killian

Anonymous said:

Do you have any advice for writing a Jewish character? Maybe a list of things to absolutely avoid doing?

Before I launch into the list of things to avoid, I want to say that the reason I love this blog so much is that they’re always responding to “how to write an X character” posts with “make sure they’re well-rounded outside of just that.” In other words, write a Jewish character so distinct that you could have two Jewish characters and they’d be different enough from each other that the reader could tell them apart.

I’m not saying you have to have two Jewish characters, just that if you have two Jewish lesbians in the same story, for example, then you can’t fall back on “Jewish” or “lesbian” as a way of defining the character and have to start building an actual personality. The book I’m writing now has three Jewish lesbians, plus a bisexual woman, and they have different interests, histories, outlooks, and roles in their world.

Read things by Jews. Try to stay away from anyone who seems to be too self-hating or “antisemisogynist”, i.e. that thing where Jewish men criticize Jewish women, which is dangerous because their intra-community misogyny gets picked up by the Gentile (non-Jewish) world and taken seriously because “oh, it’s their own people, so they must know.” No, it’s [some] men oppressing women, just as everywhere else.

Not all Jews are white or white-passing Ashkenazim. That’s something Gentiles often forget. So don’t think your Jewish characters have to look like me (or me with black hair.)

Some of us are atheists and still identify as Jews because of the way we often think of it as a tribe. Some of us feminize all the God nouns and verbs for feminist reasons. Some of us are very traditional and wear long skirts and sleeves. Some of us go to temple every week but have never, ever kept kosher (Hi. Nice to meet you.)

Here are all the stereotypes about us and, in a few cases, how I’d suggest getting around them if you find yourself written into a corner.

-Please don’t write us being either needlessly cheap (in other words, the character can afford to do X, but just doesn’t out of irrational stinginess) or cheap in a way that directly hurts others (in other words, not giving low-paid service employees a cost of living raise.) If for some reason your plot HAS to go there, it would help take away some of the anti-Semitic implications of rehashing these tropes if there are lots of other Jewish characters who aren’t acting like this or are acting in direct opposition to this. For example, if your greedy business owner won’t pay his employees above minimum wage, have the workers standing up to him and/or maybe a more generous owner from a competing business be Jewish as well. This is a character you would hurt us to write unless there are plenty of examples to the contrary showing that you don’t mean we’re all like this. This is the specific lie used to hurt us the most, in the past 150 years.

Note: broke college kids or struggling working-class people being cheap is different. Can you see why?

-Please don’t write us being the human version of the Volturi from Twilight. There is no secret Jewish conspiracy through which we control the media, banks, and politics. I used to joke that Jews don’t control the media because if we did, I’d have a book deal. I now have three book deals, so I need a new joke, but trust me, I’m in charge of nothing. Even my cat doesn’t obey me. She listens to my spouse, but not me. I think she thinks my spouse is the Mama Cat and I’m one of her littermates.

-Please don’t write a Jewish woman whose sexuality seems to be directly affected by the amount of money her partner is either making or buying her presents with. I’m not really sure there’s a way to fix this. It’s worse if she herself is already financially comfortable; I’m not really talking about a struggling single mom with three kids and a low-paid service job who’s turned on because a guy in an expensive suit offered to pay for her kid’s violin lessons. I’m talking about that caricature of a rich woman who’s used to good things that she didn’t earn herself, who requires more good things that she didn’t earn herself.

-Anything in which we are lizards or dragons is gonna have to be done delicately. I did it (spoiler, oops?) but that’s something that probably takes insider finesse. I mean, my dragon is definitely and unequivocally one of the good guys. A bad Jewish dragon would be playing into some of the most bizarre stereotypes I’ve ever encountered. (Google David Icke; I haven’t the stomach.)

-If you’re writing something with gore or fantasy violence, try to stay away from anything that evokes blood libel, the medieval myth that we use the blood of Christian kids to make ceremonial food. Vampires are also something that needs to be done with finesse because of the way “bloodsucking” can also be a metaphor for the stuff in the first bullet point, profiting financially off the hardship of others. (Side note: Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter frames the white slave-owners in the American South as literal vampires who fed on their human captives. I thought this was a BRILLIANT metaphor because, well, it’s practically not even a metaphor.)

Some other less spectacularly awful stereotypes that you’d be doing us a favor to stay away from: our men being wimpy mama’s boys, our women being frigid after marriage, our women being tremendous nags, any gender but especially women being exceptionally whiny, and reducing the entire religion and culture down to “not eating pork” and “having a different winter holiday.”

If you must write a weak-willed man who dotes on his mother and lets her boss him around, please write at least two other Jewish male characters who aren’t like this, so that he doesn’t wind up representing all our men. If you must write a Jewish woman with a low sex drive, please make it clear she’s asexual or demisexual or something – or having a medical issue – and write her as a fully realized character and recognize that men are never, EVER “owed” sex anyway.

Shark Collage!

I just remember having access to a bunch of magazines and finding so many sharks and I had to put them all in.