by Nisi Shawl
Conversation Pieces
A Small Paperback Series from Aqueduct Press
1. The Grand Conversation
Essays by L. Timmel Duchamp
2. With Her Body
Short Fiction by Nicola Griffith
3. Changeling
A Novella by Nancy Jane Moore
4. Counting on Wildflowers
An Entanglement by Kim Antieau
5. The Traveling Tide
Short Fiction by Rosaleen Love
6. The Adventures of the Faithful Counselor
A Narrative Poem by Anne Sheldon
7. Ordinary People
A Collection by Eleanor Arnason
8. Writing the Other: A Practical Approach
by Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward
9. Alien Bootlegger
A Novella by Rebecca Ore
10. The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding)
A Short Novel by L. Timmel Duchamp
11. Talking Back
Epistolary Fantasies
edited by L. Timmel Duchamp
12. Absolute Uncertainty
Short Fiction by Lucy Sussex
13. Candle in a Bottle
A Novella by Carolyn Ives Gilman
14. Knots
Short Fiction by Wendy Walker
15. Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of Her Life and Work
A Monograph by Lesley A. Hall
16. We, Robots
A Novella by Sue Lange
17. Making Love in Madrid
A Novella by Kimberly Todd Wade
18. Of Love and Other Monsters
A Novella by Vandana Singh
19. Aliens of the Heart
Short Fiction by Carolyn Ives Gilman
20. Voices From Fairyland:
The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, and Sylvia Townsend Warner
Edited and With Poems by Theodora Goss
21. My Death
A Novella by Lisa Tuttle
22. De Secretis Mulierum
A Novella by L. Timmel Duchamp
23. Distances
A Novella by Vandana Singh
24. Three Observations and a Dialogue:
Round and About SF
Essays by Sylvia Kelso and a correspondence
with Lois McMaster Bujold
25. The Buonarotti Quartet
Short Fiction by Gwyneth Jones
26. Slightly Behind and to the Left
Four Stories & Three Drabbles
by Claire Light
27. Through the Drowsy Dark
Short Fiction and Poetry
by Rachel Swirsky
28. Shotgun Lullabies
Stories and Poems by Sheree Renée Thomas
29. A Brood of Foxes
A Novella by Kristin Livdahl
30. The Bone Spindle
Poems and Short Fiction by Anne Sheldon
31. The Last Letter
A Novella by Fiona Lehn
About the Aqueduct Press
Conversation Pieces Series
The feminist engaged with sf is passionately interested in challenging the way things are, passionately determined to understand how everything works. It is my constant sense of our feminist-sf present as a grand conversation that enables me to trace its existence into the past and from there see its trajectory extending into our future. A genealogy for feminist sf would not constitute a chart depicting direct lineages but would offer us an ever-shifting, fluid mosaic, the individual tiles of which we will probably only ever partially access. What could be more in the spirit of feminist sf than to conceptualize a genealogy that explicitly manifests our own communities across not only space but also time?
Aqueduct’s small paperback series, Conversation Pieces, aims to both document and facilitate the “grand conversation.” The Conversation Pieces series presents a wide variety of texts, including short fiction (which may not always be sf and may not necessarily even be feminist), essays, speeches, manifestoes, poetry, interviews, correspondence, and group discussions. Many of the texts are reprinted material, but some are new. The grand conversation reaches at least as far back as Mary Shelley and extends, in our speculations and visions, into the continually-created future. In Jonathan Goldberg’s words, “To look forward to the history that will be, one must look at and retell the history that has been told.” And that is what Conversation Pieces is all about.
L. Timmel Duchamp
Jonathan Goldberg, “The History That Will Be” in Louise Fradenburg and Carla Freccero, eds., Premodern Sexualities (New York and London: Routledge, 1996)
Published by Aqueduct Press
PO Box 95787
Seattle, WA 98145-2787
www.aqueductpress.com
Print Copyright © 2005 by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward
All rights reserved. First Edition, Sixth printing, 2011
Digital Copyright © 2011 by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward
Digital ISBN: 978-1-933500-93-5
Writing the Other is a trademark of Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward
“Beautiful Strangers: Transracial Writing for the Sincere” first appeared as “Transracial Writing for the Sincere” in Speculations.com. Copyright © 1999 by Nisi Shawl.
“Appropriate Cultural Appropriation.” first appeared in The Internet Review of Science Fiction, October 2004,
Acknowledgements
“Notes for an Appropriation Panel,” by Hiromi Goto, by permission of the author.
Selection from Trouble on Triton, by Samuel R. Delany, reprinted by permission of the author.
Cover and Book Design by Kathryn Wilham
Original Block Print of Mary Shelley by Justin Kempton:
www.writersmugs.com
Conversation Pieces
Volume 8
Writing the Other®
A Practical Approach
by
Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward
For my mother, who knows more about writing
than I can get her to admit to.
–Nisi
To Joe
–Cynthia
Contents
Writing the Other
Bridging Cultural Differences
for Successful Fiction
Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward
Beautiful Strangers:
Transracial Writing for the Sincere
Nisi Shawl
Appropriate Cultural Appropriation
Nisi Shawl
Excerpt from The Blazing World
Forthcoming Novel
Nisi Shawl
Writing the Other®
Bridging Cultural Differences
for Successful Fiction
by Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward
Why Us
First and foremost, because we are writers. We’ve had to face the problem of representing characters of diverse backgrounds ourselves. Together, we’ve accumulated over twenty years of professional writing experience.
Nisi Shawl’s stories have been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; on the cutting-edge fiction websites of Strange Horizons, Lenox Avenue, and Aeon; in the acclaimed anthologies Mojo: Conjure Stories and So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy; and in the award-winning, ground-breaking Dark Matter anthology series. She contributed the “Voodoo” entry to The Encyclopedia of Themes in Science Fiction and Fantasy. And she’s a board member for the Clarion West Writers Workshop and a founding member of the Carl Brandon Society, which focuses on the presence of people of color in the field of speculative fiction.
Cynthia Ward has been publishing fiction professionally since 1990. She has sold almost forty science fiction, fantasy, and horror
stories to markets ranging from Asimov’s to Bending the Landscape: Horror to Garden of the Perverse: Twisted Fairy Tales for Adults. She is completing her first novel, The Killing Moon. For almost ten years, she has contributed the monthly “Market Maven” market-news column to Speculations: The Magazine for Writers Who Want to Be Read. She has written over 300 freelance reviews for Amazon.com, Amazing Stories, Locus Online, SF Weekly, fps: The Magazine of Animation, and other magazines and webzines.
Nisi and Cynthia have taught the workshop Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction for several years.
The Dominant Paradigm
When writing the other, you will depart from the dominant paradigm. For now, let’s just loosely define the “dominant paradigm” as what the majority of people in our society would call normal. (We’ll explore this construct further later, when we discuss a literary concept called “the unmarked state.”) Of course, no one is truly normal. Acknowledging the ways in which we deviate from so-called normalcy is an important step in learning to write the other.
Nisi’s differences from the dominant paradigm are:
I’m a woman.
I’m African-American.
I practice Ifa, a little-known religion.
I weigh more than currently deemed healthy.
I have made love with other women.
I’m a reader.
As a child, I was singled out for using “big words.”
I suffer from fibromyalgia, a physical disability.
My disability is mostly invisible.
Cynthia’s differences from the dominant paradigm are:
I’m a woman.
I’m short.
I’m an atheist.
I’m a military brat.
My politics are liberal.
I’ve lived overseas.
I’m a Maine Yankee…
and yet I’m not a real Mainer…
and I’m half-French in WASP-y Maine.
I have chronic neck pain.
My hearing and vision are subpar.
I also am a reader and a user of big words.
1
Why This Guide?
An incident that took place while Nisi and Cynthia were students at the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1992 gave rise to the original impetus for this guide, the class of the same name, and the original essays that also appear within these covers. One of our classmates opined that it was a mistake to write about people of different ethnicities: you might get it wrong. Horribly, offensively wrong. Better not to even try.
This seemed to Nisi to be taking the easy way out.
Nisi’s essay “Beautiful Strangers: Transracial Writing for the Sincere,” which originally appeared in the writing how-to magazine Speculations, addressed writing about characters with racial and ethnic differences. But as Nisi soon realized, similar problems arise when we face the difficulty of creating characters whose gender, sexual preference, age, and so on, differ significantly from our own. So our Writing the Other class extended and expanded on the techniques the essay outlined.
Writing the Other graduates have consistently improved the plausibility of their divergent characters. They’ve tried, and they’ve succeeded.
You, too, can learn how to think and write about characters who aren’t like you.
We wrote this guide to help.
We will show you what works (and what doesn’t) when writing about characters of races, genders, sexual orientations, abilities, religions, nationalities, and other traits and features different from your own. We’ll demonstrate the common mistakes and pitfalls of writing about differences and show you how to avoid them.
ROAARS: Race/Orientation/Ability/Age/Religion/Sex
Of course, as we said earlier, everyone differs in one way or another from the dominant paradigm. However, our culture emphasizes certain kinds of differences. It tells us that these differences are the most important ones, the ones that truly divide us.
For these categorizations, we’ve invented the term “ROAARS.” It’s an acronym. ROAARS stands for Race/(sexual) Orientation/Age/Ability/Religion/Sex. ROAARS differences are highlighted by majority culture.
You may notice that one profound difference has been left out of this acronym: class. This was a deliberate omission. As we’ve said, the focus here is on those differences that are generally presumed to be important. While class is arguably as important as race in terms of categorization, and is certainly more scientifically quantifiable, on this continent it’s not a difference majority culture recognizes as significant.
Format
The text in this guide’s first section is accompanied by writing exercises. You can practice these exercises as frequently or infrequently as you wish, but we advise you to do all the exercises at least once. Because they were designed as part of the Writing the Other class, some of the exercises work best when done with a partner or in a group. However, you are not expected to show anyone the results of your exercises or to incorporate the direct results of doing these exercises into your work.
These exercises are not tests, and you cannot fail them.
We’ve also included suggested times for completing each exercise. Though you’re not on a tight schedule such as that students attending live Writing the Other classes must contend with, we encourage you to try writing to the ticking of a timer. Try it at least once—taking a moment before you start to clear your mind of distractions, of course. We’ve found for ourselves that the pressure of producing under these circumstances can force you to switch off your internal editor and just get going!
2
Reptile Brain Function and the
Liberal Dread of the Racist Label
If you’re a white liberal, one of your great fears—possibly your greatest—is that of discovering you are a racist.
Sometimes, despite our sincere beliefs and our best efforts, we find ourselves thinking a thought that is racist or sexist or otherwise bigoted.
Sometimes, out of ignorance or thoughtlessness—with no intention of doing so—we find ourselves saying something racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise categorically offensive.
Cynthia used to believe that if she made a racist comment or had a racist thought she was a racist. She assumed it was like being struck by lightning. You weren’t a racist before, but now you were—for all time. Now and forever. End of story. The ultimate shame, with no chance of change.
Of course, that’s not true.
Cynthia will never know everything. She will continue to make the occasional ignorant or thoughtless comment with an unfortunate racial, sexual, or otherwise bigoted implication.
Cynthia will always have racist, sexist, and otherwise bigoted thoughts.
This is because she, like all humans, will always have a reptile brain.
A Walk in Whiteville
Several years ago, Cynthia relocated from the San Francisco Bay Area to a Seattle suburb that was 99.9% white. The place was quite a shock after San Jose.
Several years after moving to this monotone suburb, she ordered a takeout dinner. With forty minutes’ wait separating her from that jalapeño pizza, Cynthia decided to go for a walk in the massive apartment complex next door. As she hiked up and down the ridge, she saw several Hispanic men. With each Hispanic man—dark-skinned, working-class, speaking Spanish rather than English—she grew more nervous. More afraid.
“What’s wrong with me?” she thought. “I was in San Jose all last week, and the sight of Hispanics didn’t bother me. I was in entire Hispanic neighborhoods, and it didn’t bother me—oh! I get it now. I’m not in California. I’m in Washington.”
The Reptile Brain
The “reptile brain” is the oldest part of the mammal brain. The reptile brain is home to your survival instinct. Whether you’re awake or asleep, the reptile brain monitors your surroundings for threats. The reptile brain is small and stupid, but it’s brilliant at pattern recognition. If you see a large, vaguely cat-like shape, your
reptile brain screams, “Run away!” or prepares for a fight. This is what is commonly called the “fight-or-flight response” to a perceived threat. The reptile brain also triggers your fight-or-flight response if it sees a change in an established pattern—if, for example, it sees working-class Hispanic gentlemen in a primarily white-collar, white-race area.
Though ancient and primitive, the reptile brain can learn. In fact, it’s a great learner. But it has no critical judgment. It remembers bad information as well as good.
If societal messages tell us that dark skin means a person is dangerous or that homeless people are child molesters, our reptile brain remembers this appalling nonsense. It can’t do otherwise.
When the reptile brain thinks the time is appropriate, it feeds the appalling nonsense to our conscious mind, as when Cynthia’s reptile brain reacted to a news-bite about homosexual-relationship longevity by telling her forebrain, “Gays never stay together.” Sometimes the reptile brain sends its observations at the worst possible moment—as in the case of the man who told a female writer friend, “People like me, but women don’t.”
The reptile brain will always remember the racist, sexist, homophobic, and other bigoted information it learns, even when our conscious minds know the information is false. (Cynthia’s forebrain reacted to her reptile-brain observation, “Gays never stay together,” by remembering first that the longest-term peer relationship she knew of was lesbian, and then by thinking, “I’m divorced. Who am I to complain?”)
You’re not a bigot because your reptile brain is working properly.
And you want the reptile brain to keep doing its job, if you want to stay alive.
It’s Okay
The forebrain processes innumerable microsecond decisions so that we can conduct multi-person conversations, calculate trigonometry, steer our wheelchair, walk upright, or get our Kia out of the way of the speeding SUV driving the wrong direction in our lane. Naturally, the forebrain looks for patterns, because patterns allow routine thinking. Habitual thinking frees our forebrain to dodge that careening SUV without having to consciously stop and remember how to steer, shift, brake, and accelerate. Routinization allows the forebrain to collaborate with our reptile brain to keep us alive.
