{"id":12163,"date":"2009-06-12T09:43:53","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T16:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2009\/06\/12\/12163.html"},"modified":"2009-06-12T09:43:53","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T16:43:53","slug":"describing-characters-of-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2009\/06\/12\/describing-characters-of-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Describing characters of color"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I've been aware for a while now of the penchant that many white writers have for using food metaphors to describe brown skin colors. But what I haven't often seen is a good discussion of how to do it better. (I vaguely think there's a discussion of this in <cite>Writing the Other<\/cite>, but my copy is packed away at the moment.)<\/p>\n<p>So I was very pleased just now to come across a set of useful posts on this and related topics:<\/p>\n<ul>\n  <li>A couple months ago, N K Jemisin provided <a href=\"http:\/\/nkjemisin.com\/2009\/04\/ways-to-describe-characters-of-color\/\">some of the descriptions she's written<\/a> and some other helpful notes. (She prefaces her list with this: \"<strong>Not<\/strong> a claim of correctness or The Best Way or anything of the sort. Just <em>my<\/em> way.\") Several other writers chime in in comments with some of their own descriptions. N also briefly discusses things other than skin color that can indicate culture or ethnicity; see below for more on that.<\/li>\n  <li>Also back in April, zvi provided an excellent discussion of <a href=\"http:\/\/zvi.dreamwidth.org\/507806.html\">skin color comparisons<\/a> in fiction, especially in sex scenes in fanfic.<\/li>\n  <li>A couple days ago, afro_dyte started a great thread asking for \"<a href=\"http:\/\/community.livejournal.com\/uhuranspock4foc\/6163.html\">words, similes, and metaphors we can use to describe Uhura's complexion<\/a>.\" The primary focus here is Trek fic (see below), but it's a useful discussion for anyone wanting to describe skin colors.<\/li>\n  <li>In addition to skin color, there are a lot of other ways to indicate culture and ethnicity in fictional characters. Afro_dyte posted last week about <a href=\"http:\/\/community.livejournal.com\/uhuranspock4foc\/3622.html\">Spock and ethnic body language<\/a>: \"how can culture and ethnicity be conveyed through body language? And by body language I also include shibboleths that take into account pronunciation and even the octave of speech.\"<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(I need to provide some context so y'all won't go into those last couple of links expecting something other than what they are: the <a href=\"http:\/\/community.livejournal.com\/uhuranspock4foc\/profile\">uhuranspock4foc<\/a> LJ is explicitly a community for fans of color and about Uhura\/Spock relationship fanfic, not a general place for discussion of race, racism, writing, etc. I found a bunch of the posts there fascinating and helpful to me personally, but the idea isn't to educate people like me, it's for the participants to have a place to talk about this stuff that can avoid the racefail of (for example) a certain recent discussion of Uhura's straight hair.)<\/p>\n<p>Here are a couple of other indirectly relevant posts that I came across while looking at the above:<\/p>\n<ul>\n  <li>N K Jemisin on <a href=\"http:\/\/nkjemisin.com\/2009\/05\/spock-and-biraciality\/\">Spock and biraciality<\/a>.<\/li>\n  <li>Afro_dyte on the tendency in sf to use human terms for <a href=\"http:\/\/community.livejournal.com\/uhuranspock4foc\/2515.html\">aliens and their homeworlds<\/a>, even when the aliens have their own terms. (Also other related discussion about humans and humanity and whiteness.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been aware for a while now of the penchant that many white writers have for using food metaphors to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,27,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-ethnicity","category-speculative-fiction","category-writing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}