On Writing (and Reading) Race and Culture

Writing racial and cultural difference into works of fantasy is a difficult task. A writer can’t rely on Earth terminology if in fact the worlds being discussed are not Earth, and do not share our political and cultural contexts. N.K. Jemisin, author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, explains this difficulty in her blog post, “Describing Characters of Color, pt.2:”

“You can’t call someone ‘African American’ if your world has no Africa, no America, and has never gone through a colonial phase in which people of disparate cultures were forcibly brought together, thus necessitating the term in the first place.”

I think without the multitude of these real-world, historical, geographical, political, and cultural terms to fall back on, sometimes fantasy writers rely too much on skin color as a way to mark racial and cultural difference. As we discussed in class, in The Hunger Games Trilogy, I think Suzanne Collins uses color both effectively, in the case of citizens of the Capital, and unsuccessfully, in terms of Rue and Katniss and other District characters.

            The citizens of the Capital play games with race – they can surgically alter the color of their skin, or dye their hair, or tattoo elaborate patterns into their skin. It highlights the difference between this ruling class, for whom race is malleable and optional, and the oppressed classes, who have had their races imposed on them. And the colors they choose in the Capital are bright, fantastical, unnatural – blue skin, pink hair, green lips – not real representations of the humanity found in the Districts.

            And while the descriptions of the people in the Capital are successful descriptions of culture and race, I found the description of our main protagonist, and other notable characters from the Districts, flat and overly reliant on skin color, eye color, and hair color. Though these descriptions are repeated throughout the novel – Katniss and Gabe have black hair and olive skin, Rue and Thresh have dark brown skin and eyes – they are not accompanied by any other broad cultural hints signifying that they are people of color. There are no corresponding cultural differences, or consequences to those differences. This makes it easier for a reader to gloss over these descriptions, and default read these characters as white. I don’t think this in any way excuses the behavior of people who tweeted horrible things about the young African-American actress cast as Rue, but I think it does shed light on how people could read her as white, especially a careless or even just casual reader.

            I think two authors who are more successful in their descriptions of PoC are N.K. Jemisin and J.K. Rowling. These writers use culturally distinct names; both first and last, culturally associated styles of dress and food choices, and regional dialects to signify difference. Unfortunately, a lot of the subtle ways Rowling used to describe her characters were lost in the U.S. versions of the books, and there was an explicit description of Dean Thomas as black that was not in the original U.K. version.

            All three authors are successful in not attaching any value judgments to racial and cultural differences. The writers describe both the physical and cultural differences of both white characters and characters of color equally, without assumption that white is the norm and therefore does not require any description or explanation.