People keep saying that writers need to read a lot, because that’s how you get better. Mostly though, I disagree because I haven’t read anything in months. This is because I took a vow: not to read any book that had a scantily clad white woman on the cover. Or just a white woman in general.
Why, you ask?
Well, for years I was an avid Laurell K. Hamilton fan as I followed Anita Blake on her journey of kicking ass and taking names. Eventually, I fell out of love with how bitchy and deeply unlikeable Anita became, and the over dependence on sex to generate plot. As the 15+ book series progressed, I felt LKH lost a lot her ability to craft a decent story while everyone kept their clothes on.
So I journeyed forth, dying for someone with LKH’s skill but without… everything else. Many authors I found seemed to only mimic her style of a sassy 20-something white female lead who didn’t date or have a lot of sex until our stud of a (anti)hero shows up. Even just reading the synopsis of books made me want to flail around mindlessly, as I imagined all these sarcastic, street savvy women playing hard to get.
I was tired of my favorite genre being overcrowded with white, heterosexual (and sarcastic) female leads. Where are the women of color? Where are the LGBT main characters? Where’s the decent sense of humor?!
When I had complained to a white friend about the lack of POC in LKH’s work, she told me, “There’s that one black character!” I wanted to die. Tokenism is not appropriate representation in literature – or anywhere else for that matter. I’m aware that certain things sell, but how difficult is it to find some decent fantasy/sci-fi novels with non-white characters?
After I complained about the glaring whiteness of The Game of Thrones (on HBO) to a friend, she sent me some information about POC in contempary sci-fi/fantasy. I haven’t gotten the chance to read any of them yet, but I am going to look for them soon. Here are the books:
1. Ursula le Guin - Earthsea
2. Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
4. N.K. Jemisin
5. Patricia McKillip – Moon-flash
6. Jack McDevitt – Ancient Shores
I’m excited about these – even if some of them didn’t just hit the shelves last week, it’s good that they exist and that now you can find them. I haven’t found any books with LGBT characters in them – that might be more of a stretch, but I’m going to keep searching and see what I can find.
Honestly, I love reading – especially sci-fi/fantasy – but I don’t want to support a system that refuses to acknowledge other types of people exist and that we like books too. This is normally the part where someone might tell me to start writing this book, because I want to read it.
Maybe I shall.
If there’s a void, you should definitely consider filling it. That’s why I wrote my first book “Accept the Unexpected.” I hadn’t read any black lesbian fiction that represented me–an everyday, black lesbian woman who’s rooted in purpose, has a family, and not borderline psychotic or in the closet.
Other than reading the works of Olivia Butler (love her!), I haven’t ventured into fantasy/sci-fi novels. I do like sci-fi movies, but not surprisingly, the same tokenism is found there.
And those books by Nnedi Okarofor seem really interesting!
Definitely. It’s hard to find books that I’d like to read and enjoy. So I should write those books myself, right?!
I’ve heard of Olivia Butler. She seems pretty popular with a lot of black readers. I should check her out. I prefer fantasy/sci-fi to other genres. I love the imagination that regular fiction doesn’t really offer me. Even fictional reality is boring. :3
Yeah! i definitely need to get around to reading them, see how they measure up!
I think I got up to about book 8 of the Anita Blake books before I gave up on them. I’m reading a series that reminds me a bit of the good old days (CE Murphy’s Urban Shaman), but the main character is half white, and it definitely counts as brain candy, so I’m not sure you’d be interested. Ellen Kushner’s extremely classy and clever fantasy, Swordspoint, features gay protagonists, and I feel like a number of Tanya Huff’s characters are also gay. In Vonda McIntyre’s Sun and the Moon, the romantic lead is a very likable man who is also a (biological, not fantastical) dwarf.
Now that I think about it, I can’t recall a single black character in any fantasy I’ve read other than Earthsea. That’s really sad.
I haven’t really read any fiction books that make me think in a long time! So I’d love to hear about this series. That would be excellent. I’ve read one book by Tanya Huff when I was younger. I really liked it. I don’t remember the title; just that it had a tuxedo cat and a house on the cover. And it was purple. All of these sounds really interesting, I should add them to my list of books to read!
Lack of black characters is really sad. I definitely wish there were more of them for mass consumption.
Oh…by brain candy, I meant fluff. Not too much thought required in the CE Murphy, but fun anyway. I never really realized how little diversity there is in fantasy until you pointed it out. I’ve been racking my brain and almost every character I can think of is white, or mostly white, or an alien humanoid species that trends towards the pale and interesting.
The Tanya Huff book you read is Summon the Keeper. I enjoyed that one, too. There are two sequels, but I don’t think they’re quite as good.
Oh! Lol.
Yeah – you can probably look online for some interesting articles about how a lot of shows and movies that have aliens – they’re always white. Well, a majority of them. Superman is a really big common one, and how his cousin Supergirl is also white. Hawkgirl, also white. Keanu Reeves from his most recent alien movie – the day the earth stood still. Christopher Lloyd from his Martian movie in the 90s, also a white guy.
It’s a very frustrating problem. :/
Oh yeah! I really enjoyed that book. It was fantastic.
Representation of POC in fantasy, particularly epic fantasy, absolutely sucks. And when POC is represented, it’s often in tokenistic, stereotyped ways. There are authors that break outside of that, either because they’re POC themselves, or because they thought about it and decided to do something different as white authors (like in the list I gave you), but really… there’s so little in proportion to white authors writing white characters. :/ And you have to often really dig around to find good representations of POC as main characters or even significant characters in fantasy, and it shouldn’t be so hard to find. I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be.
Thanks for the list! It was really helpful and a gigantic eye opener.
Yeah. It’s definitely a gigantic pain in the ass to find decent sci fi/fantasy by POC or with non-white characters. I recently found a book written by a black woman, but didn’t really like the book. I felt an obligation to really try to bulldoze through it, but it didn’t really work out. But I might check out this one black author; Octivia Butler I believe her name is. I hope her stuff is good; she comes highly recommended.
Thanks for stopping by Pia! :]
Um, not wanting to offend, just wanting to state that most epic fantasy is based on northern European myths and legends, and as such takes its cues from those stereotypes. Epic fantasy and fantasy are genre fiction, after all.
I do love it when an author decides to go outside of the box, of course. Oh, and GRRM does mention “Summer Islanders” in his books, who are people of color. Several are prominent characters, though not major ones. I’m hispanic myself, but I guess I never thought about it.
Even though epic fantasy is a genre, I think it’s important to look at why these books are constantly set up in predominantly white parts of the world – England, Ireland and Scotland, for example. There are at least two continents going overlooked: Africa and South America which are full of rich history but are ignored. Part of the problem when you fixate on being “true to history” is that history is positioned as white and that plays into part of the erasure of non-white peoples. Disney is another good example of the preference for white European stories and “history” over every other part of the world. This is why epic fantasy is problematic, in and of itself.
In addition, with the “true to history thing,” in the 1600s Shakespeare wrote Othello. And black people had been on English shores/European shores for quite awhile. So clearly, it’s not “ahistorical” to include black people, but oftentimes fans just ignore that because PoC are ignored in history anyway. And part two – who cares? The BBC Merlin has one main black character Guinevere, and black people as knights or villagers. And you don’t get much more epic than Arthurian legend. If they can manage black/PoC characters, epic fantasy novels sure can.
And PS thanks for the booklist, and sorry for this random comment after 2 months
Oh no worries! I love comments!!
I used to read a lot in this genre both adult and young adult books, and initially the absence of POCs didn’t even register. I think it was because the relative whiteness in these books kind of mirrored my every day life. I’m Black but l live in a pretty white Midwestern suburb. As I got older ( I’m at the ripe old age of 21 now lol) it became something that started to increasingly bother me.
Shadow Blade Seressia is a book that’s been on my radar for a little bit though I have not read it yet. From the cover it appears to have a black female protag.
oops…Shadow Blade by Seressia Glass*
If it helps I’m a POC author who writes LGBT central multicultural paranormal fiction, so yes those stories are hard to find, but they do exist.
Thanks! What books have you written? I was looking for some LGBT books earlier today, and there are a few but not too many!
If you are looking for LGBT books in sci-fi/fantasy, you may want to look at Diane Duane’s Tale of Five (Door into FIre, Door into Sunset, and Door into shadow). I think it’s under-appreciated. I haven’t read it in a while, but I remember it making an impression on me as a teen in the eighties partly because it wasn’t marketed as LGBT – it was just a fantasy book that where the hero had a romantic relationship with another guy.
I sent this via twitter, but forgot to mention that Malinda Lo’s YA Sci fi/fantasy novels have LGBT characters. The best part is that her novels are also relevant to adults. http://www.malindalo.com/
I would add to this list – Tamora Pierce who wrote a series called The Circle Of Magic. Daja’s Book is the novel where the main character is black. I recommend the entire series for young adult readers.