Representation

As a kid, Dondi mattered to me.  

A comic strip drawn by Irwin Hasen and written by Gus Edson (and later Bob Oksner after Edson died), it was one of my favorites.

You want to accuse Dondi of being saccharinely sentimental, you go right ahead.

I won’t disagree with you.

But to little 6 year old Buzzy boy, that criticism didn’t matter (still doesn’t).

Dondi was an Italian kid growing up in contemporary America.

I was a half-Italian kid growing up in America -- in particular the American South, even more particular in Appalachia -- with a Neapolitan mom, so I identified very closely with Dondi.

Representation matters.

. . .

Now let’s state from the very beginning that the sense of connection I felt via representation in Dondi is but the merest smidgen of connection African-Americans felt when they first started seeing African-American faces in non-subservient roles in mainstream movies and TV shows.

Ditto what Hispanic Americans and Latinos and Asian-Americans and Native Americans and gays and lesbians and transgender folk all experience when someone like them isn’t presented as a stereotype.

It means something, and it means something important.

And because of the unique cultural matrix of the United States, currently it’s a lot easier for people in the dominant group (that’s you and me, wypipo) to imagine ourselves in the shoes (or sandals or moccasins) of The Other than for non-whites to imagine themselves in ours.

Kindly note I’m most emphatically not saying it’s impossible, just that it’s easier.

Problem:
How does a writer from the dominant group -- in this case, yrs trly; an able older straight white Protestant male -- write stories that reach across that divide and engage all readers?

Gawd, I wish I knew…

. . .

I’ll tell you what I am doing quite consciously in my writing, then throw it open to feedback.

As much as possible, I try to downplay specific physical identifying characteristics in my stories.

If you read my fictoids or short stories, you’ll see I frequently eschew ethnic identification, physical descriptions not just of hair and skin color but size and age, often even names.

I aim for my characters’ personalities to come across in their dialog and their action, not on what I -- able older straight white Protestant male writer than I am -- imagine characters of certain ethnic / gender types to act like.

Is that good enough?

Does someone completely unlike me in real life read these stories and identify with the characters, thinking ”Yes, that person knows what I feel” ?

Or does that linkage fail, and the best I can hope for is “Cool story, bro” ?

It bothers me.

. . .

My current work in progress has reached the 92,000 word mark, and the first draft will probably end up somewhere in the 110,000 to 120,000 range (I tend to overwrite in my first drafts and trim back; I’m hoping to end up with something in the 80,000 to 90,000 range).

I have about 100 characters in it, some major, some minor, some mentioned just in passing.

The story takes place in New England, and historically that part of the country is predominantly white.

I have three characters of Vietnamese descent, but their family has lived in the area for three or four generations now, and culturally they’re thoroughly Americanized.

Another character has a last name that suggests Native American heritage.

Another has a first name more common among African-Americans than whites, but not unheard of among the latter.

Two characters share a thoroughly Irish surname.

Everyone one else has pretty generic bland middle American names that could belong to a multitude of ethnicities or people of mixed descent.

Physically, I’m very skimpy on descriptions.

One character is very tall, another is very muscular.

It is ironically noted that three characters are perfectly average for their gender and age group, almost identical in height.

One female character is noted to strongly resemble her brother, a football player.  It is not a flattering comparison.

The only hair color ascribed to a specific character is clearly artificial, a dye job.

The most description afforded any character is an outsider to the main story, a comic relief character with facial hair.

That’s pretty much it as physical descriptions go.

Where I try to differentiate them is among speech patterns and what they want in the story.

The character trying to stir things up is clearly going to have a different tone and rhythm than a character trying to calm things down.

My question:
Will readers who don’t see themselves specifically represented in a character relate to the story as a whole, imagining John Doe to be like them, or despite my efforts, will they still hold off on identifying with characters who lack specific group representation?

To quote an example from a culturally appropriated work:  Is a puzzlement!

. . . 

I don’t want to keep anyone out.

I want the doors of my stories opened as wide as possible.

I will never write with the intent of excluding any particular group of readers.

Is that enough?

© Buzz Dixon