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Writing About Race: A List of Helpful Articles

Jessica Hatch

A client recently asked if I could recommend any articles on writing about race, especially about tokenism versus representation.

Aside from an article on not using food metaphors to describe skin color and another on why “gypsy” is not a word we should be using in the twenty-first century, I didn’t have any bookmarked or to share off the top of my head. Determined to do better, I researched and came up with the following list of articles from writers whose experience leads them to be much more expert on these issues than I am.

Because we should all always be learning, I wanted to share this list with you lovelies as well.

I am sure that I am one drop in a very large bucket of such articles that will come out in the next few weeks and months, but we need to keep talking about this even when our social media newsfeeds go back to normal and even if the protests stop—though I hope they won’t.

One last note before we dive in: As we all know, race is a complex topic and not one that can be covered just from one angle. I am going to divide the articles into different categories below. With this being written in July 2020, given the current conversations in the public sphere, many of these articles are likely to focus on writing about Black characters as a white person, but I hope to add to this and expand on the post so that it engages with many different race-related issues.

With that in mind, if there is an issue or an article near and dear to your heart, please let me know about it in the comments section below.

 

Intersectionality.

Thanks to the Writing the Other article listed just below this paragraph, I learned this week that the term intersectionality was coined by a Black feminist, lawyer, and scholar in her 1989 paper “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” Essentially, intersectionality is the fact each of us has many facets that contribute to our identities, and these facets either oppress or benefit us in the modern kyriarchal structure. Read on to learn more.

  1. WritingTheOther.com is a great resource for this. Start with their page “Intersectionality and Characterization” and go from there: https://writingtheother.com/intersectionlaity-and-characterization/.

  2. “10 New & Old Books for Intersectional Feminist Readers.” International Women’s Development Agency. https://iwda.org.au/10-new-old-books-for-intersectional-feminist-readers/.

  3. Writing Intersectional Identities: Keywords for Creative Writers, Janelle Adsit and Renee M. Byrd. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/writing-intersectional-identities-9781350065734/. From the book’s promotional copy: “Is it okay to write about people of other genders, races and identities? And how do I do this responsibly? Whether you are working in fiction, poetry, drama or creative non-fiction, becoming conscious of how you represent people of different social identities is one of the most important responsibilities you have as a writer. This is the first practical guide to thinking and writing reflectively about these issues.”

  4. “No, Hispanic and Latinx aren’t a race. Here’s a breakdown.” AJ+. https://medium.com/aj-news/no-hispanic-and-latinx-arent-a-race-here-s-a-breakdown-55bdbfb57132

 

Writing about Police and Black Lives Matter.

  1. “What It’s Like to Write Crime Fiction in the Era of Black Lives Matter.” Lit Hub. https://lithub.com/what-its-like-to-write-crime-fiction-in-the-era-of-black-lives-matter/ This article was published four years ago, soon after Philando Castille was murdered at a routine traffic stop. The rhetoric surrounding police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement has changed somewhat since 2016, but one thing that these crime fiction writers agree on is that, though it is easy to homogenize black and brown people into groups, police officers into groups, there is no easy version of “us versus them.” They also agree that it is difficult to be a person of color writing in this genre, surrounded by so many white crime fiction authors getting success and acclaim for being essentially tourists in areas that Black writers have lived through. This is some food for thought about ceding the spotlight for any white thriller writers. 

  2. “Writing About Black Lives Matter in 2019.” Tyrese L. Coleman interviewing Melanie Hatter. Electric Literature. https://electricliterature.com/writing-about-black-lives-matter-in-2019/.

  

Tokenism vs. Representation.

  1. “7 Casually Racist Things That White Authors Do.” Mya Nunnally. Book Riot https://bookriot.com/2018/02/05/casually-racist-things-that-white-authors-do/ Nunnally’s article talks specifically about things common in tokenism: poor use of AAVE, use of stereotypes, and/or not even having one POC in a fantasy or sci-fi novel. Think about the nasty undertone to the idea that there are no black people in the future. What happened there?

  2. “How (& Why) to Write Inclusive Fiction.” Kristen Kieffer. Well-Storied. https://www.well-storied.com/blog/how-and-why-to-write-inclusive-fiction

  3. “No More Tokenism: Why We Need More Diverse Fiction.” Pallavi Varma. Feminism in India. https://feminisminindia.com/2018/04/30/literature-needs-diverse-fiction/.

  4. “Bad Representation vs. Tokenism vs. Diversity Just Existing Without Justification.” Writing with Color. https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/111012462287/bad-representation-vs-tokenism-vs-diversity-just I can’t say enough good things about the Tumblr account Writing with Color. Here, they break down the difference between bad representation and “gratuitous diversity,” focusing on the fact that most of the time a fear of “gratuitous diversity” in a book is actually a way of limiting diversity from happening in fiction. 

  5. “A Conflicted Cultural Force: What It’s Like to be Black in Publishing.” Interviews by Concepción de León, Alexandra Alter, Elizabeth A. Harris, and Joumana Khatib. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/books/book-publishing-black.html Look. Even as I was gathering resources for this article, another one was published. And for those who don’t know, tokenism isn’t just an issue in between the covers of books. It’s an issue in the book publishing industry too. Read these interviews for more information.

 

Appropriation vs. Appreciation.

  1. “What Gave You the Right to Tell That Story?” Interviews by Lila Shapiro. Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/who-gave-you-the-right-to-tell-that-story.html. These seven interviews indicate what writers of varying backgrounds do to write characters who are not like them. The key answer seems to be witness fiction and checking with those who actually come from the background you’re talking about. When in doubt, I think you should always hire a sensitivity reader well-versed in your area of interest AND PAY THEM WHAT THEY’RE DUE.


What Not to Do.

  1. “White Writers’ Omission of Race: Jess Row’s ‘White Flights: Race Fiction, and The American Imagination.” Katharine Coldiron. LA Review of Books. https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/white-writers-omission-of-race-jess-rows-white-flights-race-fiction-and-the-american-imagination/.

  2. “The Truth About the Word ‘Gypsy.’” Jessica Reidy. https://jessicareidy.com/2018/11/07/the-truth-about-the-word-gypsy/ I work with a lot of historical writers, so this term pops up from time to time to refer to the Romani people. Here’s why it’s not cool to use it. And while we’re on the topic of historical terms, please don’t use the N-word. Your characters may be living through the Civil War, but your readers are in 2020.

  3. “Writing with Color: Description Guide.” Writing with Color. https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/post/95955707903/skin-writing-with-color-has-received-several I regularly refer folks to this helpful Tumblr post for why it is not okay to describe someone’s skin color as “café au lait” or “chocolate.” (Spoiler alert: Fetishization and colonialism.)

  4. “11 Common English Words and Phrases with Racist Origins.” Dylan Lyons. Babbel Magazine. https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/common-racist-words-phrases Some of these may surprise you.


Writers, Editors, and Agents of Color Who Are Contributing to This Conversation in a Big Way.

It is not mandatory for a person of color to educate white people or people who benefit from the kyriarchy on what we need to do better. This is emotional labor that can be exhausting for them, especially if said majority writers start pushing up against these new facts just because it’s new information for them. I spent several days on Google and following links and came up with this list. In other words, if you’re curious about “doing better,” there are books you can read, podcasts you can listen to, things you can put into practice on your own, without taxing a person of color about it.

However, I would also point you to the following writers, publishers, and agents of color who are indeed dedicating their time and other resources to this conversation. There are many more, but these are folks from whom I have learned a lot, just from reading their tweets or blog posts.

Again, I want to improve this list over time, so if you have any resources or requests for more information, please feel free to comment with them below. I will review them and likely add them to the list.

Thank you for reading. Here’s to a more diverse fictional future for us all!