Grumpy about a character

[valarltd]

So...
We were noodling last night and I had a brainwave: Why not an Urban Fantasy story?

It has to be het, so we decided to do something different with an Urban Fantasy (is it still UF if it takes place in the woods? we spend a lot of time in the city too). Why not make our heroine black? There is a dearth of Characters of Color, or so I hear. 8/

Why not indeed?
Except that she has no features that are definingly black. And adding them would turn her from a vague notion to a stereotype.

So what I have:
Single female, age mid 20s, pretty. Lives in a tiny apartment, works in a sisyphian office.
Bored and lonely, she goes on a camping vacation and things get wacky

There is nothing in there except her physical description that makes her black.
All I hear in my head is Harlan Ellison deriding the TV show "Julia" (about a black nurse) as "Julie Andrews in Mantan."

The thing is, we are all basically alike, if we're past a certain age: we work, shop, eat, pay bills, do housework. We amuse ourselves, sleep and get up to do it all over again.

Any help here would be hot.
Maybe she should be a member of the National African American RV Association? Or her parents were, hence why she likes camping?

Comments

[trobadora]

There is nothing in there except her physical description that makes her black.

There's nothing in there that makes her any other ethnicity either, though. So it all depends on how you flesh out her background. There's absolutely no need to default to white.

[ravenskye8.livejournal.com]

I once read a story where for the first third of the book I had figured the main female character was white - until there was a point in the story that another character was looking at her, and her skin color was described as "chocolate"... and I was like "oh! She's black!" and had to redraw my mental image of her...

You can be subtle with it - because you're right, unless you're going to make her a stereotype or African or Jamaican (some cultural marker that makes her most likely to be black) - people are very generic... So - if you want to make her black - just write it in where it fits...

[hlglne.livejournal.com]

Her hair is going to frizz. The straightener is going to wear off and the roots are gonna get all full of twigs znd junk and mat together along her scalp. I know this from cultivating dreads. Her smooth office chignon will be ruined.

How's that? mwuahaha.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

We considered making her just a little bit radical and letting her wear a natural or braids (no weave).

My bigger worry on the hair is that if she gets too absorbed in her new lover, she might forget to oil it. Then it will get brittle and unmanageable.