Okay, so there I was in bed, pondering a possible new story. No plot yet but ya know...pondering. The two main characters are a Korean-American soldier returning home from Iraq or wherever to his wife who is African-American. Yeah, i know... another interracial story.
Okay, some backstory on why all my characters are interracial with usual a black woman and an Asian or white guy. There are two basic reasons.
The first: I have never had a black boyfriend so I pretty much didn't want to mess it up.
The second: I wanted to write my own kind of love stories. Not enough interracial love stories.
The third: I'm going through a terrible case of "yellow fever" and I might as well create a written fantasy
The fourth: I was told in a dream by an Asian-American actor to write stories for Asian actors
The fifth, my mother-in-law issues. I have yet to write a story that adequate deals with all that.
And the sixth, the most important: A White woman, a feminist and a minister's wife once told me in church that she didn't like her race tainted and she hated my stories or any story where a black person and a white person are lovers. Yes, you heard that right. When I asked her about Asians and Latinos (light-skinned latinos) and Native Americans tainting her race, she went on to say that she had heard that objection before and she didn't mind those ethnic groups because they weren't tainting her race. She was very proud and defiant. Yep, very old school about her racism and very stalwart about it. Anyway, from that day, I tried to stop writing interracial relationships with black women and white men. Thus I have mostly written interracial relationships between black women and Asian or Native American men. To this day, when and if I write a story with a white man in an interracial relationship, I always have a racist religious white woman nearby.
Anyway, there I was pondering The Constant Tower and it suddenly dawned on me that the relationship between Psal and Maharai is my very first relationship I have ever written about a black boy and a black girl. Who knew? I didn't really realize it. And weirdly enough I didn't think of Psal as black, because he is the bi-racial prince in a white clan with a white king as his father.
But still, it made my day to realize this. I suppose I kinda was aware that this was a non-interracial romance because I knew Psal was partly black. But still... wow! One grows without knowing it.
Still don't know if I'll be able to do this in a contemporary novel/romance though.
Okay, some backstory on why all my characters are interracial with usual a black woman and an Asian or white guy. There are two basic reasons.
The first: I have never had a black boyfriend so I pretty much didn't want to mess it up.
The second: I wanted to write my own kind of love stories. Not enough interracial love stories.
The third: I'm going through a terrible case of "yellow fever" and I might as well create a written fantasy
The fourth: I was told in a dream by an Asian-American actor to write stories for Asian actors
The fifth, my mother-in-law issues. I have yet to write a story that adequate deals with all that.
And the sixth, the most important: A White woman, a feminist and a minister's wife once told me in church that she didn't like her race tainted and she hated my stories or any story where a black person and a white person are lovers. Yes, you heard that right. When I asked her about Asians and Latinos (light-skinned latinos) and Native Americans tainting her race, she went on to say that she had heard that objection before and she didn't mind those ethnic groups because they weren't tainting her race. She was very proud and defiant. Yep, very old school about her racism and very stalwart about it. Anyway, from that day, I tried to stop writing interracial relationships with black women and white men. Thus I have mostly written interracial relationships between black women and Asian or Native American men. To this day, when and if I write a story with a white man in an interracial relationship, I always have a racist religious white woman nearby.
Anyway, there I was pondering The Constant Tower and it suddenly dawned on me that the relationship between Psal and Maharai is my very first relationship I have ever written about a black boy and a black girl. Who knew? I didn't really realize it. And weirdly enough I didn't think of Psal as black, because he is the bi-racial prince in a white clan with a white king as his father.
But still, it made my day to realize this. I suppose I kinda was aware that this was a non-interracial romance because I knew Psal was partly black. But still... wow! One grows without knowing it.
Still don't know if I'll be able to do this in a contemporary novel/romance though.
2 comments:
Tainting her race? The poor woman is wrong in the head. Ignore her (Yup, easier said than done, I know...)and write the characters you want to write - black, white, pink, grey or blue or whatever!
Yeah, she had race-ownership down, apparently! She was from Canada, if I remember. So I guess there's prejudice in the great north as well. She was so bold about it.
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