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rainwatersparkThere have been many excellent conversations on Twitter about how tropes such as chosen one fantasies, vampires, queer coming out stories, etc. are often viewed as "cliché" and "overdone," but the problem is that such labels are usually slapped on after white authors have written them ad nauseum and don't give authors of color a fair chance to tackle the tropes. Especially since authors of color can bring fresh takes on old tropes.
I want to address this in a specific context: M/M romances.
While it's true that (cis) M/M romances *are* overrepresented compared to F/F, romances with trans and nonbinary characters, etc....
Authors of color writing cis M/M romances are—you guessed it—vastly underrepresented compared to white authors writing cis M/M romances.
So yeah, it's hurtful to be told the genre I'm writing in is "overdone" and "already gets enough attention" when I have first-hand experience that authors of color writing M/M romances featuring QPOC do not have an easy time promoting their work.
(And I write M/M for complicated gender reasons (which mean that, when I've tried to write M/F romances, they've basically all sucked) and, believe me, I've *tried* to stop writing in this genre.)
To add insult to injury, white authors writing about QPOC in M/M romances are the ones who are often applauded for "writing diversely" (even though such books are usually racist in some form or another) while ownvoices QPOC authors are largely ignored because our QPOC M/M romances are "cliché" or not groundbreaking enough.
These are situations I've actually seen:
Review of white author writing queer Asian MC: Loved this book! I was *so* excited to read a M/M book with an Asian MC!!
Review of Asian author writing queer Asian MC: The Asian character didn't feel Asian enough. They might as well have been a white character.
I mean...ouch. That sounds flippant, I know, but at this point I just don't have the words for how much it hurts to see this other than "ouch."
*
On the same topic, but a different focus, I want to talk about how authors of color are often set up for failure.
Readers generally react VERY negatively if they think one book is "copying" another. However, publishing actually incentivizes similar books through its heavy reliance on comp titles. This means that publishing doesn't care as much about books with similar premises as readers might, because publishers think a book similar to Bestseller X will also be a bestseller. Also, authors may write and try to publish totally original books, only to be rejected because publishers don't want to "take a risk" on something that looks like nothing else on the shelf.
When I looked at advance reviews for Nocturna by Maya Motayne, I noticed several readers giving the book low reviews for being supposedly too similar to A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab.
I haven't read Nocturna yet because it hasn't yet been released, but honestly? I'm sympathetic to the author. It's a no-win situation for authors of color, who will often come to the table "late" and then be accused of "copying" a bestseller by a white author.
This isn't the first time an author of color has been subjected to this, either. The Girl King by Mimi Yu has been called "too generic" and "too similar" to books such as those of Sarah J. Maas (white). In an even more outrageous example, The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi has been compared ad nauseum to Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (white), even though the authors have cited different heist movies as inspirations! SOC's inspiration was Ocean's Eleven while TGW's inspiration was National Treasure, yet I've never heard anyone say Ocean's Eleven and National Treasure are copies of each other.
So authors of color are set up for failure. Write something totally original and risk no publisher wanting to take it on; write something too similar to a bestseller by a white author, and readers turn up their noses.
It's honestly a really difficult situation to be in.
*
One last thought (which honestly deserves a blog post all on its own in the future, maybe):
The whole idea of ownvoices representation/non-Western SFF by authors of color not being "ethnic/exotic" enough is insulting and especially hurtful to diaspora authors, who may not have strong ties to their heritage. Underlying reviews like that, I feel, are assumptions by white readers that stories about POC need to be "educational" in a sense; they need to have obvious markers of Otherness so that the white reader can "learn about" X culture/experience.
Nocturna, as I mentioned above, has been criticized for "not having enough Latinx elements to be a Latinx fantasy," despite it being written by a Latinx author. An advance review for Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon by Mary Fan complained that the Asian steampunk fantasy didn't have enough descriptions of Asian food.
But...does anyone go into a Western steampunk fantasy expecting there to be tons of detailed descriptions of food?
No.
That's one of the clearest examples I've seen of the demand for exoticization, Otherness, and perhaps implicitly educational value in non-Western SFF.
And it's exhausting, because that kind of demand is such a burden on authors of color who want to tell a story first and foremost.
I want to address this in a specific context: M/M romances.
While it's true that (cis) M/M romances *are* overrepresented compared to F/F, romances with trans and nonbinary characters, etc....
Authors of color writing cis M/M romances are—you guessed it—vastly underrepresented compared to white authors writing cis M/M romances.
So yeah, it's hurtful to be told the genre I'm writing in is "overdone" and "already gets enough attention" when I have first-hand experience that authors of color writing M/M romances featuring QPOC do not have an easy time promoting their work.
(And I write M/M for complicated gender reasons (which mean that, when I've tried to write M/F romances, they've basically all sucked) and, believe me, I've *tried* to stop writing in this genre.)
To add insult to injury, white authors writing about QPOC in M/M romances are the ones who are often applauded for "writing diversely" (even though such books are usually racist in some form or another) while ownvoices QPOC authors are largely ignored because our QPOC M/M romances are "cliché" or not groundbreaking enough.
These are situations I've actually seen:
Review of white author writing queer Asian MC: Loved this book! I was *so* excited to read a M/M book with an Asian MC!!
Review of Asian author writing queer Asian MC: The Asian character didn't feel Asian enough. They might as well have been a white character.
I mean...ouch. That sounds flippant, I know, but at this point I just don't have the words for how much it hurts to see this other than "ouch."
*
On the same topic, but a different focus, I want to talk about how authors of color are often set up for failure.
Readers generally react VERY negatively if they think one book is "copying" another. However, publishing actually incentivizes similar books through its heavy reliance on comp titles. This means that publishing doesn't care as much about books with similar premises as readers might, because publishers think a book similar to Bestseller X will also be a bestseller. Also, authors may write and try to publish totally original books, only to be rejected because publishers don't want to "take a risk" on something that looks like nothing else on the shelf.
When I looked at advance reviews for Nocturna by Maya Motayne, I noticed several readers giving the book low reviews for being supposedly too similar to A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab.
I haven't read Nocturna yet because it hasn't yet been released, but honestly? I'm sympathetic to the author. It's a no-win situation for authors of color, who will often come to the table "late" and then be accused of "copying" a bestseller by a white author.
This isn't the first time an author of color has been subjected to this, either. The Girl King by Mimi Yu has been called "too generic" and "too similar" to books such as those of Sarah J. Maas (white). In an even more outrageous example, The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi has been compared ad nauseum to Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (white), even though the authors have cited different heist movies as inspirations! SOC's inspiration was Ocean's Eleven while TGW's inspiration was National Treasure, yet I've never heard anyone say Ocean's Eleven and National Treasure are copies of each other.
So authors of color are set up for failure. Write something totally original and risk no publisher wanting to take it on; write something too similar to a bestseller by a white author, and readers turn up their noses.
It's honestly a really difficult situation to be in.
*
One last thought (which honestly deserves a blog post all on its own in the future, maybe):
The whole idea of ownvoices representation/non-Western SFF by authors of color not being "ethnic/exotic" enough is insulting and especially hurtful to diaspora authors, who may not have strong ties to their heritage. Underlying reviews like that, I feel, are assumptions by white readers that stories about POC need to be "educational" in a sense; they need to have obvious markers of Otherness so that the white reader can "learn about" X culture/experience.
Nocturna, as I mentioned above, has been criticized for "not having enough Latinx elements to be a Latinx fantasy," despite it being written by a Latinx author. An advance review for Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon by Mary Fan complained that the Asian steampunk fantasy didn't have enough descriptions of Asian food.
But...does anyone go into a Western steampunk fantasy expecting there to be tons of detailed descriptions of food?
No.
That's one of the clearest examples I've seen of the demand for exoticization, Otherness, and perhaps implicitly educational value in non-Western SFF.
And it's exhausting, because that kind of demand is such a burden on authors of color who want to tell a story first and foremost.
