Today I'm going to discuss story context and voice on minority characters and its importance in literature.
The phrase to “dip your pen in somebody else’s blood” refers to someone from a dominant group writing about the struggles of a minority group. This is something that is looked down upon as someone from a dominant group has not experienced what it's like to be a part of the corresponding minority group leading to misrepresentation that can be viewed as offensive. This often comes in the form of harmful and incorrect stereotypes whether intentional or not as people from a dominant group only have a limited amount of knowledge accessible to them without experiencing discrimination first-hand. Writing about an issue that isn’t yours is as if you’re claiming the issue as yours and not the people who the issue actually affects, resulting in the trivialization of the struggles minority groups face by using them just for entertainment purposes.
Was the Blood Hers?
In Sue Monk Kidd's novel, The Secret Life of Bees, she does “dip her pen in somebody else’s blood” by writing about the struggles of black people in the 1960s while she herself is white. She includes some racist stereotypes that I believe are not intentional and are just a product of her being raised strictly Baptist in racist social conditions. A stereotype that I’ve seen in this novel is the character Rosaleen as the caretaker stereotype where a person of colour takes on the lowest level of society and serves someone who is not of colour.
Lily Owens tells this story of the minority experience although she is white and therefore privileged. There are negative aspects and positive aspects to writing this novel from her perspective. In terms of her character development and the fact Lily is meant to be the author, it is better to be in Lily’s own perspective. She starts by unconsciously viewing black people as being inferior to thinking of them as family and as this evolution is done through internal dialogue, it is easier to see it from her own perspective. However, in terms of the struggle of a minority group, it would be better to write it through the eyes of a black character in the novel as they experience the harshness of the world for themselves.
Raisin Sue Monk Kidd
This book is based on Sue Monk Kidd’s experience as a teen in the 1960s as she grows up in a world that is changing at a rapid pace. The social conditions at that time were harsh towards people of colour especially in the southern regions where Kidd was raised. As Lily’s character arc is about her becoming less oblivious to her racist surroundings, it is fair to assume that this is Kidd portraying her own growth through the Civil Rights Movement when she was a teen.
“Dipping your pen in someone else’s blood” can be extremely harmful and although this book does contain racial stereotyping, I don’t think it was done with any ill will. With the Civil Rights Movement being a rather new concept when Kidd was a teenager, activism was new too and writing a book like hers would undoubtedly be considered progressive. Some things just change overtime like how a word can be used casually and decades later may be considered extremely offensive or vice versa.
Do you have any good examples of "dipping your pen in someone else's blood"? Let me know them and I'll take a look!
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