#iso sensitivity reader

(continued) They live in Sioux Falls, SD after moving from the Cheyenne River Rez years ago. The family owns a Catering company with Native, African, and American Southern food (Mom is from VA) that does Showcasings, Chef Demos, and feeding the people within both communities while mentoring the youth. Annie (Older sis) wants to be a Pastry Chef as Andrew (little bro) does mostly savory, especially BBQ. Annie was on a kid's baking show as Andrew won kid's BBQ competitions. Both siblings want to help their communities by spreading awareness about poverty, suicide, and other stuff. They are active in their Native heritage. I did research in Natives in Japan, and I found that it's a bit mixed. Some people don't know about Natives, or that they do but only through the news and old western films. There's this one guy who went to a tribe to learn about the culture and he went back to Japan to teach his students about how the Natives truly lived. There's a Native jewelry store in Tokyo So some Japanese do know about Natives, I want to write a few small scenes where the Japanese students ask questions that are stereotypical about Natives and Black people, but they learn from the siblings. Annie begins to have a crush on a boy who is mixed indigenous (Ainu/Saami), but isn't connected to those cultures, because of his Ainu dad dying and Saami mom leaving him. He was adopted by a rich Japanese/Danish family. I want him to learn more about his heritage after falling for Annie and begins to heal from his past through learning about the Saami. Before he didn't want to do anything with them due to his mom. Andrew falls for a Japanese girl who does Medicine Cuisine. He's a expert in Nutrition and tries to help his people's health issues. They have a cute relationship. I thought of these characters just like any other person. I'm Black and I don't like seeing stereotypes. Annie and Andrew love music due to their dad formerly being in a band with only one album. They're both crafty with the Arts due to their grandparents on both sides teaching them. Annie is more outgoing, goofy, and blunt than Andrew but she enjoys the simple stuff in life and loves fashion (Vintage 60s/70s and Punk) Andrew is more quiet and shy, but not antisocial. He just likes doing his own thing while teasing his sis on her shortness and crush. He likes comfy, Punk clothing. I was just wondering what is offensive and not. I want to show their food and aspects of culture, like Powwows (I've been watching videos on Lakota Powwows) and I've been wondering if there's a coming of age ceremony. I don't want to show it just mention it. Is this where people get their Lakota name? I don't want to do religious ceremonies since that's sacred and also I'm not really religious, but what if I want to allude about it? Sorry that this was way too long!

Okay, this is a huge question but I’ll do my best to answer it with the GIANT caveat that I’m not indigenous and am only answering to the best of my knowledge. If any indigenous followers--particularly those with experience in Japan/with Japanese culture, though of course all are welcome--have thoughts or feelings, as always feel free to add more information and/or correct me!

A few observations that jump out, based on your description of your narrative framework:

Their food. Okay, while I know absolutely nothing about the food cultures you describe, I’m a huge fan of connecting with your culture through your food (and your stomach!) so I love this framing. That being said, to my knowledge African American food is fairly distinct from African food, with the former more likely to be in their cultural background given your description (obviously, in this situation you’re the expert on Black culture so feel free to totally ignore me here). 

Andrew’s food interests. Related to the previous bullet point, based on my understanding Medicine Cuisine and Nutrition would be super interesting focuses for him given his cultural background. It’d be super cool to seem him integrate his various cooking specialties and heritages into nourishing food to support his people. 

Knowledge about Native Americans in Japan. I do think it’s likely accurate that unless someone in Japan has personally done research, the average Japanese citizen probably knows very little about indigenous Native Americans in the same way the average American knows very little about Japanese indigenous ethnic groups. 

Relatedly, I think it makes sense for their Japanese classmates to ask stereotypical questions, but you should steer clear of just plain offensive questions. As you likely know, answering stereotypical questions about your identity and heritage is exhausting and should be treated as such within the narrative. Your characters are in school to educate themselves, not to educate their classmates, so while the latter may occur sometimes I don’t think it should be their focus. So while the intent of the questioning scene may partially be to help answer readers’ questions about Annie and Andrew’s heritage (and Black and Lakota culture to an extent), remember that the ultimate goal of representation is not to educate others but to help people within those demographics see themselves on the page. And more likely than not, Black and Lakota readers won’t want to see characters representing themselves having to answer the same repetitive questions they face down all the time.

I know you only mentioned him in passing, but I have a lot more thoughts specifically about Annie’s mixed Ainu/Saami crush. I don’t want to tell you *not* to write him but I do think there are several pitfalls you need to carefully avoid moving forward.

His Saami mother. There’s a big stereotype around POC abandoning their children, being absent or flighty parents, or otherwise just failing to properly nuture their children. While I’m unaware of any specific stereotype regarding indigenous  parents, I would tentatively say that doesn’t mean those stereotypes don’t exist, so tread carefully. That being said, I do know there’s a stereotype about indigenous people being alcoholics, so you should absolutely avoid characterizing his mother as such because as an outsider, you don’t have the power to subvert that stereotype. 

His relationship with his heritage. I would also be very cautious while writing his arc of reconnecting to his heritage. While reconnecting is unfortunately a very real (and very under represented) process for indigenous people, it’s an extremely difficult and personal process that I don’t think outsiders are qualified to write in-depth about. Though I don’t think you should necessarily gloss over his reconnecting process, I do think it should perhaps be a side character arc, rather than his defining character arc. For example, he might mention to Annie that her passion for her heritage has inspired him to research his own family, or else maybe he’s pictured buying a book on the Saami language. (The current discussion around Rick Riordan’s portrayal of Piper’s imperfect reconnection to her Cherokee heritage makes some really good points, so I’d check that out if you’re familiar with his books. I’d be happy to link you if you’re curious.)

His adopted family. I have to admit--as the daughter of a transracial adoptee in a family full of transracial adoptees, this framing makes me very wary. While I know transracial adoption parents likely have only the best intentions, the adopted child themselves often end up hugely disconnected from their birth cultures. It’s often an extremely stressful and traumatic event, especially in cases where the adopted parents don’t learn about their child’s birth culture themselves and/or only teach the child their own cultures (in this case, Japanese and Dutch). Honestly, with all due respect, I have yet to see any fictional narratives that properly address the trauma of transracial adoptions and given everything else going on in your writing, I’m not sure how well you would be able to write about it. More in the next bullet point.

His extremely mixed heritage. While I don’t want to come across as rude, I do have to ask: what’s your intention behind making a single side character with four different cultural backgrounds, especially backgrounds that you the author don’t share? The reality is that, no matter how much research you may do, these four cultures--Ainu, Saami, Japanese, and Dutch--are very rarely found in combination, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find any #ownvoices accounts from similar scenarios that you could hypothetically draw on to write more accurately. As a result, you’d know very little about how these different cultures meld together, and you’d have almost nothing to go on to write about his mixed multicultural background and the tensions that come with it. While I understand you may be attached to his parental setup and his backstory, I would highly advise simplification to avoid straying into territory you neither understand or are qualified to write about. Given your focus on his reconnecting, I would probably recommend keeping his Ainu father alive and cutting his adopted family. That way, you cut the number of unknown cultures in half and you can truly dedicate yourself to writing his Ainu heritage and his reconnecting process well.

With regards to your actual question about Lakota religious ceremonies, as a non-indigenous person I’m definitely not qualified to answer specifics about Lakota coming of age and naming ceremonies. That being said, I know this: Native American ceremonies, rituals, traditions, and lore are often closely guarded and not shared with outsiders. And I don’t just mean outsiders don’t share in the ceremonies themselves--outsiders often can’t even learn about the ceremonies because the knowledge itself is guarded. (This information is secondhand from my Blackfoot professor last year. If I’m wrong or if any indigenous followers have more accurate information, as always I’m open to critiques and suggestions!) As you continue researching this, I’d definitely be mindful of the source; if it comes from an official Lakota or indigenous source, it’s likely okay to share or discuss, but if all you can find about Lakota religious ceremonies is from, like, someone’s blog or Facebook post or something, then that information likely wasn’t approved to share and you shouldn’t write it into your story. Given that this seems to only be a character detail mentioned briefly, you may be able to simply mention the characters’ Lakota names in passing without referencing the ceremony itself.

Sorry for the long response, and I hope at least some of this information helps!

I’ve mentioned this before but--please, please try to be specific when describing your narrative setup because otherwise the answer will simply be I don’t know (to some extent the answer will always be “I don’t know,” but more so if there simply isn’t enough information to make some kind of judgment call). Instead of simply saying “I have an [insert identity] character who [insert reason you suspect they might be offensive] ,” please try being more descriptive. Tell me about this character, your world building, your cast of other characters, why you suspect offensive content, what other research into this you’ve done, etc. If you’re comfortable, don’t ask anonymously so I can get an understanding of who you are, where you’re coming from, what research you’ve already done, and what you’ve already written about your project (if you’ve written about it on your blog).

Once again, do NOT just describe your character/setup in one line and say “I don’t want to offend anyone please tell me if this is offensive.” I do NOT want to be your first research stop, because in the end that often means I do the research for you wrapped up in a nice post and you take that as the end of the discussion. I want to look and what you’ve done, what you’ve written, what you’ve researched and I want to add my knowledge to the fray.

My answer still might be “I don’t know,” even after you’ve added all that extra work, but I’m more willing to work through it together if I know you’re willing to go to lengths to ensure you write accurate and respectful portrayals. At the very least, we both learn in the process.

This absolutely falls under the “nowhere near enough information” ask category. If you’ve read some of my previous responses to asks, you know that I talk a lot about never knowing enough information to definitively declare something racist or not. There’s just never enough information to make that kind of judgement call. That remains especially true here.

While you’ve provided the bare essentials here--some characters’ skin colors and their family backgrounds--I know nothing about the plot, the genre, the themes, the time period, the issues tackled in the book, etc. I also don’t know if you have lived experiences pertaining to what you brought up in your ask--whether you’re black, raised in a single-parent household, raised lower middle class, raised with divorced parents, etc. so I don’t know what position you’re approaching this from. 

Just reading through this ask, here’s an incomplete list of clarifying questions that’re either unclear to me based on this ask and/or questions to ask yourself before moving forward:

When you say “this black character,” does that indicate that she’s a side character? If so, is she acting as a Black best friend/Black supporting role for a white or light-skinned character?

Are you playing into the “absent Black dad” stereotypes? Unless you yourself are Black, if your narrative for this character even as much as hints that her dad is deadbeat, then you need to cut the storyline and start over because that’s firmly rooted in stereotypes. 

Similarly, do you hype up the “superstrong Black mother” stereotype and idolize your character’s mother for “doing it all” to “make up for” her lack of father? If so and you’re not black, I’d once again advise cutting it.

In regards to theme and societal criticism, where are you going with this? With so many characters from low income backgrounds, is there going to be a discussion of financial insecurity and how that affects your (presumably) teenaged characters? Is there going to be mention of class inequality, wealth hoarding, healthcare access, savings, etc? You don’t have to mention all of these, but proceeding without incorporating some of them into your narrative is suspicious.

Especially when it comes to your low income Black woman, do you discuss redlining, generational wealth, predatory loans, etc. that’ve all contributed to the dramatic racial wealth gap? Or do you simply describe a comparatively poor Black family without interrogating the societal dynamics that put them there?

If other characters come from wealth, are you willing to explore that power dynamic and the complicated emotions that come with it?

Do you have “characters with lighter skin” or white characters? If the former, are you willing to explore the role of colorism in socioeconomic dynamics? And if your light skinned characters are nonblack, will you tackle the implicit antiblackness there as well? Alternatively, if by “lighter skin” you mean white, why aren’t you willing to call white characters white? And how does their whiteness play into the racial and economic relationship with your Black female character as well?

This is a perfect example of an incredibly vague ISO Sensitivity Reader ask where there’s nothing blatantly wrong with the basic premise but there’s also not enough information to truly assess whether the framework is racist or stereotypical.

Let’s look at some different possibilities with the help of TV Tropes.

Have these higher magical beings used their superior powers to take over and/or control the world? Because in that case, you have narrative magical aliens who look like a historically oppressed group become the oppressors in a fantasy version of the Persecution Flip trope. This has really unfortunate implications of darker-skinned people using whatever power they have to oppress the rest of the world as soon as they have the ability to do so.

Alternatively, does one or more of these higher magical beings serve as your protagonist’s guide or mentor? In that case, you may have stumbled into the Magical Negro trope, where your mystical dark-skinned characters essentially serve as character development stepping stones for your protagonist(s). 

Do you have more than one dark-skinned magical character in your cast of protagonists? Do they make mistakes and have their own character arcs, despite being from a so-called “higher” group of beings? Is this a moralistic story where your higher beings suddenly discover the horror of racism through personal experience among normal humans?

(Also, it’s worth noting that if your magical demographic took human forms from earlier humans, they would be black. Not just “darker-skinned” but truly, properly black. Maintaining racial ambiguity disregards solid history that the first humans were black, while also falling into the oft-profitable Ambiguously Brown trope.)

As someone who’s also not Muslim, I’d take this advice cautiously, but based on my understanding your premise doesn’t sound any immediate alarms. In most religions, there’s a wide variety in how people choose to practice their faith and to what degree; some Christians may attend mass religiously (hah) while others only attend during holidays, and some Jews may wear kippahs at all times while others wear them exclusively during synagogue. In the latter case, the choice to wear a kippah can vary between individuals’ varying interpretations of Jewish laws. In my understanding, wearing a hijab can likewise vary according to different interpretations.

That being said, I think you should be cautious when approaching the topic of a Muslim girl struggling with her faith. As an outsider, it’s important to not fall on Islamaphobic tropes or stereotypes as she wrestles with her understanding of Islam. For example, I think you should probably avoid framing Islam as an inherently misogynistic religion; the choice between adhering to her family’s religion or breaking from it shouldn’t be framed as a choice between freedom and oppression as a woman. I don’t think her character arc in relation to her faith is inherently offensive, but I do think you need to tread carefully because as an outsider you don’t have the ability to subvert Islamophobic tropes.

While it sounds like you’ve already done some research, I’d look into lots of personal essays, memoirs, blogs, etc. of Muslim people who have wrestled with their faith. Their personal accounts will likely have infinitely more insight.

Also, if you were following along with my “different types of asks” post, this is a good example of an “ISO Sensitivity Reader” question. The question in itself is really well-intentioned and while nothing in this premise screams offensive, ultimately that final call comes down to both the writing itself and Muslim people’s interpretation.

Hello dear followers!

I recently read the first book of Seanan McGuire’s “Wayward Children” series and enjoyed it! However, I did have some questions/doubts about the in-narrative portrayal of a trans male character. I don’t want to spoil anything so I won’t say more, though you probably know what I’m talking about if you’ve read it. Since I’m not trans, I know that my perspective on trans rep is extremely limited, so I was wondering if any of our trans followers have read the book and if so, would be willing to share their thoughts on the aforementioned character. If you’re comfortable, I’d love to ask you a few questions about your experience with the book and possibly even pick your mind on other examples of trans rep in fantasy. Your answers would be included in my review, with proper attribution to you if you’re comfortable not being anonymous.