How far I can write about a protagonist with a different ethnicity of me?
I am planning to write a book about a life of a person. However, the protagonist is a black person. The main plot is not about ethnicity things, but where the plot happens I have to talk about some situations. The book is about romance, but the protagonist is poor and goes to a university to study medicine (in my country we have great public universities).
I'm white, and my life is very different of the protagonist; I don't personally know what it's like to suffer hate due to ethnicity. In my mind, if I write a book about this character, I will be committing cultural appropriation, and people won't take my book seriously.
How can I manage this? Do I write the romance ignoring ethnicity problems and suppose this doesn't happen in the story's world, or do I talk about this theme (even a little with a lot of research) and be judged by others people saying I'm not capable write about this theme?
Write. What. You. Know. This has been said so many times that nobody hears it anymore, but it that is because it is tru …
5y ago
Let's explore the proposition you're making here. You're saying "a white person cannot know what it's like to be black. …
5y ago
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Write. What. You. Know.
This has been said so many times that nobody hears it anymore, but it that is because it is true. You cannot make a story engaging that you don't know in a deep and real way. Before you close up your project, let me explain that there are many ways to come to know something. You can learn it (not like a book report, more like converting to a new religion: you have to live what you are trying to know).
If you decide to not pursue this, please don't do it for the wrong reason. The right reason is: "I cannot internalize this story and character to the point where they flow out of me naturally when I'm writing". The wrong reason is: "I may be guilty of thoughtcrime for writing this." (That's a 1984 reference). If you are going to be straight-jacketed in your artistic expression by your religion, whatever it happens to be, your expression will suffer a lot. It doesn't matter if you are a Christian contemporary novelist who refuses to use normal, natural language dialog or a communist who can't write anything that might be spun as positive about specified "enemies of the state", the arts always suffer under the boot of dogma, so just throw that "cultural appropriation" bogeyman out right now if you ever want to write something worth reading.
On the other hand, maybe it is not the right project because you have no good avenue to truly know your subject. That's fair. Your story has to be real and true to you in a way that is personal, or it won't be personal to your readers. If you can't bridge that gap, don't write it. I do believe that it is entirely possible to deeply and truly understand cultures and backgrounds other than your own, it just takes work and (preferably) immersion.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43636. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Let's explore the proposition you're making here. You're saying "a white person cannot know what it's like to be black. Ergo, a white person should not write about black characters." So, white writers should exclude black people from their stories? That's rather racist, isn't it? The opposite of your intent.
The way forwards is research and empathy.
There are many things your characters experience that you never have. Shakespeare has never been a Danish prince, nor had his father poisoned by his uncle. Tolkien had never carried a Ring of Power. Clarke never saw the inside of a spaceship, let alone travelled into space. It is the writer's task to try and imagine what it would be like, put themselves as much as they can in the character's shoes. That's the empathy part.
But to put yourself in the character's shoes, you've got to know what shoes those are. That's where research comes in. If you were writing about the experience of a priest in ancient Egypt, you'd do the research: what their day-to-day was like, social status, social mobility etc. Why would you do less for a character who lives in our time, with plenty of information readily available, and when you can actually ask people about their experience?
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