Here are brilliant essays and articles that explain how to write another race, culture or people and why it's important to be vigilant of ourselves falling into tropes and stereotypes. This is also published as a thread on Twitter.
This is a really well explained article on why there is a greater responsibility when writing as an other! Please read it. There are so many good points @KitdeWaal makes. https://t.co/1tJ0gCiKuF — Chitra Soundar (@csoundar) April 24, 2019
Kit de Waal writes in the Irish Times about why it needs a lot of attention and care when writing about cultures that we do not belong to.
Mitali Perkins wrote this article in the School Library Journal 10 years ago and it's still relevant. Recently Mitali also created a checklist for writers and editors to spot unconscious mistakes we might make in our texts.
Have you heard about the iceberg of cultural understanding? Read this research article.
Reflecting Realities is a research undertaken by CLPE to find out how and how much non-white representation exists in children's books. Their findings had very useful learnings for writers who want to put non-white characters in their stories. Here are some learnings by Chitra Soundar.
She also writes about the research involved when writing within her own culture, but of another sub-culture. "When I published Pattan's Pumpkin, a flood tale from India, I still had to do research because I was writing from a privileged position, reimagining the story of an Indian tribe in India. This is how I did the research. "
And finally if you haven't heard the Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - The Dangers of a Single Story, do listen to this.