Mixed race character in a historical

[valarltd]

We were bitten by the heterosexual Historical bunny.
So "Yellowstone River Blues" is in the works.

Basically, imagine a middle-aged Erroll Flynn falling for a slightly-less middle-aged Thandie Newton.

The problem is, Paz appeared as profoundly mixed in my head.

Her father is the son of a runaway slave and his Apache wife.
Her mother is the result of a wealthy Texas landholder's liaison with his Mexican cook.
Her parents were burned out and murdered by ranchers/US military who were trying to open the land to white settlers.

Is this too complicated? Is it too Mary-Sue or fanfictiony?


Also, what period appropriate term would she use for her grandfather?
I'm thinking Negro was the polite term in that era.

Would you, as a reader, hurl a book across the room if a sympathetic character referred to her ancestry in such terms?
(unsympathetic characters will have less polite terms)


And if anyone can point me to a website featuring prices in the 1890s, it'd be much appreciated.

Comments

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I wanted her light enough to pass for Native American. (The only reason the black made it in is because in my head, she's Thandie. The only reason the white got in is I needed her eyes to be a very pale brown)

Doesn't matter. An Indian killing whites is just as bad--especially since the Apaches had an ongoing war with the whites during this period. The bottom line is that if you have a dark-skinned minority killing whites in the Old West, you're going to have a fair number of white people killing blacks, Mexicans or Indians in revenge, because they'd operate on the theory that the minority would inevitably know who and where the killer was. If they didn't know, they'd be presumed to be lying, and they'd be killed.

So Paz would cause a LOT of problems.

The whole town is scandalized when Matt treats her with the same respect he treated the banker's daughter.

*sighs* No. The racial divide would be stronger than that. It wouldn't a question of treating an odd cross-dressing woman as well as the banker's daughter. First, if she's living as a man, EVERYONE would have to believe that she IS a man, for her own safety; a woman who ran around and assassinated people would surely be considered insane, because women did not do things like that. Most of the women gunslingers were quite homely and often badly scarred. They could pass as men with ease. Often they married or lived with other women, and claimed the other women's children as their own.

And second, this is nineteenth-century America. There is racism, and a LOT of it. A dark-skinned male would in no way be as good as a white lady. And "lady" didn't just mean woman--the banker's daughter would be, automatically, of a higher social class because of her color as well as her father's money.

The local folks shouldn't be horrified that Matt is taking Paz in if she's living as a man. Logically, they'd believe that she IS a man.

Marrying her means he ends up loses the whole spread he built with his own two hands,and they both end up moving on. The only reason they're able to marry is the parson really likes Matt.

No, marrying her means that he's breaking the law, because marriage between blacks and whites--and by law, she's all black because she's part-black--is illegal. The laws forbidding racially mixed marriages in America didn't end until the Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia (1967) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia).

So it doesn't matter if the parson likes Matt or not. She's the wrong race in the wrong place and time. Legally, they cannot marry. And if they try to marry, or if Paz passes herself off as white so that they can marry...they'd be thrown out of town at least. Possibly arrested. Possibly lynched. Like I said, they're living in a racist society.

The thing is, you do have material here for a tragic romance set in the Old West--a love that, because of the attitudes of the people in that time and place, couldn't be. But I don't think that's the kind of story you're looking for.