Creating Real Culture: Joseph Odindo
By LMReviews on Jan 17, 2009 in Multicultural Writing, Uncategorized, Writing/Freelancing
photo courtesy Paolo Livorno
Creating believable multicultural characters involves more than just making
appropriate appearance changes to the character in the story to mimic society’s view of a given race or ethnic origin of people. To create a balanced and authentic character, writers should incorporate the richness of the chosen ethnic background.
In the post Multicultural Identities II, I mentioned Joseph Odindo, a leading journalist for Nation Media Group in Kenya. Aside from learning about Kenya through Joseph Odindo’s writing, a fiction writer can learn a great deal about the customary characteristics of Kenya’a people through the review of Joseph Odindo’s blog or other writings. Taking the time to dig past the professional persona of someone who represents a different ethnic origin gives the multicultural characters we create real life—giving readers someone they can learn from and view as a tangible person just by following your character in your writing.
