Tag: Diverse Characters

Author Spotlight: Nicole Givens Kurtz

Erin Penn

 

Amazon Cover

An active author in the Charlotte area, Nicole Givens Kurtz is also a publisher of the Mocha Memoirs Press. Her press concentrates on diverse speculative fiction, written by diverse authors with diverse characters on diverse subjects.

Her most recent publication is a weird western collection, Sisters of the Wild Sage.

Ms. Kurtz is a strong voice encouraging diversity. Her publishing house mission statement is “We believe representation in speculative fiction (science fiction, horror, fantasy) is not only important, but a necessity. We publish engaging stories that amplify diverse experiences with vivid storytelling, robust protagonists, and fearless voices.”

And she and those she hires really do understand that engaging stories is core to creating representation of all women and people of color.

You want some good stories – from science fiction detectives to magical knights – check out her writings. If you want a cup of mocha steam or horror, look at her publishing house.

Nicole Givens Kurtz’s website is here: http://nicolegivenskurtz.net/

Mocha Memoirs Press website is here: https://mochamemoirspress.com/

Writing Exercise: Diverse Other

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Today’s writing exercise continues my present diversity kick.

Remember the definition for “The Other” in writing is – not you. If you are white, it means black or Hispanic. If you are cis-male, it means female or transgender. If you are straight, it means homosexual or bi-sexual. If you are able-bodied, it means dealing with depression or blindness. If human, it means aliens and elves.

“Writing The Other” is a hot panel topic at most writer conventions. Jim C. Hines writes about a panel he was on (click HERE). Biggest take away:

Most of the time though, when I hear “We’re not allowed to write _____ characters,” it’s an author talking.  Upon investigation, it usually turns out that nobody told our author friend that he or she wasn’t allowed to write these characters; instead, someone criticized him for doing it badly.

Well … yeah.  If you write flat, unrealistic, or just plain bad characters, you’re going to get called on that.  If all your women exist only to swoon and get naked for your hero (*cough* Heinlein *cough*), then people might complain.  They’re not saying you aren’t allowed to write women characters.  They’re saying please stop sucking at it.

Do you know the number one way to avoid sucking at writing The Other? Practice and review. Write and have The Other review it. Repeat until suck-age is less.

WRITING EXERCISE: Take one of your previous flashes and change the POV character to The Other. Adjust descriptions, dialogue, and behavior. Share with someone who matches The Other in your story. Ask them to specifically look at it for writing outside your comfort zone and LISTEN to their critique.

BONUS WRITING EXERCISE: Talk with The Other. Sit down with an Other – friend or co-worker – buy them food or a drink because this is going to take a little while. Talk to them for at least half an hour about they approach literature. And LISTEN. Limit yourself to questions only. Here are three to try, “What kind of books do you like reading?”; “What is your favorite author, fiction or non-fiction?”; “If you wanted me to know more about being (Other), what books you have read and liked would you recommend?”

Other Cool Blogs: i09 March 4, 2017

Erin Penn

Meme created by Erin Penn

Cultural appropriation is a bitch – a bitch to define and a bitch to have happen. One of the easiest versions to spot is Whitewashing, where a written work is converted to the screen (movie or TV) and the main character is replaced with a person of the dominant-economic-melanin levels for the culture. In normal words – when Hollywood takes a black, yellow, or red character and washes them with white big-ticket lead.

The spectrum of humanity should be seen in books AND on the screen. i09 website wrote an article about a “Powerful video shows why Ghost In The Shell whitewashing has real consequences.”

The video talked about in the article is below:

For the fifth Thursday of the month, I am going to review the 2017 portion of my blog for the Smurfette Principle, the Bechdel Test, plus the gender and melanin splits as promised during last year’s “Made Me Look“, “Fail (Part 1)“, and “Fail (Part 2)” blogs. The world is diverse, writing should be as well.

WATCHING EXERCISE: Go through you recent Netflix watched list, your DVD collection, or what is playing and/or coming out in movies – look at at least 30 of them. How many of the movies are whitewashed? How many star female characters with agency and how many have male leads? Are any characters non-binary? How many of the movies have characters which are not “you” (i.e., black, white, Asian, male, female, etc)? How many leads are non-white? (In a group of 30 movies, if going with America’s racial mix, 4.5 should be black, 1.5 should be Asian, and 4 should be immigrants.)

WRITING EXERCISE: Choose a movie to watch where the director made a conscious choice to avoid whitewashing the characters. Write a blog or a Facebook post reviewing the movie.

Word of mouth drives Hollywood, make a difference.

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ADDITION: Whitewashing can involve fictional covers. See “Sci-Fi Author Nnedi Okorafor Says Publishers Whitewashed Her Book Cover” (Huffpost by Maddie Crum, 3/14/2017)

Writing Exercise: Fighting Disability

Erin Penn

Last month the Writing Exercise touched on how fictional words can be used to inspire non-traditional people to enter the fields of science and engineering. This month’s challenge is in a similar vein.

I’ve often talked about the challenge of writing choreography (fighting and romantic scenes). To make them unique, instead of bogged down in “he punched him in the mouth” over and over again, it helps to make what is unique about a person and integrate the characteristic into the fight. Main character a chef, have a battle in the kitchen with knives and pans. Main character a sky diver, duke it out with winged creatures in the sky before hitting dirt. Main character has a different scarf every day of the month, tie someone up with them.

Many people look at disability as a limitation. Imagine a situation where the disability is an advantage instead of a limitation. Arm wrestle a one-armed man. Find a way through a dark dungeon with a blind woman. Deafness versus the thunder villain.

WRITING EXERCISE: Write a fight scene where a disabled person is the one fighting and rescuing everyone. Not the lone person staying behind because they have been shot in the leg, but where the hero survives and gets the girl/boy situation.

Geeking Science: Inspiration

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Nasa: Jeanette Epps

The most valuable commodity in the world is human intellect. We can’t dig it up, refine it, and put it on the market in a quick just-in-time product stream. Intellect, in all its forms, requires discovery, shaping, honing, and continued usage. Whether a person excels in spacial, verbal, social, political, mathematical, educational, technological, or musical aspects of understanding the world, each individual must be given a safe, welcoming environment to sharpen the intellect to its fullest. Doing otherwise is burning scare resources and delaying advancement.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) has been throwing away millions of IQ points a year with their neglect, nay, their criminal abuse of women, especially women of color. In a field where “nerdy geeks” rule, women have been kicked out of the treehouse. Half of humanity actively discouraged from participation, and people wonder why we don’t have flying cars and we aren’t living on Mars?

July 2017 released study created from interviewing 474 astronomers and planetary scientist revealed Doctorate level women scared to attend conferences or participate in field research. Let me repeat that – women our society has trained to be the best, invested over 20 years of education, because of PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE cannot attend intellectual exchanges or go to isolated locations with their co-workers because they fear for their physical and mental health. Really, WTF? (See “Women of Color Face a Staggering Amount of Harassment in Astronomy“)

Last year #MeToo had a month of buzz on Facebook and social media as woman after woman spoke about her personal experiences. I include some of my experiences along that line in “Blog: Made Me Look“. Shortly after the month of #MeToo, the celebrity circle suffered a “witch hunt” (as some called it) of improper sexual behavior accusations. Most women I know just blinked and muttered “about time.” The long-standing joke of “sleeping on the casting bed” had its covers pulled back.

Sexual harassment costs society brains, women who choose not to go into fields where only men live. Women cautiously refusing life in the military, avoiding writing because of backlash, staying home from conferences instead of sharing papers.

Maybe a part of your brain is whispering “good”, maybe another part of you has cancer which a woman who could have discovered a life-saving cure in your lifetime never entered the field after threats were made in her pre-med classes. 

Yes, someone is likely to figure it out. After all, science is just a study of the world and discovering how it works. Eventually a solution can be found. Depending on how many people are looking, “eventually” can be minutes or decades away. 

Pushing half the people out of the STEM treehouse is beyond stupid. 

A quick perspective of how making the scientific community hostile to women and people of color affect research: ORCID – A non-profit research organization with 1 million registered scientists is 33% women. The number of women in the organization would need to MORE THAN DOUBLE to achieve parity of gender.**

You can’t get those numbers overnight.

Not even in astronomy.

So how do we help those that can’t help themselves? Provide inspiration.

People emulate what they see in fiction. Having Uhura on the Enterprise bridge inspired hundreds, thousands of people – women and people of color.

Writers can provide a face for people to see in fields they never thought to try. Make people question how the world should work. Point them in a direction.

WRITING EXERCISE:  Write a STEM flash with a woman of color as a positive protagonist. Be sure she has the strongest agency in the story and not a front for a different member of the cast.

READING EXERCISE: Find a biography or autobiography of a woman or person of color who had been in space and read it.

Wikipedia has the following astronaut lists

Women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_astronauts (include US, Soviet, Chinese, Korea, Italy, India, and more)

African-American: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_astronauts

Asian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Asian_astronauts

Hispanics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hispanic_astronauts

And you can go here to find the Arab, Jewish, and Muslim lists as well as by country splits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_astronauts

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** Statistics calculation – 33 doubled is 66. Divide 66 by 100+33 (66/133) and you only got 49%.