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A Sheltered Upbringing
I grew up in a typical Southern California community with all-white neighborhoods and schools and churches and shops and…pretty much everything. I didn’t think much about our lily whiteness in a multi-colored world; that was just the way it was in our little corner of the globe. My dad, however, worked with a few Mexican Americans. He was friendly in his dealings with them but, in private, he clearly believed whites to be superior. His attitude was common among adult Anglo men and women throughout the region. People like my dad were not mean, blatantly prejudiced individuals. In fact, I loved and respected my dad immeasurably, as I cherish his memory today. But he was quietly, perhaps unknowingly bigoted, and believed “the Mexicans” should stay where they belonged…away from us…separate but unequal.
It didn’t matter whether an individual’s or family’s heritage was actually Mexican. They could be Salvadoran or Costa Rican, Chilean or Peruvian. All Latin Americans were considered “Mexicans” in the eyes of Anglos who controlled the region. That seemed to be true for every white household and predominantly white community throughout the Southland. Broader, more inclusive terms, such as Latino and Hispanic, came later. All brown-skinned people were considered inferior foreigners, and Anglos didn’t want them around…even though Native Americans and Hispanics began settling the region hundreds of years before whites came on the scene.
The Illusion Shatters
My first exposure to “Mexicans” and blatant ethnic prejudice was in middle school. On a warm afternoon, as my school bus slowly passed a Latino student walking home to “his section” of town, probably half of the male students on the bus rushed to the right side of the vehicle to jeer the young Hispanic teen. He had done nothing to provoke them, yet they yelled and cursed at him, spat at him, and called him “Beaner”, a common offensive term that referred to his assumed cultural diet of frijoles. Personally, I was aghast and embarrassed and angry. I had never witnessed such a cruel outburst. I knew the boy slightly from class. We weren’t friends per se, but I liked him. He was a nice guy. I was sad that white kids—kids essentially like me—could be so cruel because a person looked different or struggled with English or followed cultural patterns that were unfamiliar to us. Little did I know that similar incidents and far worse went on every day throughout the Los Angeles and Southern California region. But I was about to learn. Fortunately, I also learned to detest racism. To this day, there is nothing more loathsome to me than a person who hates another individual or group simply because of the color of their skin, or the way they speak, or the clothes they wear.
There’s a paragraph early in my novel, Days of Light/Días de Luz, the end of which characterizes my personal regard for nations, races, ethnicities, cultures, and people in general. In the third chapter, Eric Martin, speaking of how he and his wife, Rosa Martinez-Martin, intended to raise their two, ethnically mixed children, says this:
Regardless of their talents and interests, we were teaching them to be proud of their mixed ethnic heritage and culture, and to respect people of all races. Individuals could be bad, but no group of people, mixed or pure, was superior to another. The Lord God made them all.
I didn’t intend this fragment to be a capsulized treatise on racial prejudice; I was simply telling the Martin family’s story. However, unbeknownst to me until now, the snippet may actually be the subconscious reason why I wrote the novel in the first place. And it may also define the reason why—in the fictional genre of crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers—frequent cross-cultural references have become crucial to creating and maintaining a solid sense of authenticity. In the past, a Caucasian-based cast of characters (which was common) could satisfy an Anglo reader’s flawed sense of reality. But that was then and this is now. More importantly, that was an illusion and this is genuine. A predominantly white story world is no longer representative of most communities and the world at large.
A Colorful Mosaic
Like it or not, the world is filled with people of different colors and ethnicities and cultures. I believe that is by design, but whatever you consider the source of our global mosaic, that’s the way it is. And the colorful, multi-shaped tiles are not as separated as they used to be. Not nearly so. To me, that’s a good thing…a wonderful thing.
As authors, here’s what we must take from this new and constantly changing reality: our writing must reflect today’s blended ethnic and cultural realities. Otherwise, even though your story is fiction, it won’t feel real to your readers, and you will lose them. You are writing a plausible, convincing story that could actually happen just as you describe it. You are not fabricating a fantasy. And if the purpose of your novel is, in part, to educate or open readers’ eyes, your insights must be based on the genuine, tangible world around us.
How can you a accomplish this? Here are a few suggestions:
- Do your research. As authors, we are advised to write what we know. That is excellent advice so far as it goes, but you certainly will need to delve into subjects, cultures, locations, etc. that you know little or nothing about. Today, search engines such as Google, Bing, and others make research so much easier than in times past.
- Don’t ignore “old fashioned” research methods. Read books and articles that address your subject; ask people about their experiences; conduct interviews with knowledgeable professionals. If helpful or necessary, visit locations that appear in your book.
- Read novels by the best mystery and suspense writers, from the earliest (about 150 years ago) to today. Watch movies and TV mysteries that relate to your subject.
- Watch and listen to current events in the media. Keep track of crime stories in the news. Take notes on how mixed ethnic and cross-cultural details are dealt with and comment on whether you believe they were handled well or poorly. Consider how you might handle a similar situation if you were writing a book.
- Stay in tune with your characters. Make sure they act as you have designed them. Sometimes, if you know a character well enough, they will guide you in the progression of your story even when you are stumped.
- Be aware of your surroundings. There is a whole ethnically diverse, culturally mixed world happening around you every day. From a heated exchange at work, to a table occupied by suspicious characters at a restaurant, to a neighbor’s complaint about a family on your street, pay rapt attention. Imagine how you can weave those common experiences into a meaningful, attention-grabbing incident in your novel.
For your current book and all your mystery/suspense thrillers to follow, may your writing excel and your stories, though fiction, reflect reality. You will be rewarded.
