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In multicultural writing, we often get hung up on skin color, race, sexual orientation and religion. Inherent and physical characteristics are not the only elements of multicultural writing. I’ve briefly discussed gender in a cultural context and plan to address it again, but multiculturalism also includes the cultural groups formed within the work place.

Because we now pound the virtual pavement as another option to seeking employment it is not uncommon to come across resumes in cyberspace. In the Multicultural Identities: Naming Characters post, I talked about selecting names readers can identify with and realistic professions. Not everyone wants to be rock stars, basketball players or lawyers. Take Tim Arel, who started off in law school and changed career roads to land in property management.

Aside from a professional profile page, Tim Arel provides a link to his resume. Writers can develop an authentic professional background for their characters from the review of online resumes. A character with an interest in law, like Tim Arel will look at the world differently and take a different path toward their ideal job than someone who worked toward being a songwriter in the entertainment industry. He will also exist within a professional culture that is different than others. It will have its own language and code of conduct.

Thinking about the professional path our characters might take to get to the point in which you are writing about them can increase their depth and authenticity.

The Immigrant Ship

There is no one way to incorporate multicultural characters into your stories. Writers can introduce multicultural characters where they live whether that is in America or their ethnic place of origin.  Some of the most interesting multicultural stories focus on immigrants and their journey to a new land.

For example, in the blog post Details in Writing III, I mentioned Amos Tamam’s innovative contributions to the taxi industry as something important to note when writing about popular modes of transportation in New York.  However, no individual lacks a variety of personal angles. Consider all the personal facets when crafting unique multicultural characters. An intriguing story surely exists in Amos Tamam’s journey from Tel Aviv to New York City in the 1980’s. Heading the team that created the first credit card taxi meter in 1992, many fiction or nonfiction stories can be woven from what Amos Tamam accomplished in those dozen years.

As writers it can be challenging enough to create a cast of characters who are unique and representative of the varied world in which we live. Step beyond the crayon box of hues to enliven the depths of multicultural characters with the inclusion of unique challenges and accomplishments.

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.

Often in the arena of multicultural writing, the topics tend to only exhibit the broadest terms or characters a mixed audience can understand. For example, I was nine years old when I moved to Arizona with my father. My parents were splitting up and my father wanted to venture out West from New Jersey. Arizona sounded new and exciting to me and being a daddy’s girl, of course I wanted to go. It was the early to mid-1980’s and many of our New Jersey relatives were not impressed. My father had to combat such comments as inquiries as:

·        You’re taking a girl away from her mother to a land of horses roaming the streets and bouncing tumbleweeds?

·        What’s out there in Arizona?

·        Where’s Arizona?

·        Are there any black people in Arizona? (Still find it hard to answer this one sometimes! LOL)

Needless to say, my father had his work cut out for him. The same is true for the development of multicultural characters in fiction. We can take the easy way out and rely on stereotypes or caricatures of a culture or ethnic origin—be it the good, the bad or a mixture. But I hope to expand my writing beyond this. How many people didn’t realize there were white Africans? Or that not all Nigerians are scam artists? As a multicultural writer, it is my responsibility to reflect all the positive representations of a culture. Sure, I’ll point out flaws, but there are enough people doing that already.

While I write about many cultures, In terms of African/African American culture, I hope that my writing will blossom to include not only positive African Americans, but positive Africans as well. Exploring representatives of a culture that is familiar yet dissimilar is challenging, however, the Internet can bust clichés and barriers as well. Take for instance, Nigerian businessman Mohammed Babangida. Many images come to mind at just the sound of his name and the simple reference to his ethnic origin; however, Mohammed Babangida was schooled in Switzerland and attended Harvard Business School. His professional accomplishments include board directorships and executive chairs in the real estate, banking, gas and oil industries.

When taking on the task of creating multicultural characters, personas like Mohammed Babangida represent how important it is to embrace the limitless possibilities multiculturalism provides.

In talking to the visitors at my book signing, it made me think of something else. I thought it was odd that one of them had to ask if my book was multicultural. The reason being that she didn’t think my heroine was black enough and obviously my hero from the cover was Caucasian. I already discussed the narrow perception of ethnic appearance, but it also brings up another question. Certainly, if you see my book on the book shelf you have no idea that I am an African American woman. My name doesn’t give it away either. But since there’s no mistaking my cultural make-up when you look at me it seemed odd that the cultural make-up of my book wasn’t obvious.

I don’t know every African American author who has ever published a fiction novel, but I venture to guess that nearly every author black or otherwise tends to write a character that mirrors them or who they know. That being said, it would seem really odd for an African American writer to never write a book with African American characters or a Caucasian author to never write a book with Caucasian characters. But Caucasians don’t feel the need to discuss the ethnicity of their characters unless it plays a role in the events of the story. They don’t have to. If the author writes that the character had blond hair and blue eyes or brown hair, we know what the character’s complexion is. Ethnic writers have to make the differentiation because there is a growing multicultural audience that wants to read stories about people like them. I read the stories about the ethnic majority, and while we appreciate those stories there’s nothing like reading about someone we can close relate to because they know our culturally-specific struggles and obstacles. As a strong proponent of multiculturalism, I really love to see writers of one ethnic group incorporating accurate portrayals of other cultures in their stories.  The stories we write should show an actual representation the different kinds of people we encounter given the time period of the story.