Own Voices -- Death

[Montero]

The problem is a character like Charlie Chan. At the height of his popularity, some were critical of his slightly stereotypical behavior, while many Chinese Americans were proud to have a mainstream Chinese detective character that was revered for his intelligence and effectiveness.

That's an interesting, and also sad point. We'll need to be careful about how we discuss this - current affairs and all that.

In Babylon 5, the doctor was black. After the actor died, his family said how much he'd loved the role - because not a single plot line was about him being black. The plot lines were about his character, and his beliefs as a doctor, and his colour was of no comment whatsoever.

There has been discussion in the thread regarding response to representations you feel are inaccurate. As a reader, I get quite put off a story by errors in science, or a scenario with which I am familiar being written in a way that I see as inaccurate. Depending on how bad my response is anything between give up fast on the book and don't review, if I finish it and write a review I may comment on the inaccuracies in the review, depending on how many, but it would be in the minority of my review. Like "Overall this was an entertaining book with good prose. I liked xxxxxxx. I have a small caveat that as a professional yyyy the sections with so and so didn't really ring true for me. If you don't have my level of knowledge on this subject, it may well not bother you." Or I contact the writer about it, if they have a website. If it is one small thing then it isn't worth mentioning in a review. Now that is with knowledge, such as historical knowledge or scientific knowledge, and with representations of scientists. I identify as a scientist and get a little weary of and irritated by public comment/plot lines on the mad scientist trope.

As a sff writer I do struggle at times as I am aware of the limitations of my experience - and suspect that I have more I am unaware of. I try to find a path for the story that I am comfortable with, that rings true for me but doesn't step on toes. One day I may publish and find out how right/wrong I was on that.
I have been intrigued down the years by people in the writing area asking for suggestions on places to set their story, and then writing their story in a place they've never been, based on internet information and info from people in forums. I'm talking about contemporary settings used in a sff book, not totally made up worlds. If I tried to do that, I'd be deeply uncomfortable, not out of any principle or ethic, but because I can't "feel" the setting. There are always sounds, smells, details, that I'd notice about a place that would colour my writing, and it would be very hard to get that in without going there.

 

[Swank]

That's an interesting, and also sad point.

I don't know why. It was just an example of how "own voices" doesn't necessarily select for cultural accuracy, preferring positivity.

I have been intrigued down the years by people in the writing area asking for suggestions on places to set their story, and then writing their story in a place they've never been, based on internet information and info from people in forums. I'm talking about contemporary settings used in a sff book, not totally made up worlds.

I would be careful of taking too many lessons from the behavior of aspiring writers on forums. They not only don't know the places they want to write about - they also frequently don't know anything about the genre they want to write in, or anything about writing. Published material is a bit more useful to look at.

 

[Montero]

I don't know why. It was just an example of how "own voices" doesn't necessarily select for cultural accuracy, preferring positivity.

Ah, I meant that it was an interesting point in terms of the split reaction of Chinese people, and sad that the most positive example of a Chinese person in film, wasn't even Chinese.

I would be careful of taking too many lessons from the behavior of aspiring writers on forums. They not only don't know the places they want to write about - they also frequently don't know anything about the genre they want to write in, or anything about writing. Published material is a bit more useful to look at.

I wasn't taking a lesson, I was just finding it very different from my working method and not one I would adopt, and it seemed relevant to the thread.
As it happens, there are published authors who've done that too, such as Keating's Inspector Ghote - I read some ten or more years ago and they were alright police procedurals in Bombay. However I've since heard that for the first nine books Keating hadn't even been to Bombay. The reviews on Goodreads are mixed with the majority in the latest 10 enjoying the first book and two criticising it for lack of credibility regarding India - one mentions how it leaves out sounds and smells.

Note that I am distinguishing between using real places in contemporary time potentially with SFF additions if in genre - contemporary as in somewhere I could have lived or visited - and a much more SFF created world.

 

[ColGray]

The problem is a character like Charlie Chan. At the height of his popularity, some were critical of his slightly stereotypical behavior, while many Chinese Americans were proud to have a mainstream Chinese detective character that was revered for his intelligence and effectiveness.

Who's right? And who is or isn't a good judge of representation among the demographic?

Charlie Chan (or any stand in/similar character) underlines the point of Own Voices: the one dimensional stereotype was seen as positive because the other contemporary portrayals were so deeply negative.

Plotting characters on a +10 to -10 scale, if Fu Manchu (a major contemporary character to Chan) was a -10 and Charlie Chan was a +2, well, sure, I get Chinese Americans applauding--but I also doubt there were large swaths of the community who were like, I FEEL SEEN!

Total lit theory academia thing, but cross cultural character portrayals tend to follow a pretty standard trajectory as the cultural experiences evolve from OTHER to combination/recombination:

1. Scary Other
   1. Invaders, Villains and Existential Threats
2. Stereotypical Negative Other
   1. Fu Manchu
3. Stereotypical Other
   1. Charlie Chan
   2. Positive due to what came before, but 1 dimensional
4. Stereotypical Assimilant
   1. Chin Ho Kelly (Hawai'i 5-0)
   2. More positive and able to have 1 negative trait
5. Unremarkable Native
   1. Harold & Kumar
   2. Just people!
6. Native Outsider
   1. Louis Huang (Fresh off the Boat)
   2. Multi-dimensional people exploring concurrent cultural experience

(total aside, Charlie Chan's cultural impact is super interesting. There was a Poe award winner on the history and impact of the character that came out maybe a decade ago that discussed the real detective on which Chan was based and the original author vs movies and actors and the rest. Worth checking out!)

The joy of SFF is that you never need to represent anyone.

The problem with representing groups of people is the tendency to fetishize them. Why does a character importantly need to be Tibetan, have ADHD, survived cancer? How much does being Indian mean that the reader is supposed to assume a bunch of stuff that the writer is too lazy to establish in prose?

I think that's exactly right--what is the purpose of the notation and inclusion? What does it add to the character and/or story? Is the inclusion of <traitX> explored and made relevant, or is it signaling (whether virtue, stereotype, trope, performative, etc.)

 

[Swank]

Plotting characters on a +10 to -10 scale, if Fu Manchu (a major contemporary character to Chan) was a -10 and Charlie Chan was a +2, well, sure, I get Chinese Americans applauding--but I also doubt there were large swaths of the community who were like, I FEEL SEEN!

The point wasn't why Charlie Chan was approved - the point was that Chinese Americans approved him. Which means that the process of seeking Own Voices approval is subject to judgements that aren't purely anthropologic - and therefore flawed.

 

[Phyrebrat]

In a parallel thought, this thread has me considering my current read and how it fits into this practice. I’m fifty percent thru Moby Dick and enjoying it immensely.

However, is it an endless essay written by a whaler (hence own voice) albeit a neophyte one, or an actual novel? I can hardly see a publishing house indulging the novel nowadays. But…you can’t doubt its own-voicey-ness.

Similarly my current WIPs MC POV has ADHD. I wanted to explore and represent what this is like for me (and hopefully clarify and steer muggles away from the misconceptions that the AD and H in ADHD implied). But I find myself heavily editing it down as I wonder if it’s too much/not interesting — even though the idea behind the (cosmic horror) story is that mental health and neurodivergence, along with protracted health conditions, ‘thins the veil’ between our dimension and that of ‘idiot gods’. So it’s directly relevant and could give me ‘permission’ to go deep but…

I wonder (as always) if genre also affects how appropriate own voice can be.

 

[Montero]

But I find myself heavily editing it down as I wonder if it’s too much/not interesting

Books can be too long and rambling, but if you have any I'd try a section on beta readers before so altering your concept. I am a great fan of all the details of something different and how they affect a life being in there - not great wodges of exposition but the tiny details. Once again I give the example of the perfumier in Paladin's Grace and all through the book she is interested in scents, smells, collecting plants, distilling, recipes.

I wonder (as always) if genre also affects how appropriate own voice can be.

Why? In what way? Not quite following this/

 

[Swank]

I wonder (as always) if genre also affects how appropriate own voice can be.

Because it is too much in a book that is mostly about spaceships and Yodas?

 

[Phyrebrat]

Because it is too much in a book that is mostly about spaceships and Yodas?

Well duh, naturally, I didn’t think I’d have to actually say that

@Montero - re genre. Let me order my thoughts about that before I reply as I need to clarify to myself what I mean, too.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Because it is too much in a book that is mostly about spaceships and Yodas?

As a leading proponent of culchies* in space, I’m cool with own voices in SO

*northern Irish for country bumpkin

 

[Swank]

As a leading proponent of culchies* in space, I’m cool with own voices in SO

*northern Irish for country bumpkin

I'm not against whatever, just musing that the writing challenge of creating a new world and being an ethnographer at the same time could be considerable.

 

[The Big Peat]

I keep trying to think of a way to expound everything I believe about own voice and this thread, and concepts such as hugboxing vs scabpicking, stories about X and stories for X, no single story, and so on...

... and fail, because it simply too vast.

Suffice to say the idea and its impact can't really be boiled down to some single sentence thing about how it is or should be.

So I'm going to respond to the idea above and give my own voices choice on death, albeit in a different way to how ColGray started the thread -

David Gemmell survived a mistaken terminal cancer diagnosis (as well as about 150 stitches from fights as a kid (I could believe he was exaggerating, but I doubt he was lying completely) and I think that experience bleeds through every time one of his characters is dealing with the idea they might be about to die a lot sooner than they'd like.

Which is often.

As for the idea that in some stories it's not appropriate to go own voices...

I certainly think in some stories it's harder. Genre stories, particularly action genre stories, are often that type of story in that they are too focused on the highly unusual, aimed at universal experiences, the secondary world and so on.

But in highly unusual stories, really grounded details can hold it together. I don't think the sitcom Scrubs would have captured so many people without its attention to the little details of hospital life.

And often the more an author is talking about their own very personal experiences, the more they come across as universal. Tolkien drew heavily on his own experiences and world views in writing The Lord of the Rings, and created a mirror that countless people see themselves in.

And, well, a lot of secondary worlds really don't put much paint on this one and you can see it coming through. Hell, for a lot of people, it's the easy way to do it. See Tolkien again, or Jordan, and so on...

So I think it can be very appropriate and add a huge amount of depth to otherwise generic seeming works. Of course, everything is in the eye of the beholder, but it really can.