From the 1988 movie version of The Milagro Beanfield War novel.
When I read The Milagro Beanfield War last week, I thought about several things: the socially conscious and frequently comedic nature of John Nichols’ impressive 1974 novel, the skill in which he depicted his quirky/decidedly un-affluent characters, the book’s great sense of place, the wordy novel being longer than it needed to be (it could have lost about 100 of its 445 small-print pages), the unfortunate fates of too many animals in the book, and…”cultural appropriation.”
That’s because Nichols was a white “Anglo” author writing about a (fictional) New Mexican rural community in which most of the residents are Hispanic.
Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Obviously, Hispanic writers writing about Hispanic characters and culture is often the ideal; I’m certainly a big fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. Same for Black writers writing about Black characters and culture — whether the compelling storyteller is Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia Butler, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zadie Smith, Buchi Emecheta, Terry McMillan, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Walter Mosley, Wole Soyinka, or Chinua Achebe…etc. (At least a couple of these authors are biracial.)
But skilled white writers can — though of course not always — make the imaginative leap into the psyches of characters with different ethnic and racial backgrounds, just as skilled writers of color can do the opposite. The same for women writing about men and vice versa. It takes care, sensitivity, some lived experience, research, a thirst for not stereotyping, and more. (It helped that the California-born John Nichols lived in Spain and Guatemala, among other places, and then moved to New Mexico — where he remained for more than 50 years.)
John Steinbeck was another white writer pretty adept at depicting Hispanic culture — mostly notably in the at-times-quite-comic Tortilla Flat, but in other novels, too. He also did a darn good job with the Chinese-American character Lee in East of Eden.
Which reminds me that contemporary Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen created some believable white characters amid the indelible Vietnamese characters in The Sympathizer and The Committed.
While Harriet Beecher Stowe’s depiction of the title character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin has drawn very mixed reactions the past 172 years (I don’t think Tom was as stereotypical as some say), there’s little to criticize about Stowe’s excellent treatment of the prominent Black characters Eliza and George in her famous 1852 anti-slavery novel.
On the flip side, the biracial French author Alexandre Dumas created scintillating portrayals of white characters in The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, and various other works — while also doing a great job with his one novel (Georges) starring a Black protagonist.
I’ll add that white author John Grisham is very adroit at giving his readers three-dimensional Black protagonists in novels such as The Racketeer and The Judge’s List.
And the aforementioned James Baldwin expertly depicted the all-white cast of characters in Giovanni’s Room, one of the earlier novels with a gay theme.
Your thoughts about this topic?
My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )
This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂
In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about topics such as my local library temporarily closing after its aged air-conditioning failed — is here.
Dave Astor on Literature 