My lip has an ouchie split place, and I think the blame can be placed entirely on opening my mouth wide enough for huge floofy bites of the kielbasa-and-greens salad, which I’ve been eating day after day as if the fields will run out of greens.
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I’m reading a book in which a new character was described right away as African-American. We’d met many characters already, and none of them had been described in corresponding terms. That is, we had not met “Liz, a short Caucasian girl of mixed European descent” and “Anne, a plump Japanese-American girl.” Just this one character, who was “Marissa, a tall and beautiful African-American girl.”
I am not usually particularly sensitive to these things, I don’t think: when someone else points them out I am immediately on-board, but often they go right past me without catching my attention. Well, unless they are blatant like in the 1960s Shocking Interracial Romance book my mother-in-law once lent me because it was her FAVORITE BOOK OF ALL TIME (ick alert: she gave her children the same names as the two hot-romance main characters), where the author couldn’t mention the guy without using adjectives to describe his skin color.
But here’s a riddle I couldn’t solve, as an example of my usual lack of noticing: What is wrong with the sentence “He was in love with his neighbor’s wife”? Take yer time. (The answer is that unless his neighbor’s wife lives elsewhere, SHE IS ALSO HIS NEIGHBOR. He is in love WITH HIS NEIGHBOR. The sentence as written implies that the man of the couple is the only real neighbor.) [Edited to add: After all the comments about commandments/adultery connotations, I should add that the original puzzle was “He murdered his neighbor’s wife.” I changed it to be less gruesome, but perhaps I should have changed it to “He respected his neighbor’s wife” or something.]
But anyway, this one caught my attention and bothered me, but maybe it is because I felt like I needed to pee at the time. And also, I started this section with “I’m reading a book…” but actually I’m not reading it anymore, because it was making me feel hopeless and weary with all its cutting social critique that didn’t suggest any alternatives/solutions to what it was cuttingly criticizing.
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I dreamed last night that my mother-in-law was alive (although I would say it like this: “ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVVVVVVVVE!!!”) and visiting us and making arch remarks about things she thought I should take action on. I woke up feeling tired and headachy and full of suppressed impotent rage—but then relieved and grateful all over again. I really am very, very, very lucky to have been spared the path where she lived into her late 90s like her mother did, and I think of it often. And I’m using it as a reminder to try VERY HARD not to be a person whose death makes other people feel relieved and grateful and lucky, but if I keep being so irritable WE’LL SEE.
It’s stories like these that make me think you MUST be making up your MIL. Because COME ON, she was crazy and nitpicky and socially inappropriate AND her favorite book was a 1960s shocking interracial romance AND she named her kids after the main characters? COME ON!
I mean, I DO believe you, but she just sounds like too much crazy for one person!
Maybe “in love with his neighbor’s wife” is an allusion to the last commandment, which says that “you” are not to covet “your neighbor’s wife”?
I always wonder how to explain characters’ race without making it sound like a dossier. I also make an effort not to cast every new character as White until I have more information, but I still find myself taken by surprise sometimes.
— Mairzy.
The racial part of this post reminded me of The Baby-Sitters Club book series, because each book took a whole chapter to describe all five/seven/if there were more than that I’d stopped reading by then characters in great detail. And one of the girls was African-American and another was Japanese-American. And I still remember all the characters’ names while I can’t remember how to make hummus – which I’ve made four dozen times – without a recipe.
Anyway, I would like to point out my favorite part of this post, because I LOVE IT when you do that on my posts:
– I’ve been eating day after day as if the fields will run out of greens.
– But here’s a riddle I couldn’t solve, as an example of my usual lack of noticing:
– this one caught my attention and bothered me, but maybe it is because I felt like I needed to pee at the time.
– I started this section with “I’m reading a book…” but actually I’m not reading it anymore,
– it was making me feel hopeless and weary with all its cutting social critique that didn’t suggest any alternatives/solutions to what it was cuttingly criticizing.
– I’m using it as a reminder to try VERY HARD not to be a person whose death makes other people feel relieved and grateful and lucky, but if I keep being so irritable WE’LL SEE.
Perhaps I should have just copied and pasted the whole post.
I find it so amazing how people don’t understand that qualifying SOME people by their race and not other people (and it’s always the people of color who are qualified, as though Caucasian is some sort of Default Race) is really not OK. As an editor, I am constantly pointing this out and fixing it, and I am stunned by how many people try to argue with me about it or go ahead and reject the edit outright. Like EVEN WHEN IT IS POINTED OUT TO THEM, they STILL do not care. VERY STRANGE.
Superjules- I KNOW. After I read the book, I said to her, “Huh, that’s weird, the characters in the book have the same names as your kids,” and she said yeah, that was an odd coincidence. But HOW COULD SHE NOT HAVE THOUGHT OF IT, IF THAT WAS HER FAVORITE BOOK OF ALL TIME?
DUDE! I seriously GASPED when I read the sentence about your m-i-l dream. You know why? Because that would be JUST LIKE HER!!!! She’d totally do a soap opera-eque reappearance like that. AUUUUGGGGGHHHHHH.
*Deep breath*
Like Jess said–“as though Caucasian is some sort of Default Race”–that’s exactly the point, right? People use descriptors when something is different to them. Like in Pride and Prejudice, one of the characters is described as “clean-shaven.” Because everyone else in the day usually wore beards. (I was a legal writing teacher in a former life, one of my lectures was “beware of the assumptions you are making about what other people think.”) People who use racial descriptors are assuming that the norm is Caucasian. (That’s not RIGHT, but its generally why you see that sort of description.)
Was it Five Smooth Stones??
So I’m pretty much dying to know the titles of both books (the one your MIL loved and the one you just stopped reading). I don’t suppose you’d consider posting the titles in pig latin?
I’d say working on making sure that I’m not the kind of person whose passing would warrant relief in our family and friends is a great goal for me. Seems important and yet, hopefully, attainable.
Here’s a thought. Maybe the author used “neighbor’s wife” because “neighbor” is gender-neutral, and the author didn’t want anyone to get confused and think that the character was in love with a man.
You have just picked out the one thing that will make me THROW a book–pointing out one person’s race and not another’s. WHY IS WHITE THE DEFAULT RACE? If we’re going by numbers, shouldn’t…i don’t know, ANYTHING EXCEPT WHITE be the default? AAAAARGH. As someone who is NOT THE DEFAULT RACE, this is particularly irksome. Did people know that non-whites read TOO? Oh no, I’m practically foaming at the mouth now. I’ll stop.
Jess, I’m so glad that you’re fighting the good editorial fight on this! I can (grudgingly) understand why a white writer who has mostly white acquaintances can, on their first draft, only describe that which stands out to them as different and ignore white characters’ race. But it’s SO easy to catch that and incorporate less clunky descriptors into your narrative on subsequent rewrites.
(One cheesey, but effective way, is to describe 2 of hair/eyes/skin/other descriptor for ALL characters, so it’s not jarring to the reader when all of a sudden – hey! race! Actually talking about how the characters’ races & ethnicities *impact* their lives or relationships makes for a better story IMO, though it’s a less quick fix & requires a dedication on the author’s behalf that many seem to lack.)
Could this book be the reason that your MIL broke tradition and didn’t name her son the name that had been handed down from previous generations?? Must’ve been some book!
One of my best classes in high school english concerned the white-default in literature. It was eye opening, and I always notice that it is the default assumption that characters are white unless described otherwise.
Sometimes I almost find it worse when a book, instead of saying this character was suchandsuch race, describes the character with eye and hair and other physical traits that are supposed to lead you to knowing that a character is a certain race, but never saying what that race is, and only doing that for the non-white races. It is like the book is thinking, ah, I’ll be clever and not describe all races other than white, so it describes all physical aspects of characters to lead you to the same conclusions.
Maybe also I should not be putting words in a book’s mouth after a large lovely glass of wine.
I definitely would not be brave enough to post about my dead MIL–she may come back to haunt you YIKES. :) Ok so I’m a chicken.
Maybe they were trying to make it clear he was heterosexual lol?
Jess – I believe that Neil Gaiman did the opposite to the ‘white is default so I’ll identify non-white characters’ in Anansi Boys, because the majority of characters were of African/Caribbean origin, so when a white character showed up, she was identified as white, while black characters were not identified as black.
Re: the neighbour’s wife thing, I took a class this semester on Language and Gender, and one of the seminars was devoted to examining the ways that men and women are described in the media. Have you noticed how women are referred to by appearance or relationships? Eg, slim blonde, mother of five, etc. Men tend to be referred to by their job or age or some other fact about them, but their family is rarely invoked unless they’re trying to Make A Point, and their appearance is almost never mentioned.
I think “neighbor’s wife” rather than “neighbor” is more dramatic due to the adultery implications. If you say “He was in love with his neighbor” hmm, kind of like big deal. Ho hum. So what? But when you say “He was in love with his neighbor’s wife” then ooooooh. Adultery. Cheating. Clandestine.
Maybe one should say “he was in love with his married neighbor”? However, still not as dramatic as “neighbor’s wife” due to the commandment and all.
I should mention that the original riddle was “He murdered his neighbor’s wife,” but I changed it because MUST so many riddles be gruesome? So the adultery/commandment thing is my fault. Should have left it gruesome!
Oh, I am constantly terrified of being the grouchy evil person who dies and then everyone says WHEEEEE!
Ug, ug, ug. This is one of my worst fears.
I am DYING laughing at your comment that your MIL acted like it was “an odd coincidence” that her children had the same names as the characters in her favorite, scuzzy book. As if her own kids’ names TOOK HER BY SURPRISE.
I kind of miss the MIL stories, because they were just SO OVER THE TOP.
Okay, I don’t have time to read the other comments (sad face) but here is a thought on the neighbor’s wife thing…
Just saying he is in love with his neighbor doesn’t sound scandalous enough. She could be single. His neighbor’s wife give more information. I did see when I was scrolling down that Mairzy also hit my second thought – the biblical aspect / parallelism with 10 commandments.
lifeofadoctorswife- Hey, that IS fun!
Okay, I think I’d better change the post about the neighbor’s wife thing!
Ger and Clueless But Hopeful- I don’t remember my MIL’s favorite anymore, but the other one is…oh, hey, it’s hard to pig-latinize. It’s ooTheoo ooUncouplingoo, minus the bracketing o’s.
The last sentence of your post made me laugh and left me in a good mood.
I love your MIL stories.
Anyone have any ideas of the best way to deal with racial descriptions of characters? Because I write stories, and I have not figured this out yet. I totally agree with you that the “white isn’t a race, it’s the default” is a big, big problem, and I don’t want to perpetuate it. But, as one of the commenters above said, describing someone’s characteristics feels overly clever and self-conscious or something. And, as a reader, I don’t like when my visual of a character is revealed to be radically off several chapters in, so I do want to give them a clue right off the bat. Is there a good way to do this that I haven’t thought of? Or is it one of those “no good options” situations?
The descriptor that drives me nuts is how car accidents are described in the news. They seem to feel the need to specifically mention when it was a woman driving.
I laughed out loud at the last line too!
Sorry about your lip – mine will occasionally split right at the corners and I HATE that. Hope your lips are intact soon. :-)
I MUST KNOW what her favorite book was!
How the heck do I Google this?
the mere mention of this MIL makes me want to read everything else you’ve ever written about her because i once narrowly escaped having a MIL like this. i was engaged and when my fiance’s mother found out, she flew from a different continent, locked herself in her son’s bathroom and refused to eat or drink until he broke up with me. I hope also not to be this kind of woman, as I know many people would rejoice my death.
I just love you. ‘Just found your blog tonight. The “WE’LL SEE” keeps making me laugh. :)