Understanding Multi-Cultural Romance

It seems like there is a lot of confusion out there about multi-cultural romances. I do think a lot of this is stemming from the constant talk in politics and society about issues of racism, diversity and so forth. It is unfortunate as these two issues are potentially blurring the lines and making this issue murkier than it needs to be.

Let me first of all say, I am someone who is certainly supportive of diversity issues. What I will be talking about here is the GENRE of MULTICULTURAL LITERATURE.

It seems that many people today are missing the point about the definition. It seems that people seem to be thinking that putting ethnic characters into a story makes it multicultural. This is far from the truth. Yes, multicultural literature will have characters of different races and ethnicities, but this is not what defines the genre.

I like to think of this genre the same way I think of women's fiction. In the case of women's fiction, it is not about the character, but the perspective and the point of view of the story. This genre looks at the world through the female lens. We see how the world is processed through the female psyche. In other words, the "feminine perspective" or "feminine point of view" becomes, at some level, a character in the story.

The same holds true for multicultural literature. Along with the characters in the story, it is the world that the characters are living in that comes to life as a character. If we want to talk about an African American Multicultural piece of literature, the African American experience and point of view will come forth in the story. We are immersed in the ethnic experience. In other words, it is much more than simply putting in characters who happen to be African American. The GMC (goals, motivation and conflict) of every character and action in the story needs to be shaped by that cultural experience.

I want to also bring up the historical aspect of this genre. There will simply be some time periods where that ,multicultural experience will not likely emerge. Regency romance in London will not likely bring forth an African American experience. This is just one example, but I think you can understand what I am talking about.

If you are someone who wants to write, or thinks you are writing a multicultural novel, you need to ask yourself what is the focus of the story. Is the focus to tell of the experience of this cultural to show how this culture shapes the thoughts, actions and believes of the characters in the story? Or, are you telling a story simply to include people from a different culture? If you are doing the second, you are NOT telling a multicultural story. If you are doing the first, make sure that entire experience is woven in throughout the entire story, not just as a plot element, but as a theme and setting element. We need to be immersed in that culture.

Understanding Multicultural Romance and Women's Fiction

I was helping my daughter out with her math last night and I found it interesting how the authors of the math book were doing there best to integrate a "multicultural feel" to the story problems. I am sure someone had gotten on their case about the lack of a connection to other cultures. What this author was doing was what I see far too many authors of multicultural fiction doing. They simply had names that represented cultures. I am sorry to say this, but naming your characters (or in this case the individuals in the story problem) Maria and Juan does not turn this into a Hispanic story nor does your story become Asian by naming your characters Min and Kenji.

When we think of multicultural fiction (and this can be romance, fiction or women's fiction) we have to look deeper than the setting and the characters. Understanding this genre is really looking at the story through a different lens.

If we think of women's fiction, we think of seeing the story through the "female lens" and understanding what it is to be a female and to approach problems from the female perspective. The same goes for multicultural stories. The idea is to see the world through this cultural lens and to understand how this culture deals with problems, relationships and so forth. As an author, you are striving for a full immersion for your reader into this culture.

As we read a multicultural story, we should really get this sense that we are right there in the culture. We get the full exposure of the culture including the senses, smells and certainly the values of the culture.

As an agent, when I read a story labeled as multicultural, but completely forget that the characters are coming from a specific culture, or there is not hint of anything new that I can learn about this culture, then we have a story that really isn't multicultural.

On the other hand, if you read Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie, you are dumped right in the middle of those cultures they write about. You can't help but see the world through those eyes.

Let's Talk Multi-Cultural Romance Today!

Hola,

Now, before I go any further, this does not make it a multi-cultural blog simply because I threw in a Spanish word. Along the same lines, if my name was Jose, that doesn't fix it either. Unfortunately, I see a lot of projects that come across my desk that seem to think this is all that is required.

Multi-cultural romances really have a lot more depth to them. In many ways, the approach you take with this sub-genre is the same you would take with an inspirational romance. You have to have a theme you are working with and then build the story around it.

First of all, before we go any further, it is important that we define the concept of culture.

-Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
-Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
-Culture is communication, communication is culture.
-Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning.
-A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
-Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group's skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.
-Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action.
-Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation to generation.
-Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.

Now, with these broad (and I stress really broad) definitions of culture, we can start to examine the concept of multi-cultural romances. One common thing I see a lot of are inter-racial romances being marketed as multi-cultural romances. You will notice in the above definitions that race is not a factor. While many people from a given race may be part of a culture, it doesn't work in reverse. Along the same lines, someone who is Jewish building a romance wit the other person who is Catholic is not a multi-cultural romance. Sure there are conflicts but that falls outside of the definition.

What we want to see is a romance built around a clash of cultural beliefs and ideals. In other words, the external conflict in the relationship really is watching the hero and heroine attempt to work though these differences in beliefs and traditions. For example, you may have a hero that is coming from a mid-eastern country and views the world from an Islamic point of view. Now we insert the heroine with strong western ideologies. In this case, they have to work through not only language and religion, but also the perception of clothing, the female postion in the world and so forth. This is a multi-cultural romance.

So, if you are someone wishing to pitch a story like this, think what the theme is that you want to work through. Also, remember that we are not talking about simply race or religion.

Multicultural Romance

First of all, sorry for missing the blog on Friday. My day was totally messed up with a schedule that just didn't flow like it always would do. Woops.

So, let's talk about mulicultural romances and what we are really looking for in projects of this nature. This is a tough category but one that publishers and agents really do like, if the story is done well. It is that last part that tends to mess up most proposals that cross the desks of those editors and agents.

The term multi-cultural, according to communication specialists deals with a significant collection of people with a shared deposit of knowledge. That desposit of knowledge is also refered to as a world view. When we discuss that concept of world view we are looking at issues of shared beliefs, values, perceptions of life and death and so forth. It even extends to more common every day ideas of how time is perceived and used, definitions of man and woman, gender relations and communications.

I bring all of this up because many authors pitching mulit-cultural romances to me clearly miss the point on this one. There is a perception that if I call the heroine Maria Rodriquez it makes it a hispanic story. Or if the hero is Alexis Eaganixsis he is Greek. Some go so far as to just have the characters eating "traditional" food. This is not it.

When we use the term multi-cultural romances, we are looking at how that culture plays a significant role in the lives of the hero and heroine. We want to see how that culture is either creating huge roadblocks to the development of the relationship, or is somehow guiding the story. I think the best right now has got to be Amy Tan. We understand how the Chinese and American cultures are clashing with each other in her characters relationships.

For myself, I am looking for the opportunity to be immersed into a culture that might, at first, seem distant and foreign. I want to see the hero and heroine struggle and for me to scream, "come on, if you would do it this way..." and then discover that "this way" might be a cultural perception that exists for me, but might not exist for the characters.

So, for those of you writing those multi-cultural romances. Go beyond the names, locations and food. Don't just simply insert the language of the culture. Take us to the culture.

Scott