I watched the cinematic eye candy that is DCEU’s Aquaman on Saturday, not at all surprised to see the lack of diversity within it’s civilizations. I expected popcorn munching nonsense, and that’s exactly what I got. Even though he’s from an under-represented culture, Jason Mamoa, the re-invented Arthur Curry, is still an archetypal typical Hollywood heroic male–even if he was the “charming boozer.”

I loved the touches of Māori culture in the film. Between Mamoa and Black Mantis (whose racial characterization remains in keeping with the original) that’s where the movie’s diversity ends. All the other principle characters are white, able-bodied, and presumably neuro-typical. Given the nature of the forced and arranged marriages in a feudal system, I’m going to guess they are binary heterosexuals as well, including the half-fish “Fishermen.”

via GIPHY

A lack of representation of the life I’m exposed to is one of the reasons why I write the characters I write. In my V’Braed series, Clare uses cochlear implants because she is deaf. When she was a baby, a viral infection damaged her ears. Cochlear implants are devices that convert sound waves into electronic signals the brain can interpret as sound. My son has auditory dys-synchrony and uses bilateral (both sides) hearing aids and he inspired that par of Clare’s character. I saw no reason why someone with hearing loss couldn’t be part of this adventure.

What is the Other?

Raised by a single woman, I was made aware of gender inequities and issues between women and men. While my mother did stereotype men, she didn’t stereotype races. I thought that meant we weren’t racist. In the university course introduced me to the concept of invisible privilege (Peggy McIntosh) and what the Other truly meant. My eyes were opened!

Humans have a proclivity to categorize and organize life. When an author creates a character or writes about a group of people who are unlike themselves, those characters (or people in non-fiction) are the Other. This could be an non-disabled author writing about a character with a disability, or a white author integrating black characters into their story. The writer might be speaking of someone with a different religion, culture, or even occupation. The other is not you.

As an author, I want to integrate the same kinds of people I see and know in my life into my stories until the day when #weneeddiversebooks is no longer necessary. However, I also have to conscious of how I represent people whose culture, lifestyle, circumstances, mental health, or whichever layer of life’s many layers are not the same as mine.

Writing “Not Me” Starts with Not Me

First, a writer needs to be conscious of who and what their are, and what they know. This isn’t quite like the adage “write what you know.”

I have to be conscious of who I am and what I know. I’m a cis hetero white woman without significant personally medical or physical challenges. How can I fully understand what it means to be something other than what I am? Once I understand my knowledge gap, then I know where I need to look for advice and direction to adequately represent someone who isn’t like me.

Seek Out the Other

#WeNeedDiverseBooks shouldn’t be a mantra or objective. It should just be. And if it takes that extra effort for a writer to reach out to someone in the community, race, or religion who can help the author clean up their understanding of the Other, then so be it.

I may be cis hetero, but I have no objection to people who identify with something other than what I am. But I also don’t have that lived experience. I wanted to represent gender diversity within the matriarchy I designed for The Crowning Ceremony in the anthology Beyond the Shadows. I hired Talia Johnson to do a sensitivity read-through of the story to make sure I wasn’t doing a hack job writing a trans protagonist. I’ve worked with Talia before and I value her opinion.

Bust Out of the Tropes

Listening to people is a skill that good authors exploit, especially when writing the Other. I’m privileged to know several authors of the Spoonie Authors Network, authors and supporters who live with a disability. One of their authors, Derek Newman-Stille, penned an insightful guide to the tropes of disabled characters which I highly recommend reading.

Have you seen an over-use of the blind fortune teller? The character who miraculously overcomes their disability in order to achieve their goal? A transfer of consciousness from a failing body into a new, upgraded model? A disabled character who is “less than?” These represent some of the ableist tropes of people with disabilities in fiction.

Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You is a story that particularly inflamed the disabled community as it represented the life of the rich, disabled protagonist as tragic and not worth living. Sadly, this is not the first time mainstream media has depicted a life with disability in this way.

There is No Singular Us, Them, or Me

I am a woman, but there is no woman exactly like me. If I write a female character, not all women are exactly like her. This is true of writing the Other, too.

I want to avoid writing to stereotype, and I want to represent diversity within the Other. Because that is the reality I see around me. I’ve met people for whom personal tragedy has been transcendent. Is that the norm? I doubt it.

When writing the other and being supportive of #WeNeedDiverseBooks, it’s important to recognize that every type of character has value within a story not just the “normative” neurotypicals, the ones that look sexy, cause knee-jerk emotions, or feed into tragedy or inspiration porn.

Please note that I use affiliate codes on some links for a small commission. I’ve earned $0.06 so far!