Not your Man Friday.

Question:

Why the hell don’t more non-Caucasian American authors write science fiction and fantasy?

Seriously, I would love to know this. I love my sci-fi and fantasy authors regardless of their skin color, upbringing, what the hell ever, but as I look around the blogosphere, various social networks, writers’ conventions, I find myself in a distinct minority (no pun intended) of toasty-brown people among the significantly pigment-deprived. While I alone could easily represent at least four different ethnic demographics, I want to know:

Why don’t we write?

Legends such as Murakami aside, authors of diverse ethnicity seem confined to nonfiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, and ethnic romance. Those are all perfectly valid genres, and there are some amazing writers from all over the rainbow on those shelves (and atrocities such as Fifty Cent sitting next to them, with those notoriously godawful G-Unit books). But why the lack of interest in sci-fi and fantasy? Why does there seem a racial predilection to shy away from escapism into other worlds of fantastic magic and technology?

I can’t help but wonder if it’s because we can’t find anyone to identify with in the realms of speculative fiction. Let’s face it, 99% of the protagonists we read are white. They may be engaging, witty, wonderful characters with a sympathetic perspective, but they are, in fact, very white. Who are we in the novels? We’re the Man Friday, Gal Friday, the Tonto to the Lone Ranger. We’re the sidekick, the exotic love interest, the stereotype with a freaky made-up name and habits that seem at once barbaric and mystical. We’re the Magic Negro…and frankly, there’s nothing there for us to relate to. With nothing to identify with, we’re less likely to read speculative fiction, less likely to come to love it, and less likely to write it.

It’s a problem not just with what we’re reading, but with the readers themselves.

Being a bit of an ethnic pastiche myself, I have little trouble putting aside the skin color of the protagonist, forgetting their upbringing, and just enjoying their experiences. I wasn’t raised in any particular ethnic lifestyle, but rather in many cultures and in a middle-class suburban white neighborhood. I, for the most part, had a white kid’s upbringing with some influence from my varying ethnicities and more influence from the kids at school who didn’t know which box to put me in and so shut me out of all of them. I don’t see color, generally – but I’m well aware that others do. I’m aware that sometimes (but not always) white readers will feel disconnected from an ethnic protagonist. And I’m aware that ethnic readers will feel that same disconnect from white protagonists (again, sometimes but not always), especially if there’s a clear difference in lifestyle caused by differences in race. We’re often unwilling to embrace those differences, because they make the protagonist deeply alien to what’s familiar and comfortable to us.

It’s an unfortunate reality, but people of different ethnicities are raised in different environments and subcultures. Many of those subcultures preserve a rich history of beautiful traditions, but they also serve to isolate us by removing us from any sense of common experience. Yet sometimes the unique experiences of one’s subculture can bridge all cultures to tell a unifying tale of common, heartfelt emotion…which we should be doing that with science fiction and fantasy. It’s rather sad that in worlds where we cross lines of magic, technology, reality, unreality…we rarely cross lines of race to tell stories where people of all color and culture can take on significant roles and true, unique depth rather than simple token appearances as a typecast side character. Racial lines are blurring in our everyday lives. The things that divide us are changing, fading away…so why can’t that be reflected in popular fiction?

Maybe if more authors of diverse races and cultures delved into science fiction and fantasy, it might. Some people criticize white writers for the roles they give ethnic characters in their stories, but why should we put it on them to do it? They’re writing what’s in their comfort zone, and telling the best story they can from a perspective they understand, which is how they create believable, empathetic characters. Maybe we should do the same. With any luck we’d be able to open a window into our world, and help foster even more cross-cultural understanding while telling one hell of a story.

So if you’re out there, if you’re reading…what are you writing?