Pam Noles, "Shame"

[truepenny]

Read this.

Comments

[ethereal-lad.livejournal.com]

Brilliant article. It's why I support the Carl Brandon society (fans of color).

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link.

[michael-b-lee.livejournal.com]

Damn. That's a fantastic article. Thanks for the link.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I'm reminded of Anansi Boys now, and sheepish all over again that I mostly failed to notice the ethnicity of the characters most of the way through.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Brilliant article.

Though it does sort of bring up that old question: if one includes people of a variety of colors in their work, is that tokenism? I do have characters of a variety of colors, and they just walked onscreen like that; but the problem is sometimes I don't mention their color, because describing characters in terms of color isn't always part of the natural flow of the narrative. I've used the term "dark-complected" because "black" sounds anachronistic amongst the horses and swords. (Not to mention that some of my nonhuman people are black in the charcoal-colored sense, and it's an important distinction from the shades of pink and brown my humans are.)

It seems to me that if I talk too much about it, it's tokenism. But if I don't talk enough about it, it's easy to get the impression that everyone is white. :-/

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Le Guin barely ever mentions skin color at all (iirc). I bet there are plenty of people out there who think Ged is white. (Like there are a lot of people out there who think Jesus was white ... *ahem*) You can't control what happens to the story once it gets into other people's hands, and you will drive yourself crazy trying to.

Which means you do what you think is right. If you didn't make the character dark-complexioned in order to have a Token Person of Color, then don't treat them like a token.

At least, that's my feeling.

[heresluck]

Thanks for the link.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

You saw her follow-up, right? About some of the responses that "Shame" provoked. (http://andweshallmarch.typepad.com/and_we_shall_march/2006/01/the_shame_of_ea.html)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link.

[storyjunkie.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[reannon.livejournal.com]

Hon, did you know Locus has named MELUSINE one of the best books of 2005?

http://www.locusmag.com/2006/Features/Cheney_BestOf2005.html

Brava!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Wow.

Thank you for the link.