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

[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.