Oops?

I am now officially three posts behind. Going to do my best to remedy that, starting now...

First of all, it's International Blog Against Racism Week, and while I'm still piecing together what precisely I want to post about on the subject, I'm going to start off with linking to How To Tell People They Sound Racist and the most recent This Week In Blackness, because I think they both say important things in a very listenable way.

More later.

International Blog Against Racism Week.

I finished Running In Her Veins,my first novel, last summer. In outline form, and in half-completed drafts, there were no People of Color in it at all. When, at eighteen, I started writing the book, it hadn't occurred to me that there was anything wrong with that. I wasn't really conscious about race back then - I was idealistic, and I was proud to be colorblind, and would have hotly denied that any racist thoughts ever passed through my head.

I live in a more complex, more aware world now, and I want my books to contain similar worlds.

Halfway through the draft, a friend of mine was startled when I mentioned one of the major characters in Running In Her Veins, Ben, was a redhead - because, he'd said, he'd assumed he was black from the way I wrote him.

I'm still not certain what I wrote that made him think that, but nothing in Ben's part of the plot called for any specific cultural or ethnic background, and so in my mind, he became black. I haven't gone back and edited every description of him in the book to match that yet, and I've questioned myself quite a bit. I was troubled that I was writing an all-white book, and now I'm troubled in wondering if I'm engaging in tokenism. I want to make sure, in editing passes, that I am attentive in the way I treat Ben, so that his identity is clear and articulate, that his background is essential to who he is, rather than just a sop for my conscience.

The book I'm working on right now, The Hellion Prince, is only about half white. Working on the backstory and worldbuilding early on, it became obvious to me that there were two distinct cultures within the setting, and I made the decision that one of them would be Caucasian in appearance, and the other would be olive-complected, Arabic or darker Mediterranean. While that choice wasn't an essential one at the time, it's become moreso since - as I've had to sort out the past clashes between the two cultures, or further detail their backgrounds, or decide the identity of a minor character with a single speaking part. The world feels more alive and more real to me than it would have with a monoculture, and while I don't imagine it will be without problems I'm still pleased with the way it's turning out.

I haven't escaped racism in my thoughts or in my writing, not by a longshot. Bur every time I see a problem, or every time someone points out a mistake I've made, I'll do my best to correct it, and fail better the next time.