A great many of the pearls of wisdom in this primer on how to write about Africa and Africans apply to writing about Native Americans and Indian Country.
Take note, young scholars, of how to make the subaltern bleak:
Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can’t live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.
Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa. African characters should be colourful, exotic, larger than life—but empty inside, with no dialogue, no conflicts or resolutions in their stories, no depth or quirks to confuse the cause.
These are words to live by. All you have to do is replace “Africa” and “Africans” with “Indian Country” and “Native People/Indians/Native Americans”.
22 comments
April 6, 2010 at 10:39 am
zunguzungu
Sherman Alexie did just that:
“How to Write the Great American Indian Novel”
All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.
The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory.
If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender
and in love with a white man. But if she loves an Indian man
then he must be a half-breed, preferably from a horse culture.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white
that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers.
April 6, 2010 at 10:43 am
Rebecca Clayton
It works well for Appalachia, too. I’m never sure if I’m living in “the green rollin’ hills of West Virginia” or “the land of the nine-fingered people,” or some vestigial outpost of archaic Scotch-Irish folk culture.
April 6, 2010 at 11:32 am
Mario
And California! For instance, a good writer should:
-Always invoke the 60s; you can be sure that the lives of any character is always lived in relation to an artificial construct that might bear a small resemblance to a 4-year period from 1968-1971. For instance, Berkeley is full of hippies and the foothills are full of communes, as is Mendocino.
-Palm trees should line every boulevard, and you should treat them as the archetypal California plant.
-There is never wind in California, except when it is racing through your hair as your rented convertible goes 80 down PCH
-San Diego might as well not exist
-Mention how California “doesn’t have real weather.” Ignore the fact that literally 4.5 billion people in the world also don’t have “real weather” and this might impinge on the “realness” of “real weather.” Those 4.5 billion people are pretty much all brown anyway, as are the majority of Californians.
-Implicitly contrast California with New York at all times. This is mandatory.
April 6, 2010 at 12:20 pm
ben
These are words to live by. All you have to do is replace “Africa” and “Africans” with “Indian Country” and “Native People/Indians/Native Americans”.
Way to keep putting Africa down, Ari.
San Diego might as well not exist
Amen, brother.
April 6, 2010 at 12:34 pm
kevin
Sneer about “Indian Country” all you want, Ari, but that Ravi Shankar-Merle Haggard duets album is outstanding.
April 6, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Fats Durston
One of the most incredible displays of this (among many, obviously) is the National Geographic show “Savanna Homecoming” which implicitly equates the movements of wildebeests (headed to the waterhole to spawn) with a pregnant Nairobian who returns to her rural (and non-savanna) family home to have the kid.
I have, however, been to that expat bar. It’s a cliche because it’s real and that awful.
April 6, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Jason B.
. . . but that Ravi Shankar-Merle Haggard duets album is outstanding.
Amazing. I can make my nose bleed just by passing my eyes over that sentence.
April 6, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Robert Halford
San Diego might as well not exist
Did you know that San Diego was one of the world’s first centers of architectural modernism, simultaneously with (or slightly predating) Vienna? I didn’t either, until I saw this.
Yes, yes, completely off topic, but let’s not just have Wolfson hang around and trash San Diego.
April 6, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Robert Halford
Hmm, that link didn’t work. Try this:
http://s93883215.onlinehome.us/adamjaneiro/2010/03/irving-gill-part-1.html
Or this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Gill
If you care.
April 6, 2010 at 4:04 pm
kevin
Amazing. I can make my nose bleed just by passing my eyes over that sentence.
In that case, you shouldn’t glance at the follow-up Indian Country album that Ravi Shankar did with Jerry Reed: Smokey and the Pandit.
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.
April 6, 2010 at 7:04 pm
William Berry
In fairness to Karen Blixen, she was a narcissist for whom everything was context to her life, including, only incidentally, the “natives”.
April 6, 2010 at 9:18 pm
ben
I also trashed ari.
April 7, 2010 at 1:32 am
Walt
I didn’t understand this comment: “Mention how California “doesn’t have real weather.” Ignore the fact that literally 4.5 billion people in the world also don’t have “real weather” “. 4.5 billion people live in places with climates the same as California?
April 7, 2010 at 7:57 am
Vance
It makes sense if “real weather” means severe winters. I do think there are people who think this way, but for me, monsoons count as real weather too. (But then I’m a Californian, so “real weather” means whatever I haven’t got.)
April 7, 2010 at 8:08 am
JPool
So what you and Silbey are saying is that I need to be reading Granta more often.
Sigh. Fine.
And, yeah, I’ve been to that bar too.
April 7, 2010 at 10:04 am
Mario
It makes sense if “real weather” means severe winters. I do think there are people who think this way, but for me, monsoons count as real weather too. (But then I’m a Californian, so “real weather” means whatever I haven’t got.)
My experience is that “real weather” invokes the same thing as “season” (as in “California doesn’t have seasons”), so maybe I should have written that one instead. But it’s just for fun.
Anyway, yeah, both terms in my experience are deployed almost exclusively to mean snowy winters and hot summers, with a crisp fall and warming spring between. It’s a normativity that’s incredibly geospecific, despite the fact that in the US alone the 3 most populous states (CA, TX, FL) don’t have “real weather” or “seasons.”
April 7, 2010 at 10:05 am
Mario
Gah, brain fail. 3 of the 4 most populous states (NY is between TX and FL).
April 7, 2010 at 10:33 am
Vance
To nitpick, we may not have “seasons” but we do have seasons. Here at the edge of the American west, we’re quite visibly moving from the wet season to the dry. “Wet” being of course a relative term (while “dry” is absolute).
Another sense in which we don’t have “real weather” here is that our clouds are boring. The Midwest enjoys giant cathedrals, palaces, Dubais of cloud and storm — here it’s mostly either overcast or clear.
April 7, 2010 at 10:46 am
Robert Halford
One thing that bugs me slightly me when I read books to my kid is that children’s books are always talking about seasons in the Northeast/Midwest sense, in a way that has absolutely no relevance to our lives. “April showers, May flowers”; “In November, the leaves turn orange”; “In the summer, the leaves are green”; “Then the cold snow comes.” Uh, sweetheart, you know that’s actually not going to happen here.
Enough with the East Coast weather hegemony.
April 7, 2010 at 11:36 am
dana
“Real weather” or “seasons” means that “we have to try to justify the crap weather around here somehow, and it’s either this or pretend that November is good for moral fiber.”
April 7, 2010 at 11:40 am
Jason B.
. . . or pretend that November is good for moral fiber.
And there you have Minnesota Scandinavian stoicism. Uff da!
April 7, 2010 at 11:46 am
Mario
To nitpick, we may not have “seasons” but we do have seasons.
Vance, we’re on the same page–that’s exactly what I was trying to satirize.