Sometimes I despair.

[conuly]

A few weeks ago I read this book The Candy Shop War.

It's a fun, exciting book, and I don't recommend it because of how the author deals with race (which is to say, pretty badly.)

And I wrote a review about it! On Goodreads and LibraryThing I'm not alone, and on Amazon I largely am, but that's to be expected.

Anyway, I got into a conversation about it on somebody else's review.

One person went:

I'm not trying to justify the fact that he made you uncomfortable. However, what I think he was trying to do was give the reader a picture of the character right off the bat. When authors don't describe the character's race, since I am white, I usually (subconsciously--it's not intentional on my part) picture them as such, which would not be accurate for many of the diverse characters Mull has. I think Brandon Mull wants us to picture the characters the way he sees them. Does that make sense?

This just upset me because by my count, this book does NOT have diverse characters. Extras don't count, especially if they don't even have speaking parts. And if he "wants us to picture the characters the way he sees them" he could do a better job than describing the white ones with five adjectives and the non-whites with "black" and "Asian" and ending it there.

Which I basically said:

He described the white characters with a variety of interesting adjectives. He described the other characters (and he didn't have a diverse cast, the main characters were all white) ONLY by their race or, if they were lucky, by their race and a stereotypical feature.

If he wants us to "picture characters the way he sees them", he should do a better job of it by not limiting the description of non-white characters to "black" or "Asian".

And she bounces right back and goes "That's what I'm saying, how would YOU suggest he describe his non-white characters!!!"

WTF? Did I not just say how I'd rather he describe all his characters, of all races? I'm sure I did. Am I wrong? Is this miscommunication on my part, or willful misunderstanding on theirs? Because I just don't see what went wrong.

Comments

[redbird]

I don't think the problem was at your end. And I'm not sure what you can do when you have, in fact, already answered the question that's being thrown at you as if it refuted your point.

I suppose "I'd suggest that he say 'the driver was a tall woman with dark brown skin and a quiet laugh,' but he didn't give me enough to know whether she was tall or short, how dark her skin is, or whether she laughed" might make things clearer, if you want to do that much work on someone who seems uninterested in understanding your point.

[conuly]

Oh, I already replied, and pretty pissily too, but I wanted confirmation from others that I wasn't overreacting to ask why people reply before they read.

[mc776]

........I'm pretty sure I would've replied even pissilier. D8

[conuly]

Thanks. I'm not in my patient and nice time of month, and I don't particularly want to be either.

[kyrielle]

...no, you are not wrong. 'Black' or 'Asian' is not sufficient description by themselves. No more than 'white' is. What color hair? What stature? Larger, thin, stereotypical, normal, quiet voiced, loud-voiced, wearing neon green shirts? THOSE are descriptive. Black, Asian, and white are categories - and they can add to a description but they are not themselves descriptive enough to be useful.

[conuly]

I know I'm right about that, I was wondering if maybe I was unclear and this person couldn't've been expected to understand what I wrote in my first comment.

[dragonwolf]

I think it provides some interesting insight into the assumptions that a writer has about things like race, in addition to the reader. It's already generally known that if skin color isn't mentioned, the reader will assume the description is of a member of his/her race. In the same sense, a writer might neglect to write in skin tones of his/her own race because when it's of one's own race, it doesn't really consciously register and is subconsciously assumed.

It'd be interesting to see what the descriptions would be like if Mull wasn't white.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Anybody who thinks that it's sufficient to describe a character by race alone ought to take out The Egypt Game again and read it one googol times until they get it.

[conuly]

Gosh I love that book. But the sequel was so not worth it.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

truth ...I read it back when it first came out... in a freezing trailer at the taxi station downtown during a November blizzard ... waited about two and a half hours for a taxi to get home in. the wait was (and is) customary in that kind of weather, it being a large university town with a monopolized taxi service, but there is nothing worse than wanting to escape into a book during that time and not being able to because (as she sometimes has in her long career) D'ol Zilpha failed utterly and utterly failed.

I think the owner's wife finally gave me and the other two or three customers a free ride in her Cadillac.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you can totally describe a person of any race so that people will either know right away or quickly figure out their physical appearance/race without actually giving their race or country of origin. if she's in the "all black people look the same" mode, though, maybe just "being black" is enough of a distinguishing characteristic for her imagination. Very annoying. Yes, you said he should describe them better, and she is like, how? When you already said he could do it with better adjectives! So, no, it absolutely is not you.

[conuly]

Thank you! This is just what I wanted to hear, validation and confirmation that I'm not the wrong one in this exchange.

[conuly]

And I just want to say that I don't think bringing up race *is* necessarily a bad thing. So long as it's not the only thing, and also not totally superfluous.

There's a difference between an author describing his characters with, among other things, their race and your loser coworker telling "dude, this totally happened!" stories where the ONLY time the person is described is when they're black. (Obviously.)

[leora.livejournal.com]

Umm, the response seems to be, but if the person isn't White, what other physical descriptors could possibly be meaningful?

Presumably non-White people all have the same hair length and style (at least within their race), all have the same mannerisms, the same scars or lack thereof, are all the same height (at least for the sex, I kind of assume some form of gender is stated), possibly all look the same age, all have the same body shape... I mean, duh... they're not White, so they must all be identical.

I can't see how else to interpret that response, but I dunno, I might consider describing some of the above details.

Plus you can throw in neat details like "his eyes seemed to be gazing off past anything one could see" or "her hands were fidgeting as if she were forcing herself to keep from tearing the envelope out of his hands" or "he kept bouncing on his feet, because he couldn't wait to be done with these dull adult questions and to get back outside where he could watch the chickens being fed" anything like that would give you some image about the character, some little detail, and tell you something about the person.

Or you can just say single Black male 32, which sounds like the start of a dating ad.

[conuly]

Dating ad or a wanted poster.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

If I understand it correctly, I think the other reviewer does not realise that you do not mind that a non-white character is described as "black" or "Asian" as long as it doesn't stop there. So basically she thinks YOU are saying "I don't want characters described as 'black' or 'Asian' at all", which in turn makes HER go "But how am I to know that they are 'black' or 'Asian'?" The answer being of course - and that is, I assume, what you meant - "Well, say that they are 'black' (or 'Asian', or whatever) but also that they are [insert descriptive adjectives of choice here]".
In short, the other reviewer thinks you take offense at the use of "black" or "Asian" as such.
So there's definitely some misunderstanding at work. I don't think it's necessarily wilful, though. (Recalling the lady you quoted a while back, the one who took offense at the "black man singing in the west" or some such, I must assume that there are people who take offense at "black", "Asian" or whatever in a book, and the other reviewer has probably encountered them already....)

Does that help? It makes sense to me, but I'm not sure I managed to word it in a way that makes sense for others.

[conuly]

That makes sense, I guess.

She's replied to me, but I haven't brought myself to read it yet.