REPRESENTATION OF MARGINALIZED POPULATIONS

When writing characters from marginalized populations, writers with privilege can inadvertently perpetuate assumptions and biases. 

There’s a lot to know about this subject, and I’m far from an authority on it, so consider this a call to fellow writers with privilege to keep learning. There are plenty of internet resources devoted to this. I’m knee-deep in publishing tasks with the hurdle of neurodivergent- and disability-related task paralysis, but when things calm down, I hope to share my own list of resources I’ve relied on. Listen and learn from the people in our lives. And read, read, read books written by marginalized authors whose characters are written from the author’s own lived experience. I’ve compiled a list below of authors to read and support. I haven’t yet read them all, but I plan to. Tell me what you think!

There’s a complexity of issues related to a person of privilege writing characters from marginalized populations whose identities the author doesn’t share. In my universe 300 years in the future, race and ethnicity have changed a lot. But we writers and readers still bring the biases underpinning our current societal conditioning. My primary main character can be read as BIPOC*-adjacent, and the secondary main character, white-adjacent. The decision to write a BIPOC protagonist, instead of a white protagonist within an ethnically diverse universe, was an intentional one. Either way, as a white author, each was going to be problematic, for different reasons. But if I didn’t choose, I couldn’t write the book. So I took the leap.

I’m always open to feedback on my work, both what I’m getting right, and how I can improve.

Happy reading, y’all.

*BIPOC: Black, Indigenous, and People of Color

Neon Yang - Nonbinary and Singaporean

Ryka Aoki - Transwoman and Japanese American

Sarah Pinsker - White, Jewish and Queer

Malka Older - Latina, Jewish and Queer

Simon Jimenez - Filipino-American and Gay

Jadzia Axelrod - White Transwoman

Charlie Jane Anders - White Transwoman

Micaiah Johnson - Biracial and queer

Tehlor Kay Mejia - Latinx and nonbinary

Zoe Hana Mikuta - Korean and queer

Aliette de Bodard - Vietnamese-French-American and queer

Emma Mieko Candon - Japanese-American and queer

Jes and Cin Wibowo - Indonesian and queer

Rebecca Fraimow - queer and Jewish, White

Andrea Hairston - Black American and queer

Brenda Peynado - Dominican American and queer

Kosoko Jackson - Black American and queer

Makana Yamamoto - Indigenous Hawaiian, Japanese, and nonbinary

Kaliane Bradley - Khmer-British

Amal El-Mohtar - Canadian and Lebanese

Multiple authors - There is a Rio Grande in Heaven, a collection of short sci-fi stories from a Latine lens