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

Yeah. Note to self - the romance trade is NOT for me.

[the-willow.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

I'm glad other people commented. I took one look at the scenario you laid out and had to remind myself who you were. I've been seriously bitter lately.


Just...

My reaction when I finally read the comments and saw you wanted a brown skinned woman to run around killing white folk was that you MUST be telling a supernatural ghost story cause that is one dead negress.

Then all this too was coming on the heels (some two weeks) of my being linked to information about just why it is quite a few of those towns in the mid/west don't even have one black family living there. Because they took up arms to chase the black families off, shooting, burning, threatening and then annexed the land for themselves.

I can't imagine a scenario where a black woman kills a white man, and manages to be successfully harboured by a white man. Cause the few and far between white families that spoke up against that sort of stuff? They got run out too.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/banished/
http://soulphoto.net/index.php/Main/comments/banished_american_ethnic_cleaning/

I'm also glad as heck someone's pointed out to you that a -red- woman murdering and killing would get shot as soon as looked at. And I have to admit to some 'WTF is going on in her head!?!' that that didn't occur to you at all.

I know the West gets romanticized a lot. But man... when I think of you I think of a writer who does research. Is this us doing some homework for you? Or you just testing out if your mind was just clearly not seeing straight up and down facts?

Yeah.. see, I waited and waited thinking I'd be calmer and now I'm finding I'm not as calm in choosing my words as I want to be.

If all you want is a woman who's scorned and looked down upon doing a seeming man's job in a man's world in the west - you could just as easily have her be the known child of a whore, or the child of perhaps some white family that was made so broke by the bank that they had to go live in the wild off the land like 'Indians' *attempts not to gag*

If you want to attempt to explore an individual who has that many ethnicities mixing up in their history - try someone from the Caribbean or South America. No, for real. You'll find Spanish/Venezualeans, East Indians, Lebanese, Syrians, Chinese, African Descendeds, Amerindians and Whites on the island of my birth alone. And those whites were French, English and Spanish.

In other countries of the tropics and below the equator there'll be Amerindians, Whites (Germans, Dutch, Spanish, French, English), African Descendeds, Chinese, East Indians & more.

Then again, that wouldn't have your gun slinger romance, would it. And it likely wouldn't have your white men rescuing the WoC with his love. And yes I say rescuing, cause you call her bitter, and then having him tending to her and the hurt/comfort trope of that is soul rescuing, or rescuing from emotional despair and bitterness.

Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman was a show not reality and a prime-time, network show at that.

Quick Secondary Comment

[the-willow.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

If you want to write about an amber eyed mixed race female assassin, scorned by her family who's called back to take care of some business and is nursed to health unexpectedly by the Western Town's prerequsite loner widow/bacherlor etc...

Why does it have to be the OLD WEST?

I'd think the current democratic race and commentary shows plainly that racism is NOT dead in these 'modern' times.

If you wanted to show a character with long reaching roots in the area (Great Granpappy was a runaway slave, Great Granmammy was result of a rich white man raping his mexican cook - but they survived and their children) who comes home to kill - why is that not an acceptable story?

Heck least that way the bachelor doesn't have to be lily-white and if he's a widow, then his prior wife doesn't have to be lily-white either.

Maybe you saw Thandie cause she's of modern times.

But this is just me trying for a comment that's not quite full of 'from hell's depths I stab at thee'.

Re: Quick Secondary Comment

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

This is me, reading too much "THe Ballad of Jake the Snake and the Rock and Roll Kid."

I had an idea of an old west where gunpowder was never invented. And an image of a woman who looked a specific way riding into town out of the sunset, her broadsword on her back. (it turned into a conventional western when I couldn't pull off the world-building in my head)

I value all the input. Better a negative reaction when we have 1000 words of Matt Court trying to settle in a new town than hair-tearing and shouting later when it's published.

I know white/Mative American marriages happened in the era. My great-great grandmother was in one. That was probably where the problem of my hyper-creativity started. I got to playing with my family history and extrapolating.

Basically, at this point we're going with the "nobody knows anything about her, including that she's female" thing.

I do my research, but Time-Life's The Old West series is a product of its times, and very sketchy on some things. Thanks.

Re:

[the-willow.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

I'm... a little confused. You can't manage the world building for an old west without gunpowder but you can or thought you could manage world building to write in a PoC point of view?

Also, seriously? You need to watch some Anime. I highly suggest Claymore. Because Swordslinger in Western Seeming Town is all over Japanese animation.

As for the Time Life Western Series - You are so lucky I can't reach through the internet and thump you friendly like at the back of your head. Calling it 'a product of it's times' is being genteel and docile.

Please please please don't encourage me to start comparing you to LKH, she of NO research at all. I expect her not to figure out black history would not be contained within those pages. Black history / Native History as opposed to White History's brushes with Other. Of course if LKH tried writing about a WoC and actually cracked open a resource book, I'd be a hell of kinder to her in order to encourage the crawl back to sanity.

You remember not even a month ago the shit that stirred with Cassie Edward's plagiarism and cultural appropriation, right? And now the brown and smelly hitting the swiftly rotating over Ms. Peggy Seltzer 'I wanna be a half native ganster' - yes?

Now is not the time to start falling down in the area of thoughtful awareness.

Re:

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Does it help on the Time Life books if I say I have them for the pictures, many of which are primary source material for the period?

This is at the noodling/research planning phase.

We've weighed all the options. And i think we're writing the Robin Hood piece instead.

Re:

[the-willow.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Does it help on the Time Life books if I say I have them for the pictures, many of which are primary source material for the period?

Actually, that helps some, yes.

I'm truly sorry if I seem harsh. But I'm not at a place to be writing right now and so I really look to the writers I know who're working steadily to be, DECENT and AWARE and using their opportunity to have a voice heard.

Re:

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

(They're also my inheritance from my late grandfather)


I can take a hint. Or, you know, a direct clue-by-four. 8)

When EVERYONE I know--friends, respected writers--is saying "This is a bad idea," it's time to step back from it and say "Bad idea."