the seven deadly sins are introduced relatively early. These well-known symbols give the reader a good idea of where to start looking for deeper symbols that follow later.

This is why it seems every romantic comedy about nerds seems to have a superficial reference to Gandalf or lightsabers.

**2. Describe things well enough that people outside your group can understand them.**

They don't need to understand (or even notice) the symbol, but they need to know what's going on. A beta reader can help with this if you're not sure.

I know next to nothing about Japanese video games from before I was born. However, from reading Ready Player One I still have a mental image of what the robot looks like and I know it comes from a Japanese video game. The reference adds resonance, even if I don't understand it fully.

**3. Readers may miss the symbols the first time, but that gives them reasons to reread**

I didn't recognize most of the symbols in the Keys to the Kingdom series until I read it for the second time. Discovering a hidden layer to the story on rereading made me enjoy the story even more. Every time I learn more details about things the Keys to the Kingdom series alluded to, it increases my interest in both the series and the new information I'm learning.

(Another perspective: At some point, you learned the symbols for your own group for the first time as well. That might have been from your family, but it also might have been from a book. My family is British, but in writing this answer I realized most of my knowledge of King Arthur and Celtic symbols comes from the Dark is Rising series and other books. So, in some ways, the approach is the same regardless of if your readers are members of the same group or not.)

Original score: 4