I write about “people of colour.” I didn’t know this was a thing, back when I first started. As far as I was concerned, I wrote about “people” and that was that. I only later realized–somewhat belatedly–that I was writing “diverse fiction.”
I’m still not sure about what I think about this. On a certain level, I know that people are looking for this sort of thing, so I try to market it as such whenever I remember. I don’t always–I see my work as regular fantasy, just like any other work.
Obviously, my background colours my worldbuilding. This was made clear to me one time when my friend was beta-reading my work and told me that one of the things that stood out for her was how much Sume was willing to sacrifice for her family.
I never thought about it that way. Sume’s experiences, and Oji’s, were matter-of-fact. It never occurred to Sume that the family she was taking care of was not “hers” as it would apply in the Western world. Growing up, “extended family” meant the same as “family.” It’s why my cousin doesn’t think twice about taking my daughter to school or carrying my sleeping son around for a few hours if he got to him first. This concept of family is extended well into The Agartes Epilogues, particularly within Jin-Sayeng, although the Gorenten and Shi-uin people are extremely similar, too.
There are a lot of other things, like the way characters eat food or respond to questions, that are clearly a ‘default’ for me because of the way I was raised. Some characters, particularly those from a heavy Jin-Sayeng background, are awfully polite. This is probably why I wouldn’t be able to write a convincing pseudo-European world (the Kags are a minority in Vir).
These are things I try not to think too much about because it gets in the way of writing a novel.
A few weeks ago, I got into a heated discussion on the Fantasy Reddit about diversity, and why people would bother pointing out works that don’t have diversity and why it couldn’t have more of that. It was difficult to explain that it’s not really about wanting to see, say, Asian main characters in a work like the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I love that series the way it is. A badly-done caricature stuck into a series like that, just for diversity’s sake, would ruin it.
It’s just a discussion, about what could be in fantasy. It’s these sort of discussions that most people get into and then forget the next day, but weigh heavily on the minds of some of us. Me, for instance; until the idea that there is a lack of diversity in the genre was brought up, I never thought twice about it. I never thought to include more of my culture or similar other cultures in my stories, because in my mind, fantasy was about white people in a pseudo-European world.
I mean, yes, The Agartes Epilogues did have people of colour as the main characters from the very beginning, but most of the action was supposed to happen in the Kag and Dageis, which were–at the time–places featuring the “typical” fantasy setting. I did not make the effort to flesh out Jin-Sayeng. There are still parts of me–parts that I am trying very hard to erase–that feel conscious about my culture, a part of the colonial mentality that Filipinos grow up with.
Then I got into Avatar: The Last Airbender and realized the possibilities. I also realized, with a bit of regret, that a lot of the richness of my own culture has been lost through the centuries. It’s not an accident that I left the Philippines speaking better English than Tagalog (which by the way is a pain in the neck, grammar-wise).
So I began to craft Jin-Sayeng into a what-if society, a culture that features a lot of Southeast Asian manners with East Asian cohesion. Herey, a different country set in the same world and featured in a different series (The Wanderer’s Gift), is a different interpretation of the same thing, with a stark difference: people from Herey have adapted the typical medieval European culture to slowly replace their own.
You discover so much, writing like this. It’s especially important to point out the self-discovery aspect of things, especially when people start to point out inaccuracies or whatever in your book. Writing, especially fiction is, arguably, a personal experience. People get to view the final product, but it’s not necessarily about the audience.
I mean, hey, if it was, shouldn’t we ought to get paid more?
Laugh and point at my self-doubt in The Agartes Epilogues. That’s about as entertaining as I can make it.
