Michy
Boss(y) Lady / Site Owner / Admin
Posts: 7478
Registered: 1/15/2008
Location: Texas
Member Is Online
Mood: Peaceful
|
|
2/21/2010 Writing Prompt - Gotta Be Brave to do This One
Okay, political correctness aside, I want to pose a writing prompt that some of you might not be comfortable with.
Ned talking about having an evil dude living in his head and having problems with that started me thinking about how important it is when writing
characters, especially our lead characters, that we are able to really get inside them, to feel them, to perhaps, for a short time, to actually BE
them. Otherwise, we will never be able to make our readers feel them, believe them.
So I got to thinking....
And some of you, as professional, mature writers here, can do justice to this without hurting anyone...
What would it be like to be a different race or color?
I've been a red-headed white girl all my life, but I lived in a Hispanic family for a year and raised a mixed child, who was sometimes discriminated
against for nothing more than the color of her skin - she's very, very dark compared to me especially. She likes black boys, she is half Mexican (with
strong Mayan influence in her blood and Cherokee from my side, so she sorta looks native sometimes) and half Caucasian. What a lovely mix she is! It
made her skin so beautiful too, like a perpetual olive/red tan year-round, but because of her red-headed mama, she still blushed! LOL
So my writing prompt to you.... can you stretch yourself and write a scene from your life, only this time, change your race. IF you're white, how
different would that scene be had you been black? If you're Hispanic, how different would you life have been growing up up North or down south by the
border?
Race, color, national origin.... as much as we are all the same, these things DO influence or perspectives and sometimes our attitudes about life.
Can you write a believable scene and become another race or color? What if you're a different religion? Or from a different country than you are?
Put yourself in someone else's shoes, and then try to write from that perspective.
Anyone up for the challenge?
Love and stuff,
Michy
~~Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations~~
Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again." James R. Cook
-----------------------------------------
|
|
|
windowshopping04
Board Admin/Moderator
Posts: 598
Registered: 1/16/2008
Location: Somewhere near Galveston, TX
Member Is Offline
Mood: grateful
|
|
I'm orange. In my society, orange is the color of trash, and like trash, most people consider those who are orange disposable, sub-human, not worthy
of consideration or accommodation. Those of us who are orange are segregated into facilities especially designed to contain us and to limit our
interaction with those outside and each other. By working through the system, we can earn the ability to work as groundskeepers, grocery baggers, or
in laundromats. In a few rare cases, some of us are even allowed to earn degrees. In even fewer cases, advanced degrees and PhD's have been allowed.
Of course, that doesn't give the bearer of those degrees any sort of equal access to career opportunities... we will always be orange.
I didn't choose to be orange, but I'm not ashamed of being orange, either. I am who I am. There are people who would tell you that it was obviously my
fate, something which I must have deserved, and that the treatment which all those who are orange receive is justified and justifiable.
I am one of the extremely fortunate ones, educationally. I took undergraduate and graduate degrees in Psychology and an MD. However, I am only allowed
to take those who are orange as clients, of course... and none of them can pay, so the facility pays me a small stipend to take cases. They receive
Federal Grants to help with that expense. As you may already suspect, I have a lot of clients - being orange isn't easy. Maintaining a healthy mental
equilibrium is difficult, at best. Sometimes those in charge actually listen to my suggestions.
I may not be ashamed to be orange, but I wish one day that I could be treated like I am green or blue or purple... maybe someday people won't see me
as orange first, but as a person, a person with hopes, dreams, skills, desires.
For now, though, excelling or even surviving, despite being orange, means knowing the system, the restrictions, the codes governing us, and knowing
them well enough to work them to our favor, to use the rules against the very people who devised them. Most administrations, at least, adhere to their
own rules - but certainly not all. Administrators come and go. Staff come and go. We are the only constant in the facilities which segregate us,
living like second class citizens at best.
We rely on the few advocates and sympathizers we have outside our communities to lobby for better treatment, the abolition of segregation, and equal
treatment under the law. Change... we hope for change.
[Edited on 21-2-2010 by windowshopping04]
Grace and abundance are limitless even in the face of fear and malice.
|
|
|
|
![[*]](images/engage/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
