Race in Gay Fiction
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When you are reading a book, in your mind how to you portray the characters if no race is supplied?
Do you think of them as your race?
Do you go by the book cover?
Do you not assign a race?One item as an editor that I look out for is assigning a character a race. If it is not pertinent to the story referencing a characters race is stricken from the book as it is bad forum to refer to one character by their race and not refer to all the other characters by their race. You will find this often with ever race but Caucasians. You will find authors referring to Blacks as black or African Americans, Asians as Asians… But not Caucasians as Caucasians. My views as an editor is that when an author refers to a characters race in such a fashion and it is not pertinent to the story it is showing racism, prejudice, bias, ignorance.
What are your thoughts on the subject?
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I agree with you.
And for your question I think that according to what I feel I assign him a race
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Interesting question! I have never thought about this really, until now. By default, unless I am reading something from a writer that usually focuses on characters from his race, e.g. E. Lynn Harris, I usually assume that the characters I am reading about are Caucasian. I guess I still subscribe to the belief that writer's write about that which they know, and I don't see too many gay themed writers jumping around writing literature about races other than their own.
I agree though, if race is not a key element to the story, it is better to make the story universal and remove as much race defining material as possible.
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Priest as an editor do you think that homosexuality in fiction is a hard sell ?
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I feel that if the story is well written and appeals to the audience then having homosexuality in the story is a non-issue. Now, I am not talking about erotica fiction, but mainstream. It is always the story that is told that is important.
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it varies a lot for me; i bet that most of the time, sadly enough, i go for caucasian by default if nothing is written - but sometimes a character might be described as having blue eyes and light brown hair or whatever and just because, when the character was introduced, i pictured them as let's say arabian or something, then that idea i had before the character's features were described basically sticks with me.
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