[K. Lynn]

As a black woman who’s been a reader since the age of 3 and a writer since the age of 8, I have to say that the Eurocentric literary viewpoint has ALWAYS bothered me. Yet in my stories I basically do the same thing except that the non-black characters are ‘the other.’ I’ve had people tell me in workshop that they didn’t know my character was black other than the fact that I mention the skin color (which I tend to do regardless). When I hear this, I get irritated and wonder whether I need to drop in some sort of Stepin Fetchit-era dialect to help them adapt the character to whatever stereotypical image of black people they have in their minds. What you speak of is part of life in these United States: whites are in the majority, whites have always been in control of much of the media, so it’s whites’ stories that tend to get told, in all their variety, and those are seen as the ‘norm.’ Whereas nonwhites’ stories, particularly when told by whites, tend to fall into predictable stereotypes. That’s because they’re — we’re — the ‘other.’ I don’t know how you can avoid writing from a certain viewpoint without offending or slighting somebody. One way might be to work on creating true characters, regardless of race, that avoid stereotype. I think that’s the true challenge for any writer.

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Name : K. Lynn, Gender : F, Race : Black/African American, Age : 34, City : Chicago, State : IL, Country : United States, Occupation : Writer/programmer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

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