diversity in literature

The Name Game: Go Anglocentric or Go Home?

Naming characters is something every writer has to deal with, and every writer has strategies. Some use baby name sites/books to find names with certain meanings, some draw from names in their own lives, and some (hello, fellow sci-fi/fantasy writers!) make up names from scratch, among other methods.

I want to talk about those character names today and ignore the making-it-up situation, assuming we’re in some kind of contemporary setting.

First, a day-job detour.

I’ve heard some people bemoan the lack of time-honored, long-standing names like John and David among YA characters. As I approached the start of this school year, I looked at my class lists. Out of about 200 kids, all around 14 years old, I have no one named John. No one named David. No Sue or Jane. I do have a couple of Josephs (one goes by his initials), and a handful of Annas-or-Anns. A couple of Nathans and Andrews.

You know what else I have repeats of? Braden (or Braeden). Cole. Hunter. Parker. Brianna. And all kinds of variations on McCall, McKenzie, McKayla and the like.

So we can conclude that these names were trendy fourteen years ago. Maybe that trendiness didn’t hold, so by the time our books are published, a teenager with that name may seem out of place. In that sense, the advice to use more “tried-and-true” names makes sense.

But here’s something else from the day job that happened just yesterday. We were discussing a couple of story problems in class. If you’re in education, you probably know that in the last 10-20 years, textbook writers have made a transparent effort to include more culturally diverse names in things like story problems.

One problem involved a girl named Pietra. A student said, “That’s not a real name!” I said it was (and a boy named Pieter in the class noted it’s the female version of his name). We moved on. Another problem involved a girl named Pilar. Someone said that wasn’t a real name, either.

The Hispanic kids in class weren’t very amused, and neither was I.

Let’s bring this back around to writing.

Regarding one of my early stories, several people commented that I was trying too hard to make “unique” names for my MCs. I wasn’t—at least, I didn’t think I was. I’d chosen one Hispanic name, and one somewhat related to a Hispanic name. Not quite as straightforward as Rosa or Carmen, but Hispanic readers didn’t bat an eye. Both were names I’ve encountered in real life, so I didn’t think of them as rare.

The thing is, I didn’t state anything else in the book about the characters having any Hispanic heritage. It wasn’t the focus of the story. I’m clarifying some of that in a rewrite, but here’s my question:

Should we only use ethnically/culturally diverse names in stories deeply rooted in cultural identity or discovery? Do we stick to Tom, Dick, and Harry otherwise because that’s more “comfortable” for the caucasian majority?

Back to those sci-fi and fantasy writers. We have to be careful not to create names that are a reading-roadblock … the kinds of names that make our readers desperate to either buy or sell some vowels. Similarly, in contemporary settings, we probably don’t want to pick names that are difficult for the mental reading voice to get a pronunciation for. It interrupts the flow of the story, and no one wants that.

But is there anything wrong with a character named Pilar? Or Dai-Ling? Or Tiave?

Because those are real names.

(Of course, if we create such characters, making them culturally authentic is another matter entirely … but maybe one we should think about challenging ourselves with. Myself included.)

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Write What You Know, Pt 2: Diversity Edition

Last month, I posted about writing what you know, or more specifically, knowing vs. experiencing and the necessary levels of each. With the situation I had in mind at the time, I have to believe it’s possible to write authentically without experiencing firsthand. (If not, I’ve got problems.)

Today, I’m thinking about a different situation. In this case, I still think it’s possible to write it well without firsthand experience, but the closer you can get to the source in your “research,” the better.

The situation is writing from an ethnic or cultural perspective that is not your own.

Clearly it can’t be necessary for us to share backgrounds with our protagonists. If it were, women could only write female protagonists. No one could write from the POV of anyone older than they were. Way too limiting, to the point of being ridiculous.

But how do we do the research to make sure our characters are culturally authentic?

As I mentioned in the other post, two of my novels have deaf characters. In the first, it’s not the POV character, but the almost-as-important sister. Honestly, I didn’t dare attempt a deaf POV at that point. I’d been teaching at a deaf school for three years at the time, but I didn’t feel ready. (It turned out that I think my POV choice was the right one regardless, just with who the characters are and where the story needed to go, but that’s another matter.)

For the second novel (which followers of the blog may notice has finally shown up among the tabs at the top), I got brave. My MC is hard-of-hearing, and there are a variety of deaf supporting characters. I felt like I was ready to take it on.

I’m not “in” Deaf culture, but I’ve been pretty well immersed in it for several years now. I’ve seen a lot of viewpoints within it, some of them completely contradictory to each other. I think witnessing and acknowledging the contradictions was the key.

No culture is homogenous any more than a society is homogenous. You can’t say, “All Deaf people are like this,” any more than you can say, “All Chinese people are like that.”

That doesn’t mean you can have a character say and do anything and have it be authentic, though.

Am I talking in circles yet? Feels like it.

Cultures are tricky things. Group history, personalities, individual experiences, family tradition, education … all those things feed into the culture and influence how each person inside experiences it. Individual, unique, yet within certain bounds that offer sameness, that allow a person to say, “Yes, I belong.”

Can you find that in a Google search?

Will you even know to look?

Be honest. How many of you are looking at me funny for capitalizing “Deaf” in some places? How many of you are getting question-mark-face at the way I’m discussing a physical disability alongside cultures like they’re the same thing?

Surely anyone can write a deaf character. Just cut out the sound and add in sign language, right? I might have thought the same before I became acquainted with people on the inside, and learned that Deaf and deaf are two different things.

Do we fall into the same trap with other cultural identities? Do we assume we can write a character from a particular background, when really we haven’t dug deep enough yet to see the nuance and variety within that culture? The push and pull that come from being part of a smaller culture (or more than one) within the larger culture of a particular society?

This is definitely a post where I don’t have answers—just questions. And it’s gone on long enough. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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