shouting from the void

Before you say, Write your own! – let me tell you that we do. But this page is a resource for writers, so we thought writers might want to know what kinds of representation would make us more likely to get excited about your book. We don’t speak for everyone in our demographic, just ourselves, but we hope this post gives you some cool writing ideas.

Note: This is additional info writers can keep in mind when writing characters of those backgrounds. We believe it’s a good thing to ask the people you’re including what they’d like to see.

Actually hearing from misrepresented and underrepresented people and asking us what we’d like to see of ourselves is much better than unthinkingly tossing characters into tired tropes or reinforcing stereotypes that do us harm.

Colette (Black): More Black people doing stuff! Going on adventures, riding dragons, being magical! More Black characters in prominent roles in fantasy + sci-fi and historical settings and not always and only as slavess. These stories are important, but they’re NOT our only stories. We were kings and queens too. Let us wear the fancy dresses for a change instead of the chains, damn it! More Black girls being portrayed as lovely and treasured and worth protecting. More Black girls finding love. More Black girls in general who aren’t relegated to arc-less, cliche “Sassy best friends” and “strong black women.” More positive, dynamic roles of Black men (fathers, brothers, boys…) More positive, dynamic family roles of Black families as a whole, families that are loving and supportive and there. More Black people from all socioeconomic classes. More Black characters that don’t rely on the stereotypes that the media is currently going full force to reinforce.

Yasmin (Arab, Turkish): More Arabs who aren’t token characters. I want to see Arabs normalised in literature. Arab teenagers in high school, Arab young adults behind on their taxes, Arab dads who cook amazing food, Arab moms who refuse to soften their tongue for others. Arabs who aren’t mystical fantasy creatures from another planet. Arabs in YAs and in dramas and nonfiction and comedies and children’s books. We are human just like everyone else, and I’d like to see that reflected in literature. Often we are boxed into very specific genres of literature and made to feel ostracised from the rest. Let’s see some change!

Alice (Black, biracial): I’m hoping for more Black and biracial (mixed with Black) leading characters in all genres, but mainly in SF/F who fall outside of the stereotypes. Characters I can relate to who love, cry and fight for their ideals and dreams. It would be great if their race would play an active role in their identities (I don’t mean plot-related). Some intersectionality with sexuality and disability is also sorely missed, without it becoming a tragedy or it being seen as a character flaw. More mixed race characters who aren’t mixed with some kind of monster, fictional race or different species. Dystopias about problems usually faced by poc having actual poc protags, without all the racial ambiguity which always gets whitewashed. 

Shira (Jewish): More Jewish characters who feel positively about their Judaism and don’t carry it around as a burden or embarrassment. While the latter is definitely a real part of our experience due to anti-Semitism and all we’ve been through as a people, the fact that it overrepresents us in fiction is also due to anti-Semitism, even internalized. (Basically, Jews who don’t hate Judaism!)

More brave, heroic characters who are openly Jewish instead of being inspired by the Jewish experience and created by Jews (like Superman) or played by Jews (Captain Kirk) but still not actually Jewish. I’m tired of always being Tolkien’s Dwarves; I’d like a chance to play Bard, Bilbo, or even Gandalf’s role in that kind of story.

Elaney (Mexican): While we’re discussing what sort of representation we’d like to see, I am using the word “latinista” and I want to quickly address that since you may have not seen it before: “-ista” is a genderless suffix denoting someone is from an area (“Nortista”, a northerner), or who practices a belief (“Calvinista”, a calvinist), or a professsion (you’ve heard ‘barista’).  I find it more intuitively pronounceable than “latinx” and also more friendly to Spanish, French, and Portugueze pronunciation (and thus more appropriate), personally, so I invite you to consider it as an alternative.  If you don’t like it, well, at least I showed you. 1. I want legal Latinista immigrants. The darker your skin is down here, the more likely you are to be assumed to be illegal by your peers, and I want media to dilute this assumption so many have of us. 2. I want Latinistas who are well educated, not just smart, and I mean formally educated, with college degrees, professional skillsets, and trained expertise.  Being in fields which do not require a formal degree is no less legitimate of a lifestyle than being in a field which requires a PhD, but I want you to consider when casting your Latinista character that We, as a people, are assumed to be little more than the drop-out and the janitor by our peers, and People Of Color in scientific fields are mistaken as assistant staff rather than the scientists that they are.  I want media to dilute this assumption.  

3. I want Latnistas who are not marketed as “Latin American” but as their actual country of origin, because “Latin America” is a conglomerate of individual entities with their own, distinct cultures and if you are, for example, Cuban, then Mexican characters may appeal to you but they don’t have the same relatability as fellow Cuban characters. Wouldn’t you be a little more interested, too, to pick up a book that’s about a character who lives where you do rather than about a character who lives somewhere in general?

4. I want rich or well-to-do Latinistas.  Looking back, I notice that several of the character concepts that have been bounced off of us with regards to Latinista characters incorporate poverty despite an astronomical and diligent work ethic. I don’t think this is on purpose but I do think that it is internalized because so often the stereotype of us is poor and uneducated in a vicious cycle (uneducated because we’re poor, poor because we’re uneducated) and I think that there should be more media to dilute this.  

Lastly, I personally do not want these tropes to be explored and subverted by people, I want them to be avoided entirely because I feel that normalizing positive representation rather than commenting on negative representation is far more beneficial and validating to the people these works are supposed to help and represent. We don’t need sympathy, we need empathy! 

Jess (Chinese, Taiwanese): Stories that don’t center around the identity of being Chinese-American. That doesn’t mean “erase any references to protag’s Chinese identity” but I’d definitely like stories that have us go on awesome adventures every now and then and don’t have the Chinese character being all “I AM CHINESE” from beginning to end.

Please round out the Chinese migrant parents instead of keeping them as strict and/or traditional. PLEASE. I could go into how my parents and the Chinese aunties and uncles here are so awesome, seriously, and we need more older Chinese migrant characters who are awesome and supportive and just people. Also! EAST ASIAN GIRLS WHO AREN’T SKINNY AND/OR PETITE. Please. PLEEEEEASE. And more stories about Taiwanese and Chinese folks who aren’t in bicoastal regions (the Midwest, the Plains, etc.) WE EXIST.

More Chinese-Americans who aren’t necessarily Christian. Maybe it’s because of the books I’ve wound up reading, but there seems to be this narrative of Chinese migrants joining churches and converting when they’re in the US. This doesn’t mean I want less Chinese-American Christians in fiction, mind: I’d also just like to see more Chinese families in the US who are Buddhist or who still keep up with the traditions they learned from their homelands, like me, without having it considered in the narrative as ~old fashioned~ or ~ancient~ or ~mystical~. Tangentially, when writing non-Christian Chinese families, I’d rather people keep the assumption of Communism being the underlying reason why far, far away. I have been asked in the past if Communism was why my family didn’t go to church, and needless to say, it’s really, really offensive. 

Stella (Korean): I’d love to see more Korean (and Asian-American) characters that don’t perpetuate the super-overachieving, stressed-out, only-cares-about-succeeding Asian stereotype. These Koreans exist (I would know; I went to school with quite a few of them) but they don’t represent all of us. I want to see more Korean characters solving mysteries, saving the world and having fun. More Koreans that aren’t pale, petite, and a size 2. Not all of us have perfect skin or straight black hair or monolids. And some of us love our short legs, round faces and small eyes!

And fewer stoic&strict Korean parents, please. So many of us grew up with loud, wacky, so-embarrassing-but-endearing parents!  

Recently, there’s been quite a few novels with Korean American female protags (particularly in the YA section) that deal with being in high school, dealing with strict parents, getting into college, and boys. Lots of boys! I think it’s awesome that there are more books with KA protags, and I’m so so so glad they’re out there. But I also recognize that those are definitely not the kind of books I would have read as a teenager, and it’s not the kind of book I want to read now. I want to see more Korean characters that are queer, trans, ace, bisexual. More Korean characters that are disabled or autistic or have mental illnesses. More Korean characters in fantasy, SFF, mystery! Heck, space operas and steampunk Westerns. I want it all! :DDDD

A lot of Korean-Americans struggle with their identity. It’s hard to balance things sometimes! But I’d love to see more stories that *aren’t* overtly about Korean-Americans dealing with their racial identity or sexual orientation, but stories about Koreans saving princesses and slaying trolls and commandeering spaceships. I want a plot that doesn’t center on Korean-American identity, but on a Korean-American character discovering themselves. White characters get to do it all the time; I want Korean characters to have a turn. 

And honestly, I just want to see more Asians in media, period. South Asians, Southeast Asians, Central Asians! Thai, Hmong, Tibetan, Filipino, Vietnamese characters. Indian characters! There’s so much diversity in Asia and among Asian diaspora. I want us to be more than just ~~mystical~~ characters with ancient wisdom and a generic Asian accent. We’ve got boundless oceans of stories within ourselves and our communities, and I can’t wait for them to be told.

I would also love to see more multiethnic Asian characters that are *not* half white. It seems to be the default mixed-race Asian character: East Asian and white. But so many of my friends have multiethnic backgrounds like Chinese/Persian, Thai/Chinese or Korean/Mexican. I have Korean friends who grew up in places like Brazil, Singapore and Russia. Did you know that the country with the largest population of Koreans (outside of Korea) is actually China? 

And while I’m at it, I’d love to see more well-translated works from Asia in the US. Like, how awesome would it be to have more science fiction, fantasy, and historical novels from Asia that are easily accessible in English? SUPER awesome!!

Kaye (Muslim): I am so hungry for Muslim representation, because there is so little of it. You can see one or two (YA) titles I currently think or have heard are good representation on the shelves - notably, Aisha Saeed’s Written in the Stars - on an AMA I did the other day for /r/YAwriters. However, I’d just love to see stories where Muslim characters go on adventures like everyone else! I’ve been saying recently that I’d LOVE to see a cozy mystery. Or a series of Muslim historical romances a la Georgette Heyer (there are a LOT of Muslim girls who love romances, and I’m just starting to get into the genre myself!). I’d love to see Muslim middle grade readers get girls who find secret passages, solve mysteries, tumble through the neighborhood with their dozen or so cousins. I have a lot of cousins and thus I always have a soft spot for cousins. And siblings. I’m looking forward to Scarlett Undercover by Jennifer Latham because Jen is writing Scarlett as a detective a la Veronica Mars. And she’s Somali-American. How cool is that?! Let’s see some classic road trip YA with Muslims. Let’s see comedies with quirky characters - for instance, I know one or two tween Muslim girls who are driving their moms MAD by suddenly turning vegetarian and refusing to touch the celebratory biryani at family Eid parties, who join relevant societies at their schools and start preaching to their extended families about the benefits of going vegetarian and all the funny little interactions that are involved with that. Let’s have a story with some wise-cracking African American Muslim girls. My cousin is a niqaabi who loves YA and hates that she doesn’t see herself in it. Let’s see some stories with teen niqaabis! Let’s explore the full, joyful spectrum of diversity in Islam. Let’s have stories where we talk about how one word in Bengali is totally different in another language, and one friend is hilariously horrified and the other friend doesn’t know what he/she said. (True story.) I want to see joy. I want to see happiness. Being a woman of color and a hijaabi often means facing so many daily, disheartening scenarios and prejudice and hatefulness. So many of the suggested tropes recently in the inbox focus on trying to force Muslim characters into beastly or haraam or just sad and stereotypical scenarios. I know that writers are better and have bigger imaginations than that. You want angst? Push aside the cold, unkind, abusive Muslim parents trope. Let’s talk about the Muslim girls I know who have struggled with eating disorders. Let’s talk about Islamophobia and how that is a REAL, horrible experience that Muslim kids have to fear and combat every day. Let’s approach contemporary angst without the glasses of the Western gaze and assumptions about people of the Islamic faith on. We can have Muslim novels that focus on growing pains like Sarah Dessen and Judy Blume (and speaking of that, my “auntie” who used to teach in a madrasah used to press Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret on the Muslim girls she knew because of how Margaret approached growing up and had concerns about her faith and her relationships, etc.)

“What do you mean the fatties live longer? This CANNOT BE RIGHT DO THE STUDIES 15 MORE TIMES!”

And when they can’t figure it out, they simply say “it’s not worth reading” to keep anything POSITIVE about fat bodies from getting out into the public eye.

Because then folks might not but into the billion dollar industry for diet fads and weight loss scams that all of these obesity doctors line their pockets with.

“No one has been able to make the paradox go away”

They wanna get rid of that shit SO BAD. Because if fat people aren’t as OMG OBESITY CRISIS as folks love to scream, that means their fad diet scams and weight loss surgeries can’t make them millions anymore!

*points and laughs*

MY FUCKING GREAT GRANDFATHER LITERALLY FLED LEBANON DUE TO A FUCKING FAMINE AND MY GRANDMOTHER AND DAD AND I ARE ALL FAT AS FUCKING HELL.

combine that with the fact that gen x was the last generation allowed to play outside, pretty much, and the fact that everybody nowdays is working service jobs that exhaust them without working their muscles, and there is basically no way on earth you’re going to get a fit and healthy population without changing the basic structure of our society.

don’t fall for the hype. don’t focus on weight. it’s actually far more dangerous to be underweight than overweight. even with what is clinically defined as ‘morbid obesity’ it’s possible to be healthy as a horse, if your bone structure and metabolism are set up for it and you’ve got lots of muscle to support it.

on top of that, the charts for ideal weight are at least a generation out of date. they were compiled based on a population that didn’t regularly get enough dairy and fresh produce, at a time when girls didn’t do athletics in school. young women in the 1960′s were measurably smaller than young women today. their bones were thinner, they had less muscle mass, their shoulders were more sloped, they had a smaller lung capacity – society discouraged them from being physically active past the age of ten or twelve, and they finished their physical development in a sedentary setting.

boys were plenty active, but just like the girls, they were eating just about nothing but red meat and starch and some mushy greens with the vitamins boiled out. the thing where the poor get fat because sugar and fat are cheap wasn’t really happening yet, especially in rural areas; a farm kid’s diet was beef and wheat in the north, pork and corn in the south. “eat your vegetables” was such a hard sell because everything else was expensive and bland and overcooked. you’ve seen the godawful cookbook excerpts from that time. mushy green beans and fried spam on a bed of mashed potatoes, seasoned with nothing but a pinch of white pepper.

sorry, that was kind of a tangent. i guess my point is, even the people who ate well by the standards of the time were malnourished compared to the standard of today. your lunch of a matcha cucumber smoothie and a cobb salad with one ounce of ham, one ounce of turkey, and 15 kinds of fresh vegetable, would give them the explosive shits because they’ve never had that much fiber in one place before. there’s more vitamins and antioxidants in your black bean fajita dinner than they saw in a week.

so first of all, the idea of trying to be the same size and shape they were is absurd.

and second, if malnourishment in one generation primes the next two for protective fat retention, the combination of that and the incredible wealth of nutrition we have available to us today is obviously going to make us HYUGE.

When I was 125, not a single doctor was ever worried. I was constantly cold, stressed, and exhausted. I was literally always eating, and still could not gain anything. I was hungry all the time, but at the same time I would have given anything to just go to bed and sleep for days, because being chronically underweight does screwy things to your entire system

Now, a couple years into being an actual reasonable weight for my height, I’ve had a doctor, on our first visit, include ‘healthy eating and weight loss’ tips in my visit notes without even asking if I was happy at my weight. I am still mad about this. But also, I have so much more energy, I sleep better, I can actually regulate my own damn temperature, and I just over-all feel better

About A SPONGE

LIVING UNDER THE SEA

This was meant to be a quick warm up, but it turned into a comic that I’ve wanted to draw for a while. This is something that is extremely important to me, and I appreciate it if you read it.

A while ago, I heard a story that broke my heart. A family went a cat shelter to adopt. The daughter fell in love with a 3-legged cat. The father straight up said “absolutely not”. Because he was missing a leg. That cat was that close to having a family that loved him, but the missing leg held him back. Why?!

Many people have the initial instinct of “nope” when they see an imperfect animal. I get it, but less-adoptable does NOT mean less loveable. 9 out of 10 people will choose a kitten over an adult cat. And those 10% that would get an adult cat often overlook “different” animals.

All I want people to do is be open to the idea of having a “different” pet in their lives. Choose the pet that you fall in love with, but at least give all of them a fair shot at winning your heart.

This is Lenore. I first saw her in a little cage at the Petco I frequent (I used to take my parents’ dog in for puppy play time), and she looked like the grouchiest, old, crotchety cat in the world, and I fell instantly in love. She was cranky, she was anti-social, hanging out at the back of her cage. Her fur was matted because she wouldn’t let the groomers near her.

She was perfect.

But I didn’t have a place for her. I wasn’t living in my own space yet, and where I was, I wasn’t allowed cats. So I pressed my face to the bars of her cage and I promised that if no one had adopted her by the time I’d bought a house, I would come back for her.

I visited her every week for over six months while I looked for a house. At one point, they had to just shave her entire rear-end because the mats of fur were so bad. They told me she clawed the heck outta the groomer that did it, screamed the entire time, and spent the next two days growling at anyone that came near the cage.

A couple of weeks later, I closed on my house. I went back and I got an employee, and I said: “That one. I need that cat.”

They got the paperwork and the lady who ran the rescue that was bringing the cats in told me that Lenore (at the time, Lila) was 8 years old, had been owned by an elderly lady who had died, and brought in to a different rescue, who’d had her for six months on top of the time I’d been seeing her at Petco.

This kitty had been living in a 3x3’ cube for over a YEAR because she was older and “less adoptable.”

I signed the paperwork, put her in a cat carrier, and drove her to my new home. I had pretty much nothing; a bed, an old couch, a couple of bookcases, and a tank of mice I called “Cat TV”. I let her out of the carrier and onto my bed, and I told her “I told you I would come back for you when I had a place. It’s not much, but it’s yours too now.”

Lenore spent the next three days straight purring non-stop. She followed me around the house purring. Sat next to me purring. Slept next to me purring. Leaning into every touch, purring, purring, always purring. She still purrs if you so much as think about petting her. She’s amazing, and I love her.

Women’s soccer is more fun to watch because you don’t have them falling dramatically when they stub their toe on someone’s cleats. A woman goes down and you know she’s hurt. A man goes down in the game and after his dramatic wincing and what not, manages to miraculously get back to his feet and play like nothing happened.

When you start playing golf, you get a handicap. Usually starts around 72 (at least where I play, can’t say for other countries, I think it’s different in the us). Your handicap tells you how many extra hits(strokes? Man idk English okay) you get per hole. So if you start a round at the first hole, you might have 4 ‘extra’ hits. Here’s an example: The first hole is a par 4. You are a newbie and therefore have 4 hits. You use 6, and therefore get 2 points. Your friend is pretty experienced and only has 2 hits. He also uses 6, and therefore gets 0 points. Your other friend has 0 hits. He only uses 4 hits for the entire hole, and therefore gets 2 points.

So the system is pretty great! Once you’ve played a round and gotten over 36 points, you hand in your scorecard and you go down in handicap. That way you have less hits per round. This way, someone who have only played for a year, can play against someone who’ve played for 7, and still have a chance, because you get different points based on what level you play on, making the whole schazam more enjoyable for everyone because you can only compare you to you, not everyone else.

So you would think “great! No need to separate between genders, right? Everyone just plays at their own level and that’s fine!” But you would be wrong. You see, in golf you have different startingpoints, called tees. I think they’re most commonly divided into red, white and blue in the us, but here it’s red, yellow and white (though some clubs have other options for newbies or pros). Now supposedly this is to give options for people wits different lengths to their hits. If you play at red, you have less hits than at yellow, because red is closer to the hole. But the thing is, red is also known as ‘ladies tee’ because women usually play from red, where men play from yellow. So often times they’re referred to as ‘men’s tee’ and ‘ladies tee’ instead. The automatic systems you use to login and get your personal scorecards usually decide that if you’re a woman you play from red, and if you’re a man you play from yellow (with the option to change it yourself of course, but this is the standard). In competitions you are always deicided into men and women’s tee. Despite the fact that you get extra hits depending on your tee and level. Why is it divided into gender? “Well women usually aren’t as strong and therefore can’t hit it as long, so they should play from red”. No! It’s just because! I know plenty of old men who started late in life and therefore does not have the flexibility it takes to actually move the ball more than 100m. They should definitely play from red, but no that’s the ladies tee!

My own club actually did some stuff to try to get rid of these stereotypes. They changed the names from red and yellow to “48” and “56” (indicating the amount of meters there is all the way around) to get rid of the association of red=ladies, and they changed the system so it doesn’t assume your tee from your gender. But in competitions your tee is definitely assumed. And like, in competitions you’re further divided into level than just handicap! You got your personal handicap, but prize winners are divided into A, B and C (and sometimes even D) rows, where they group the different handicaps together to even it out even more! So is there any reason for the gender divide? No!! Is it still there? Yes!!!!

IF people acknowledge it, they play the necessity card– there weren’t any women out on the range, so they had to “resort to men.” this claim completely erases 1) the romantic (not just sexual) writings of actual cowboys, 2) the acknowledgement of cowboys’ potential homosexual activity by writers at the time, and 3) the possibility that some men would deliberately become cowboys with the intent to seek out homosexual encounters.