Who else is thinking about race in fiction AND has battled evil garden invaders?

The answer is.... Justine Larbalestier* (psst, that asterisk means "see memorial footnote below")! On her blog this week, she has a great post about handling race (and racism) in her current project. Also if you dig around her site, you'll find this post where she mentions her warfare against basil-eating slugs. Why the heck am I talking about her battle against slugs? It's about solidarity... In light of my current offensive against a whitefly infestation, I need a sister in arms.

That solidarity carries over to writing, too, since we're both dealing with how to write about race and racism in the 1930s, although J.L.'s work is set in early 1930s in NYC and my novel #3 is set in East Texas at the end of the 30s. In her post, J.L. points out that "a distinction has to be made between depicting the racism of a particular time and being complicit with that racism." I'm not so worried about that problem as I am about another one that J.L. mentions: the danger of turning all white people into villains. She writes,

Some of my characters are white. Most have the racial attitudes of their time. If I depict them accurately they can only be read as villains by contemporary readers. But if I depict them as thinking and acting like a twenty-first century liberal white USian then I create a very unrealistic depiction of the time and place. Which makes me wonder why bother writing an historical?

I get to sidestep this a little since the color spectrum I'm working with is fuller; my protag is Mexican-American, her twin (half-) siblings are mixed, and her love interest is black. Because the East Texas town of the time didn't have three-fold segregation like regions with heavier Hispanic populations (a bit more about that here), Naomi and her sibs manage to slip into the white school, giving me a lot of situations where I need to deal with particular patterns of racism.

J.L. also points out that even those sympathetic to the situation of black individuals could be hideously patronizing in the 1930s, and I agree. I have some of those folks in my book. But I also think that there are wise souls in every time who think a bit outside of the paradigms of their world. This needn't be a protag or even a main character (indeed, let's avoid having a white character "rescue" people of color), but the presence of such an individual can help readers recognize that the author isn't trying to vilify white folks.

Like J.L., I have been struggling with the question of what to do about the N-word in my novel. I'm mildly obsessed with a feeling of authenticity in dialogue. Dialogue shouldn't be a facsimile of reality (boring!), but it should gesture convincingly toward it.

This is why The Knife and the Butterfly contains a number of words--and sentiments, especially about women--that aren't at all an expression of who I am. They're part of who the protag (a teen male) is at that moment, and I need them so that I can show how his experience deconstructs that bravado (at least partially).

So where does that leave me with the N-word in novel #3? I would never dream of inserting it with anything close to the frequency with which I am sure it was uttered in 1937 East Texas, but to omit it completely seems wrong, too, although as one commenter pointed out, we can generally count on readers to fill in at least some of the trappings of racism on their own.

Right now I am using the N-word in the mouths of a few characters in their most extreme states. (I did the same thing with the F-word in The Knife and the Butterfly and managed, by the end of writing, to cut down the frequency pretty dramatically.) I will have to decide later if the N-word needs to come out altogether. I'm not sure, though, that in a book that deals with lynching (as mine does at one point) that it's right to excise it. After all, this was a time when some white people still attended lynchings as if they were picnics, keeping photos as souvenirs or to send as postcards.

For now, I'll just keep writing. And following the discussion on J.L.'s post here.

*It's possible (ahem, probable) that I have a professional crush on Justine Larbalestier. Not that I want to be·her--or to have her particular challenges when it comes to getting publishers to behave properly (I mean that whole white-washing thing with Liar). But I do admire her bold stance on various issues and her adventurousness·as a writer (check out this challenge list of genres and subgenres she wants to hit at least once). I also love her use of footnotes on her blog. This footnote is a tribute to all that awesomeness. And like the mention of slugs, this footnote has nothing to do with what today's post is about.

You know about the segregation of black school children in the Jim Crow era, but do you know how it affected the Mexican American community?

For my third novel, I have done a lot of research about the experiences of Mexican Americans in schools in the 1930s. In reading about the logistics of segregating Mexican-American students in Texas, what stunned me most was that most kids were essential forced out of school by sixth grade. Enormously overcrowded classrooms  in the "Mexican" schools made learning difficult, putting the students further behind their white peers with each year.

On top of that, the school districts in Texas often divided each elementary grade into two years (for example, "lower first," "upper first") in "Mexican" schools. The result was that--by middle school--Hispanic students were often told they were "too old" for the grade they should have been able to join in the (white) middle school.

In Houston in the 30s, only a handful of Mexican-Americans (usually lighter skinned) graduated from high school at all despite a significant Hispanic population in the area. They faced discrimination in white schools, and there was no "Mexican" public high school as an option.

I also discovered that, unlike African-Americans, whose teachers--also African-American--were usually committed to helping students use education to combat their circumstances, Mexican-American children were almost invariably taught by white teachers, some of whom found theirs an "undesirable" placement and were quick to underestimate the abilities of their students.

None of this is at the center of novel #3, but an unfavorable educational situation in San Antonio acts as one of the catalysts for a key relocation. Some of these details will, I hope, find their place in the plot, though. Because the three-fold school segregation in Texas--and its powerful, negative legacy for our communities--needs to be acknowledged.

Something that I'm working on in novel #3 is keeping various lines in the plot going at the same time while also creating meaningful connections between these lines. In music, this is called counterpoint. (Disclaimer, y'all: I'm no musician. In fact, my elementary school music teacher took me aside before a school concert and gently suggested, "You just mouth the words, honey." The only reason I know such a thing as counterpoint exists is that I had many musically gifted friends some 12 years ago when I was a student at Simon's Rock.)

A quick skim of the Wikipedia article on counterpoint confirms that it is, precisely, what I'd like to accomplish with my current plotting efforts:

In its most general aspect, counterpoint involves the writing of musical lines that sound very different and move independently from each other but sound harmonious when played simultaneously... In the words of John Rahn:

It is hard to write a beautiful song. It is harder to write several individually beautiful songs that, when sung simultaneously, sound as a more beautiful polyphonic whole. The internal structures that create each of the voices separately must contribute to the emergent structure of the polyphony, which in turn must reinforce and comment on the structures of the individual voices. 

The separation of harmony and counterpoint is not absolute. It is impossible to write simultaneous lines without producing harmony, and impossible to write harmony without linear activity. The composer who chooses to ignore one aspect in favour of the other still must face the fact that the listener cannot simply turn off harmonic or linear hearing at will; thus the composer risks creating annoying distractions unintentionally. Bach's counterpoint—often considered the most profound synthesis of the two dimensions ever achieved—is extremely rich harmonically and always clearly directed tonally, while the individual lines remain fascinating.

So, from now on: my new mantra is, "Bach it." I'm betting I'm not alone in my aspirations. All right, y'all, go Bach it now.

I have a problem: one of the main characters of my new novel-in-progress is shy, quiet, tongue-tied. She's also passionate, secretly sensual, and fiercely dedicated to what she cares about. But how do I get her to speak? What does it mean for narration when a character is quiet? Do I write in the third person? Or would that be like saying that, because she's shy, Naomi can't speak for herself?

You'd think I'd know what to do with Naomi since I am, myself, rather shy. It's something that few people realize because I tend to project a bubbly personality--probably an overcompensation. Teaching, too, has helped me to be able to turn "on" even when I'd rather go hide behind a filing cabinet. But as this website all about shyness (and famous people who were shy) says, "Shyness is not who we are, but something we feel while we do the things we do."

Okay, so Naomi doesn't = shyness. But I believe she is--unlike me--the kind of shy person that other people recognize as shy. For the boy who'll fall in love with her, that shyness is part of her mystique.

But what does the inner voice of a shy person sound like? If, for example, Naomi has trouble finding the words she needs to speak, does she nevertheless feel very strongly--inside--what she wants to say? How can I capture this contrast?

For my own confessions about overcoming shyness in the classroom, check out this post.

To ring in 2012, I offer you this scene: a Paris Metro car full of people on their way home, their facial expressions ranging from impatient to bored. In the middle of us all, a woman with her amplifier strapped to a dolly, sings into a microphone that lets us hear her loud and clear (whether we want to or not) as she croons "Sway" with a very thick French accent.

At first, I found it a bit annoying to have my eardrums accosted by accordionists, singers, and other performers on the Metro when all I wanted was to get home from work and see my boys. But then I began to really pay attention to these performers. Some clearly were doing it just for the money--the handful of change they shamed or pressured travelers into giving them before they finally stepped off the train and went to inflict auditory torture on someone else.  The instrument they carried was basically just an accessory to their panhandling efforts.

Other buskers were different--well dressed and apparently indifferent to whether or not they received donations.  I have a theory (perhaps totally bogus) that these performers see the Metro as a kind of endless open-mike opportunity. They have a captive audience, after all.

But for my shy self, the proportions of their courage boggle the mind. A captive audience, yes, but a very cranky audience determined not to be moved by their music. Is it the challenge that appeals? And has a Metro crowd ever burst out into applause? I'd love to know.

While I have sometimes wanted to pay the Metro performers money to please, please STOP playing, our little boy Liam is a huge fan of all music, no matter how bad. He'll sway to an out-of-tune accordion, elevator music, or even a cellphone ringtone. So I guess--when he's with us--the buskers can count on at least one appreciative member in their captive audience.

And maybe, with enough courage, one real listener is enough to make it worthwhile. That's what I'm trying to remember this new year, knee-deep as I am in scary, rough-drafting for novel #3.