Writing Marginalized Characters: A Ramble

     I grew up afraid to write minority characters.  For me this came from two primary places; the first was the idea pervasive to our culture that people who aren't white, cis, heterosexual, middle-class/wealthy, able-bodied, neurotypical males are "other" to such an extent that they're often seen as not fully human, or maybe human but in a different way.  Society insists that those who don't fit inside the rigid little sector it's blocked off as "normal" aren't really people in the same sense that those who do fit into the sector are.

     Obviously, I'm not all of the above; however, society's belittling of marginalized groups is so pervasive that it's not uncommon for marginalized people to marginalize themselves (see: internalized sexism, racism, ableism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, intra ableism, intra racism, biracialism, etc.).

     Growing up a tomboy in a primarily masculine household, I came to see women as lesser, and later fell prey to the many ailments inherited by young girls--the conflicting standards, the fear of being seen as inferior, the apologies, the feeling of being a burden, etc, etc, etc.  Unlearning these things was (is) a long process I won't talk about now, but I guess my point is that when I started writing novels at the ripe old age of nine, the only reason I felt comfortable writing girl characters was because I was a girl, and even still I had a lot of trouble at first with writing female characters that weren't either based off of real people or stereotypes.

     The other thing that caused this fear was my limited experiential resources.

     I grew up in two towns, one of them full of rich white people and the other full of not-rich white people.  In the town I usually say I'm "from," I had exactly one black classmate, and the only black classmate I had in the town I "grew up in" moved away after first grade.

     I never thought of people who were different than me as really different.  They were people just the same as I was, and I recognized them as such, as I'm sure many people do when they meet "othered" people face to face, especially in their youth.  Even with my internalized sexism, I still judged every girl on her own merits once I met her--I generalized groups, not individuals.

     But when writing, and trying to be socially conscious in our writing, we all have groups that we feel ishy writing about, not necessarily because we don't want to write them, but because we're scared to get it wrong.

     As a kid I was afraid to write people of color--a pretty common fear among white kids, because after they teach you about slavery and genocide and Jim Crow laws in first grade the last thing you want to do is exacerbate that White Guilt everybody's always talking about, and you certainly don't want anyone to think you're racist or, even worse, to find out that you are, in fact, a racist.

     The only way to keep yourself safe and cozy is not to bother, and say things like "I'll leave it to them to write themselves into a story."  As a little kid that feels very valid, especially when you grow up in an environment where racism isn't something you notice in your day-to-day life, and is instead subliminally flashed into your brain as you watch your all-white-with-maybe-a-token-PoC cartoons.

     Sadly, leaving it to a marginalized group doesn't always work--how often do you see black authors being lauded?  For a book that isn't exclusively about white people?  When was the last time a female author got big in something that wasn't YA or Romance?  Do you even know of any books written by someone with a disability?  I guarantee you it's not from lack of talent or trying--unfortunately, the system is still heavily weighted in such a way that it's exponentially more difficult for a marginalized individual to make it big--or make it at all--than for a white abled cishetero male of the same or lesser talents, and the exponent tends to multiply if the author-of-marginalized-origins writes about characters who are also not white cishetero males.

     Sometimes, when you're at a party and things are loud and crowded, the only way to get people to listen to the guest of honor is for the host to jump out with a microphone and shut 'em up.

     I didn't know all that when I was little.  I just knew I wanted to write about superheroes and dragons and magic and weird science.

     The funny thing is though, unlike a lot of people I've spoken to over the years, I wrote about people with higher melanin counts before I became afraid.  In part it was actually because I wrote about them that I became afraid.

     I should probably explain:  My uncle is very, very racist.  I hate him.  I don't just hate him because he's racist, I have a lot of reasons to hate him, but this has certainly always been a point of contention between us.  I didn't always hate him of course, because when I was younger I was small and naive and thought that shared blood meant shared love.  Probably should've realized sooner how bullshit that was.

     I was a creative little kid, and after finishing my second novel at age eleven, I wanted to tell everyone about it.  As I was going through the first edit, I stumbled upon something that didn't make sense and asked his opinion--in order to do this I had to explain the concept to him--four types of shape-shifters live on an island and fight amongst themselves, sort of Animorphs meets Warriors meets gorn-tastic political intrigue/adventure-fantasy.

     Instead of helping, my uncle, being as uncouth as he is, decided to ask me which group were the "n" words--I was repulsed by the language, but was all at once struck by the realization that not only could the division between the shifter-types be construed allegorically as a division between the races, but that I had written people of color into my story--I hadn't thought about it as I wrote, I just sort of correlated fur color to human skin color, so shapeshifters with darker fur ended up with darker skin, and shapeshifters with lighter fur had lighter skin; it wasn't like any group was composed all of one human race or another, they were completely mixed-color societies, but I was still afraid.

     I didn't go back and white-wash my draft, what was done was done, but I wouldn't write people of color into my drafts for a long time afterward because I was afraid of doing it wrong.  I don't exactly know now what I thought the "right" way was, but that was the only way I wanted it done; I was a conscientious child and didn't want to offend anyone, and since I was only just getting the hang of the internet I had no idea that there were places where writers gathered in bulk to discuss such things.

     My resolve to write only about white cishetero abled rich men and women--or, even better, aliens and robots and monsters, oh my!--lasted until I discovered Tumblr as a thirteen-year-old.

     I know, I know, Tumblr has a mixed bag of a reputation among the liberal crowd, but for a white girl in a town of 1,000 people, 98% of whom are white, and most of whom are also hetero and cissexual, middle-ish class, able-bodied, and neurotypical, Tumblr was the best place for me to break into a world that was, up to then, largely unavailable to me.  Today it's known as a toxic wasteland, and some parts are, but it was an important part of my development as both a writer and a liberal (in case you couldn't already tell which way I lean).

     Within a year I was writing stories with "othered" individuals again--people of color, people with disabilities, people of a multitude of genders, sexualities, religions, you name it.  Through Tumblr, and the many websites it introduced me to, I'd found out there were tons of resources on how to write this group and that group and the other group, and I learned that it was okay to trust my own real-life experiences and those of my family and friends; every experience was valid.  And though there are going to be different characterizations and complications with each new type of character you create, it was freeing to find out that everything truly boiled down to something I'd known all along--people are people.  Nothing more, nothing less.

     That's what it all comes down to.  People are people--we all have wants, needs, feelings, we all have things we care about, we are all our own.  What makes me different from someone of a different race has less to do with race itself than with upbringing and societal pressure and our personal likes and dislikes.

     Fear can be good--I think, in my case, fear was good, because it drove (and still drives) me to seek out the information I need to avoid creating a caricature or a stereotype in place of a human being; fear led me to ask questions and make sure that I did (and do) everything in my power to not just keep from offending people, but to keep myself from harming myself and others with poor portrayals of certain out-groups, and to make sure that I use my privilege as a white person not for accolades and the like but to assist and teach, to encourage others to hear the voices of those whose voices aren't being heard, and to normalize what should already be, but is not yet seen as, normal.

     Fear can also stop us in our tracks--and if you write marginalized characters, you're going to end up being criticized for it, even if you are yourself part of the group you're writing about!  But you can't please everyone; every time I write a sensitive male character, someone tells me he's not realistic even though I know for a fact that everything the character does is nothing I haven't seen my brothers and my male friends do, and every time I write a female character I risk being called out on her promiscuity or her aloofness or her hatred of babies because no matter how hard you work to go against a stereotype or humanize someone, even yourself, someone is always going to get pissy about it; that's how life works.

     So yes, it's important for people without privilege to speak up and have their stories heard, and their voices are going to ring the most true and should hold more weight.

     A story written by someone with absolutely every privilege there is probably won't be authentic, of course, but it's important for people with privilege to speak up as well--not to drown out the voices of your downtrodden kin (as some are, unfortunately, wont to do), but to help raise awareness and compassion and facilitate love and understanding and conversation in ways that some, through the horrors of a discriminatory society, are unable to do.

   So write.  Whoever you are, whatever you want to write, write it; try to include marginalized characters when you can, because the sad truth is that there's not a lot out there, and even less of it is well-written.  Be careful, don't be too afraid--just don't be a dick, either.

     And when you think you're finished with that manuscript; stop, wait a minute, fill that cup put some liquor in it--now pour it out, take a deep breath, and go look for some critique partners and beta readers that know what's what in whatever subject you've chosen, because no matter how well you think you know something, if you're writing from a place of privilege you're bound to make mistakes

     The fewer mistakes make it out into the real world, the better it'll be for everybody.

     And even if you're writing from a point of diminished privilege yourself, it never hurts to have extra eyes on the ground.  No two experiences are ever exactly alike, and you may not be as enlightened as you think--I like to think of myself as having cleansed myself of my internalized sexism, but on occasion I still catch myself mentally criticizing a woman for doing something I wouldn't think twice about a man doing, or using the phrase "like a little girl" in a derogatory fashion.

     When we write only from our own experiences, we're also at risk of making every character's experience practically the same, which serves to homogenize the group and sometimes creates a new stereotype.  I don't think we need any more stereotypes than we already have.
   

TL;DR:  Don't be afraid to write marginalized characters, no matter how privileged you are; just remember to treat everyone as human beings, do your research, ask questions, and seek out the opinions of people with first hand experience before you go tell the world about how great you are (for writing something that may actually be offensive).

Bildungsroman: A College Entrance Essay

Adulthood is not achieved in a single step.  It is a process of years, the first seeds 

planted in the milestones of childhood—in the four-year-old’s first self-cooked hotdog, 

the six-year-old’s first attempt at babysitting, the ten-year-old’s acceptance of a 

constantly changing world beyond their control.  Often we try to pinpoint the exact 

moment of maturation, attempting to capture the concept in something as simple as a 

jumped train or special birthday, but the reality of the situation is that childhood is not a 

garment, not a cloak to be ripped off all at once to reveal the adulthood 

beneath—childhood is a skin we shed scale-by-scale throughout the years, the inches 

slipping away until one day we peer back and realize that new flesh is all we now 

possess.  That singularity we seek is not really a moment of becoming—it’s a cosmic 

instant in which some portion of the world recognizes the denouement of the childhood 

journey and the quickening of a new age of life.   

 In the eyes of my community, the culmination of my maturation came shortly 

after my diagnosis of Tourette’s Syndrome.  In September of 2010, I was diagnosed with 

a late-onset and increasingly active case of Tourette’s, which included violent physical 

tics and loud verbal tics, such as coprolalia. 

As the news spread and my classmates became accustomed to my outbursts, it 

became clear that word-of-mouth was not enough; upperclassmen could be brutal, 

lowerclassmen could be petty, and teachers, ignorant of my disorder, badgered me to 

tears.  Education, I posited, was the key; in the dark, we are afraid because we cannot see, 

and if ignorance is dismantled, enlightenment casts out the fear that leads us to ostracize 

others.  Thus, in a meeting with the principal, I proposed that I give a series of 

presentations on Tourette’s to the school.  

Within a month, I had given presentations to the student body, the faculty, and the 

school board.  The teasing vanished almost completely. 

I was asked by a local human service agency to present to their groups in nine 

counties and to speak at the Families Together Conference in Albany, but my greatest 

achievement occurred in the library at the Newark Valley Elementary School, where I 

advocated for a second-grader with Tourette’s, fighting to receive the necessary services 

from the school. 

I spoke to the entire faculty, fluidly and with authority; I easily answered every 

question.  My presentation was interactive and the audience was required to simulate two 

tics while writing the Pledge of Allegiance in ninety seconds or less; they would erase 

every third word written and rewrite it, and tap their pinky to the corner of the desk each 

time I clapped my hands.  As expected, no one was able to complete the task.  

It was in that moment that I reached, in my own heart, the climax of my childhood 

journey.  I, still a student, aged fourteen, had become a teacher of teachers, the educator 

of administrators, and the key to a young boy’s education.  I could see the gears turning 

in the minds of the faculty, the lights going on behind their eyes.  It was a wave of 

understanding, and the response to my lecture was almost immediate—in the space of 

perhaps an hour, administrators who had completely refused the idea of a 504 were eager 

to sit down and properly hash out a plan to put the boy on track. 

The transition to adulthood is little more and nothing less than a slow process of 

taking on responsibilities, one-by-one, until the world acknowledges your capacity to 

contribute.  An adult is defined by their ability to do for others as well as for themselves, 

so it wasn’t until I took to advocating for others that the scales I had been shedding came 

loose, the shredded leather torn away in the strong winter winds to reveal the woman 

beneath. 

When Nervous Blood Has Been Undone: An Autobiographical Narrative

Maggie C                                                                                                                          11/22/14 

When Nervous Blood Has Been Undone 

                                                                                                                                          

I met them when I was eleven.  At the time I was hurtling through a tempestuous 

downward spiral of emotional anarchy, watching as my life fell apart and people whom I once 

trusted betrayed me for reasons that never seemed real enough for my tastes (“You’re just not 

popular enough,” she’d said, blonde hair shining beneath the bright lights of the cafeteria, lights 

which made her seem fairer but turned me to bleach and sand.   

That was the first time I realized that friends can (you call them that?) look and act and 

feel real, beaming with perfect teeth and bright-lit eyes (lovely, dolled, and beautiful, with high 

sweet voices full of dulcet worry) and not care, not even a wit, that you’d rather die than lose this.  

“You’re just crap.”  She was my first friend in this new school and I thought that mattered 

(because I had been there for her, defending her against the very girls she now sought to leave 

me for time and time again (“But what do you expect from outcasts?” I could hear my mother 

(or maybe my brother) say to a little girl perched on the edge of her bed.  “Loyalty is for the 

rich.”)), but watching her leave was like tearing ribbons from a well-loved box and listening to the fabric as 

it ripped, not a part of the box but close enough to flinch).  

To make up for the loss I threw myself into fiction (that ancient friend of mine), hoping 

that in so doing I might be able to recreate a sense of company, forgetting her just as she forgot 

me (though trying is not doing so maybe I never succeeded).  I had been friendless before, and I 

would be friendless again, and I would do it with grace.   

There was no thought in this; only the acceptance of realities outside of my control.  The 

books took her place, discussions of characters taking priority over discussions of people; places; 

things. 

One afternoon in late May I burst from the school gym with twenty classmates in tow, 

rushing through the tennis courts and down the hill to the track, worn sneakers slapping the 

ground as I took in the sight of the distant foothills, dark against the bright blue of the 

sky.  It was too hot to think, sweat already running down my face as I hit the blue plastic mat 

near the field goals, settling against the burning tarp with a tired whoosh of air.  I don’t think I’d 

slept the night before. 

The girl I’d been running with (freshly met, with whom I’d shared few conversations thus 

far) was laughing as we reached our goal, burning with energy as she turned to wait for our 

teacher’s arrival. 

“Tell me more about that thing,” I said, drawing my knee up to untie and retie my shoe.  

“What’s it called?”  It took more effort than perhaps it should have, bitten-down nails fumbling 

for purchase in the thick knots I’d left in the lacing. 

“Golden pelt’s den,” she replied, spreading out across the tarp as more kids clambered up 

around us.  I scooted back to allow them room to sit and grimaced as day-old rainwater 

(lukewarm bilge) slid down from a higher vantage to coat the seat of my pants.  “I’ll write 

the address down for you later.” 

We were all exhausted by the time we were finished, twenty bodies stuffed into the 

sweltering sardine can of the locker room we didn’t want to be in.  I listened closely to the 

girl’s instructions, taking a pen and writing the URL on the white rubber of my shoe.   

Roleplay consumed my summer.  I started with the one website, taking my time to puzzle 

out two or three characters I enjoyed, then more and more and more, until I found that there other 

sites and learned that that first was really only for beginners, rudimentarily constructed, poorly 

admined, and peppered with children who barely knew how to string sentences together and 

had little interest in playing nice with others.  I found links to other similar sites and went 

elsewhere, the number increasing as I sped through the process of application to site upon site, 

staying only briefly as I found each one to be, ultimately, unsatisfactory.  Some were too 

inactive, others had too much traffic, and all of them failed a test I didn’t know I was handing 

out--on a level of interpersonal connection, there were no successes, no one to whom I could be 

pinned. 

I found the link to FNC on the advertisements page of a website that was 

well-maintained but seldom touched, the remaining patrons only checking in when it suited 

them.  I was curious, as I always was, and though I held no higher expectations for this than I did 

the others, It seemed like a nice place; the homepage was inviting, the backdrop a full moon 

shining down on a distant river valley, and I took pleasure in signing up, listing my character’s 

name, occupation, personality.   

I didn’t show up again for several days after, already having mentally marked the website 

as “too young,” unlikely to see many patrons, and maybe it was because the site administrators 

were clearly already best friends, but there was a part of me—what little of me understood what I 

was looking for—that assumed that all attempts at befriending them were futile.  Cliques were 

dense and thickly walled, after all, and my experiences with them had never been pleasant. 

Yet I was pleasantly surprised. 

“Firestar,” Songwing (who I’d come to know as Beckie) had typed by the time I came 

back, “why don't you change your name?  That way you don't copy the books.” 

“Okay,” I said, completely unaware that in this decision lay the seeds of a new era of 

self-address and personal identity, that I would keep this decision with me for five years and then 

some.  “I’ll go as Moonstar.” 

Our friendship began cautiously, a gaggle of young girls gathered to expand our writing 

skills and pretend we weren’t alone in our obsession with a book series about very human, 

prophecy-driven cats.   

As I said, Mary, Beckie, and a few others were friends long before I met them, a clique 

halfway finished that I wanted badly to belong to.  In life it had always seemed to me that there 

was a manual given to children upon their birth, an ancient transcript meant to guide them 

through the intricacies of interpersonal interactions and the pillars of social constructs.  It was a 

book I--and my mother before me and her mother before her, a long line of confusion stretching 

back either to the day these manuals were given out or the day our line’s was stolen--never 

received.  These girls were smart, funny, and, despite their occasional awkwardness, had all very 

clearly read that book.  I liked them but I was, like a caged animal, wary.  It had been my 

experience that girls only accepted you when they knew that they could use you. 

I don’t remember the first time they called me their friend, or the first time they seemed 

to express a kind of exasperation at my awkward, fumbling attempts at joining in their games 

(which, like reindeer games, were at first elusive in their aim and impenetrable in nature).  I 

don’t even remember the first time I joined them in the silly side-roleplays they enacted, 

pointless, communally-drafted stories where things happened from the blue; one minute you 

were a cat and the next a dragon and still the next a chocolate bar, and it was all for no purpose 

except to make the others laugh.   

But I remember the night that Windstorm first called me “Moony.” 

Our roleplay names were the only ones we knew at the time.  Mary was known as 

Ivorypelt and Beckie as Songwing; Windy’s first name, and Twisty’s, I never learned.  They had 

a habit of dropping half a name and adding a “y” to create diminutive endearments, and it was on 

the 24th of July that I received mine.  When Mary asked about the date of a group discussion I 

replied, “What about the first?”  

Beckie said, “All in favor of a discussion on the first, say ‘Songwing rocks!’” 

“Well now no one is going to vote for a discussion on the first, Songwing,” Mary had 

said.  “We aren't liars, after all.” 

“ROFL,” Windy supplied, “how about ‘Windy rocks?’” 

Twisty, ever the diplomat, added, “How about BEEEEP!  That way no one has to lie 

about any of us!” 

“You are mean, Ivory. *sobs*” Beckie fired back. [Sic] 

“Well,” Mary would say just two comments later, “I'm not the only one, Songy.  How 

about we do this the old-fashioned way?  All in favor, say ‘AYE!’” 

But before she had the chance, Windy would ask, “How about, ‘Windy, Songy, ivory, 

Twist, Moon(y?) all rock!!’ Is that one better?”  [Sic]  

I don’t remember what I did afterward—time has this horrible habit of stealing away the 

transitional phrases we deem so necessary in English classes; no longer is it “I X, then I Y before 

Z, and finally I A,” but “Y, but before that Q, and after it B, and some years later L-M-N-O-P,” 

the interstitial links stripping away molecule by molecule until all that’s left are the facts—but I 

remember stopping to think for a moment (or maybe an hour), and staring at the screen, reading 

those words (that word) over and over again, breaking down the meanings and the sub-meanings 

and trying to believe, above all else, that they shared my understanding, because in my life I was 

never one to give or receive nicknames lightly, and it had always been my habit to over-analyze. 

I sat in the midst of that hot, dark night, the waning half-moon shining almost as brightly 

on the midnight grass as the image on the FNC homepage, staring at bright colored text on a 

darkened screen, my fingers twisting in my lap.  I listened as a breeze carded through the leaves 

of the many trees outside, the cicadas buzzing, the crickets chirping, suddenly all too aware that I  

was the only human awake, maybe for miles.  I remember it being too hot to sleep, but maybe I’d 

only been hoping for something like this, something to go to bed on, to feel good about. 

And I remember how my gut twisted and my heart bled, the hollow ache in my chest 

becoming sharp and physical as I turned my mind to it and realized, for the first time, how 

madly, horribly, unequivocally lonely I was, understanding a hulking monster that had crept 

under my skin to lay eggs, the young now hatching and screaming (voiceless) that I had never 

belonged to anyone, anything before, except in the most transient and marginal of ways.   

And I cried for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes—alone in the dark, thinking, accurately or 

not, that someone who was not my mother or brother or father cared about me, cared enough, at 

least, to mark me as one of them, to shorten the name I’d given them, and, perhaps most (or 

least) touching of all, to have, in a way, asked my permission. 

In the days to come I retained my insecurities and continued to type with care, this 

fledgling friendship still seeming shaky and probationary, the fear of being cast out (that they 

might mistake my excitement for fanaticism) a real and proper threat when only recently a belief 

in the supernatural and extraterrestrial had cost me several friends, parts of my reputation, and a 

certain degree of self-respect (how can you respect yourself, after all, when children far older 

than you laugh at the things you hold close to your heart?).  

In the formative years of our relationship, fear was as much my companion as they were, 

but I allowed myself to let go, bit by bit and piece by piece, speaking more freely, sharing more 

openly, doing my best to communicate to them the incommunicable.  To their credit, though they 

didn’t always understand, they always seemed to listen. 

And eventually we’d fall apart, misunderstandings, stress, and self-righteous attitudes to 

blame.  The words I wanted to give to them would be discovered all too late, and for a long time 

we’d keep coming back, forcing life back into the friendship we’d so cautiously set to breathing 

the first time around, though of course it couldn’t last.  But I’d never regret them, no matter how 

much they might regret me, because for a while they took away the edge loneliness had pressed 

against my throat, and they were the ones who would bring me to the two friends I hold most 

dear even now, setting off a domino effect of websites and ideas that steamrolled one into the 

next until they shoved me to the ground and beat me into the girl I am today.   

And maybe most importantly, they taught me what friendship was (the surges of 

affection, dumb smiles at odd hours as I remembered things they’d said, a feeling of fullness in 

my chest that warmed me on the worst of nights and sometimes burned when the days had been 

kind), and showed me that, before them, I’d never known it.