Publishers Weekly
07/15/2024
Novelist Temblador (Half Outlaw), who identifies as mixed Latine, delivers a valuable handbook explaining how authors can responsibly write characters whose abilities, class, gender, race, or sexuality differ from their own. Offering candid reflections on her own struggles to create respectful representation, Temblador recounts completely revising a Vietnamese character’s dialogue after deciding the character’s fragmented English was offensive. Rather than indicating an accent through phonetic spellings of dialogue, Temblador suggests it’s usually better to just “label the accent for your readers” (e.g., “Her accent pointed to South London”). Drawing lessons from problematic works of fiction, Temblador emphasizes the importance of fleshing out each character and criticizes Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for describing African people as an undifferentiated, “beastly” mass. Throughout, Temblador urges writers to read as many books as possible by authors from the background they wish to portray and to “build authentic relationships” with those communities. An extensive list of problematic genre tropes will help writers spot insensitivities in their work (she suggests, for instance, that monocultural alien races in sci-fi reflect the failure of white colonizers to recognize the diversity within other racial communities), and Temblador’s reckoning with her own blind spots sets an example for probing one’s biases without defensiveness or ego. This thoughtful guide brings clarity to a fraught topic. Agent: Mary Moore, Kimberley Cameron & Assoc. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
"This thoughtful guide brings clarity to a fraught topic." - Publishers Weekly
"Alex Temblador provides a concrete and detailed guide to the issues of misrepresentation, appropriation and stereotypes in creative writing. She asks difficult questions of writers who would wish to create characters with identities different from their own and she demonstrates not just how challenging this task can be but what is required to even approach this task with intelligence, sensitivity, knowledge and self-interrogation. In the end Temblador interrogates not just issues of craft but the biases we all carry that we may be unaware of. An essential text." — David Mura, A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing
"Alex Temblador breaks new ground in Writing an Identity Not Your Own, guiding writers to craft characters from historically marginalized backgrounds with sensitivity and depth—a seminal guide to responsible and enriching creative writing that is both timely and timeless. Every writer who aspires to write great fiction should have this book on their shelf. It's an instant classic in the new canon of essential craft books." -Blake Kimzey, Founder & Executive Director of WritingWorkshops.com
"At once accessible and forthright, Alex Temblador's WRITING AN IDENTITY NOT YOUR OWN is a helpful companion for writers. With friendliness and care, Temblador offers writer-to-writer conversations about the complexities of identity in cultural production. This book is reaching for an ever more thoughtful approach to literary representation—as writers grapple with their own and their characters' identities, positionalities, and relations of power." - Janelle Adsit, author of Toward an Inclusive Creative Writing; Co-Author, Writing Intersectional Identities
