QUESTION: What do you say to allegations of racism in Carve the Mark?
This is a question I have been asked several times in the last several weeks since Carve the Mark’s release—sometimes as directly as posed above, and sometimes more indirectly. I was not originally sure whether to answer it or not, because I am aware that as the author of the work in question, my voice is much louder than other voices on this issue and I am wary of drowning out the voices of people who are already discussing this. But I do also try to remain engaged with my readers as they absorb and process my work, and to answer questions honestly when they’re posed to me.
When this critique of Carve the Mark was initially brought up, I decided to wait until the book had come out to decide what to do or say—because I know I’ll never be finished learning about other people’s experiences of the world, I also know I need to take care to listen to a variety of perspectives within marginalized communities before (and after) I speak. A friend of mine sent me an article about cultural humility, and while it’s primarily discussing this in a psychotherapy context, I think it’s still useful here:
“…we never arrive at a point where we are done learning. Therefore, we must be humble and flexible, bold enough to look at ourselves critically and desire to learn more. When we do not know something, are we able to say that we do not know? […]Understanding is only as powerful as the action that follows.” (Amanda Waters and Lisa Asbill, source)
Even as I attempt to contribute to this ongoing discussion by engaging with this question, I want to reiterate that I’m striving to do so from a place of cultural humility.
Before I start talking about Carve the Mark, though, I want to speak to a broader issue related to these questions, because it’s important, I think, to know the context of critiquing race issues in science fiction and fantasy.
Fantasy Worlds and Our World
The temptation for an an author (or a reader) coming from a position of privilege, I think, is to say that because a fantasy world is not our world, because the fantasy people aren’t real people, people marginalized people aren’t allowed to be hurt by harmful portrayals. That’s a difficult thing to fully unpack here, but my opinion is essentially that while a story may take place in a fantasy world, we live in this one, and we bring our perspectives, our history, our biases, our hurts, our everything into the stories we read and write. Ignoring that seems foolish to me. So it’s completely fair to critique a science fiction/fantasy work using real world context.
The harmful trope that has specifically been brought up in connection with Carve the Mark is that of a dark-skinned, aggressive, savage fantasy race. The most prominent example of this trope that I have been exposed to is in Lord of the Rings. On one hand, you have the pale, ethereal elves, a force for good in Middle Earth. On the other, you have dark, brutal orcs. Elves and orcs share an origin, but are fundamentally opposed to one another, and this is physically represented, quite prominently, in color.
I’m not saying you can’t still love and appreciate Lord of the Rings—there are a lot of problematic favorites to be had in literature. But this fictional elf/orc distinction does reinforce actual real world stereotypes, that of dark-skinned races as primitive, violent, and inhuman. These real world stereotypes in many ways contribute to actual harm, historically with colonialism, enslavement, and the dehumanization and murder of dark-skinned people; and currently, in microaggressions, racial profiling, and police brutality, among other things.
This trope isn’t always quite so stark—sometimes the fantasy races in stories are not so transparently “bad guys,” but they serve to offer the main character a source of wisdom , often grounded in nature, that he or they can use to better themselves. It’s a little more difficult for people to understand why this is harmful, since the portrayal isn’t negative. Essentially, it is because this trope treats an entire race of people, with all their complexities, as existing only to serve someone else, usually someone privileged. (Typically that privileged person ends up “saving” the fantasy race, which is an example of the White Savior trope. See also: Avatar, Dune.)
For more about this, you can check out the TV Tropes page for Fantastic Racism, which is a good jumping off point: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticRacism
You can also read about the “white savior” trope here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightyWhitey
Okay, so that’s the basic context for the questions about Carve the Mark. Now let’s dig into the story itself.
The concern that I’ve seen raised more than once about Carve the Mark is that there is one light-skinned, straight-haired race of peaceful people (Thuvhe) warring against a dark-skinned, curly-or-thick-haired race of warriors (Shotet). Okay. So let’s dig into that.
My intention with Thuvhe and Shotet was to make very clear that they are people of blended origins, that they are physically indistinguishable from another. This means that Thuvhe is not populated with light-skinned, straight-haired people, and Shotet is not populated with dark-skinned, curly-haired people—both cultures contain a mixture of physical descriptors. This is significant because of a particular plot point. Spoilers from the first fifty pages of Carve the Mark ahead, marked by asterisks: ***Akos’s innate ability to speak Shotet is perceived as a sign of Shotet ancestry, and indeed current belonging to the Shotet culture. This requires him to look like he could belong there, or the question isn’t as relevant or significant to Akos’s emotional development.***
I decided to establish the varieties of skin color and hair texture and eye color available to both Thuvhesits and Shotet in the book by representing that variety within Akos’s and Cyra’s families. Here are some examples from the book:
Cisi: “In this light, with her curly hair framing her face, she was Aoseh’s daughter, pure and simple.” (p23)
“Dark curly hair framed her face…” (p319)
“I could tell Cisi’s skin from Isae’s only by its darker shade.” (p385)
Akos: “He had fair skin, and a kind of wary tension in his body, like he was bracing himself.” (p60)
Eijeh: “…a second boy, with dense, curly hair, stumbled along.” (p60)
“Eijeh’s eyes were pale green. An unusual color, like iridescent insect wings…against his light brown skin, so like the milky earth of the planet Zold, they almost glowed.” (p64)
Ryzek: “…his skin was so pale he looked almost like a corpse.” (p60)
Ylira: “I was looking at my mother’s hair. It was dark, like mine, but a different texture—hers was so curly it trapped fingers, and mine was just straight enough to escape them.” (p38)
Cyra and Ryzek, compared: “I was tall, too, but that was where my physical similarities with my brother ended. It wasn’t uncommon for Shotet siblings to look dissimilar, given how blended our blood was, but we were more distinct than most.” (p61)
Cyra, observing a non-Shotet doctor: “His skin was the same shade as my mother’s, however, suggesting a common lineage. Many Shotet had mixed blood, so it wasn’t surprising—my own skin was a medium brown, almost golden in some lights.” (p55)
And I also tried to show this variety in the other Shotet characters (since we spend most of the book with the Shotet), too.
Vas: “the long side of his hair was greasy and limp, the shaved side red with razor burn.” (p59)
The Storyteller: “a tall, pale man opened the door, his hair shaved so close his scalp shone.” (p125)
Lety Zetsyvis: “She had a long blond braid and wore, not the bright colors of the more common Shotet in the crowd below, but subtle blue-gray finery to match her eyes.” (p153)
Jorek: “His skinny brown arms were bare.” (p181)
Yma: “Her long pale hair hung to the middle of her back, perfectly straight.” (p204) Teka: “Teka was in a beam of moonlight that turned her blond hair silver-white.” (p411)
So, to summarize: Shotet is not a culture of dark-skinned individuals. Thuvhe is not a culture of light-skinned individuals. They share a history (discussed on pages 124-129 of the book); they share bloodlines.
Another concern that has been brought to my attention is that the Shotet language, described by outsiders as “harsh” and “guttural,” is based on Arabic or other North African languages—and that other elements of Shotet culture seem to be lifted from Islam. These concerns are related, but not the same, since not all Arabic dialects are the same, not all Arabic-speakers or North Africans are Muslim, and not all Muslims are Arab. I’ll therefore be addressing them language and religion separately.
A note about my history, for context: I lived in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, for five months in 2011-2012. I still have ties to the place. One thing that’s important to note about this part of Romania is that there is a significant Hungarian population there, and the connections we (my husband and I) formed there were primarily with Hungarian people. Hungarian is not a Slavic language or a Romance language, as I’ve heard some people assume—it’s a Uralic language, more closely related to Finnish than to anything else, and has developed on its own, to a certain degree. Check out this language tree:
When I originally wrote a rough draft of what would become Carve the Mark, I was living in Romania. I didn’t want the Shotet language to feel like it was based on something familiar, and there was nothing more unfamiliar to me than Hungarian, since it wasn’t related to any languages I had heard before. So I decided to use some of the sounds that stood out to me from Hungarian.
The reason I didn’t want to just use Hungarian is that I didn’t want to appropriate it. The Hungarians I am acquainted with are a minority population in Cluj; they often experience discrimination there, and their language seems especially dear to them because they can only speak it with each other. (“Hungarian is the language of heaven because it takes an eternity to learn,” is a joke I heard more than once. They aren’t kidding.)
Simply being inspired by another culture isn’t quite the problem—the power difference between the writer/artist and the culture in question is what makes appropriation harmful. Hungarians experience marginalization in Cluj, and I’m a white American, and am afforded a great deal of privilege as a result, even in Romania. If you’re interested in learning more about cultural appropriation, you should read through the Native Appropriations backlog, particularly this post.
(This is a quote within a quote from that post—I believe this is from a Racialicious blog post that is no longer up, but click the above link to get a sense of the source. “It matters who is doing the appropriating. If a dominant culture fancies some random element (a mode of dress, a manner of speaking, a style of music) of my culture interesting or exotic, but otherwise disdains my being and seeks to marginalize me, it is surely an insult.”)
Instead of using Hungarian, then, I took some of the sounds from the language I loved most—the k’s, the long o’s, the harder h sounds, etc.—and came up with a long list of syllables using a ConLang generator. I then pieced together names and words using that list. I kept only one Hungarian name intact (unless it happened by coincidence elsewhere): Akos.
Based on the descriptions in the text, I would say that Shotet might sound like Hungarian, or like German, or Polish. (The latter two are my parents’ native languages, so I’ve heard them more than others.) Those languages aren’t all that similar, but to an American ear their harsher sounds do stand out.
I came up with Thuvhesit using the same process, but with different sounds. Thuvhesit is supposed to sound slippery, breathy, and tricky. To me it bears resemblance to French, Farsi, or Arabic (which I don’t think of as harsh or guttural at all—here, listen. Evidently some of the pronunciation there is distinctly Lebanese, not classic or standard Arabic, but it will give you an idea). Again, those languages aren’t the same, but to my ear they are often breathy, and tricky to pronounce, like Thuvhesit.
A little background on me: I fell one credit short of a religious studies major in college, so most of the classes I took that weren’t about literature or writing were about religion. The program at Northwestern University is secular, meaning it has no religious affiliation. It required a mix of courses on eastern and western religions, but my focus was on western religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam). I am also a practicing Christian, which is an important lens to acknowledge when discussing this.
My particular area of fascination in religious studies was rituals. The first Protestant denomination to which I was exposed was not big on rituals, so I think that was maybe why I found them so interesting—rituals are a way of engaging with history, most of the time, of experiencing anew something that the people who came before you experienced. Pilgrimages are a significant ritual in a lot of world religions, most significantly Islam (as with Hajj), Hinduism (to a variety of places or sites, depending, but the largest gathering in the world is Kumbh Mela, a pilgrimage with an eye to cleansing), and Christianity (to sites that are significant to the life of Jesus). Kumbh Mela takes place approximately every twelve years in a few different sites; Hajj happens yearly but is compulsory only once in a person’s lifetime.
I believe the comparison between Islam and Shotet culture revolves mostly around the Shotet practice of the sojourn. The sojourn is a yearly ritual practice the Shotet engage in, in which they travel around the border of the solar system, following the path of the currentstream (a physical manifestation of an energy known as “the current” which resembles the aurora borealis). They then descend on a planet (a different one each year) and “scavenge,” or search out valuable, discarded items to repurpose them back on their home planet of Thuvhe (which they call by another name, “Urek”). For the majority of the Shotet, this is not a religious practice at all, but it is for some.
The sojourn has been compared to Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, and a mandatory (if you are able) religious practice. Hajj is supposed to be undertaken once in a person’s lifetime, and it’s taken to Mecca. You can get a cursory overview of this practice on the Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj
But the sojourn is not a religious practice, and to divorce Hajj from its religious foundations—from its stated purpose, its ritual garments, its acts of worship, its deep spiritual significance—is to fundamentally misunderstand it. The Shotet sojourn may be a pilgrimage, too, but it’s a way of ensuring that they remember their history, when—for a period of time—they didn’t have a permanent home in the galaxy. The sojourn is a way to remember why it’s important that they remain strong, resourceful, and innovative, and fight for their sovereignty in a galaxy determined to deny it to them.
Scarification—the ritual practice of scarring—and tattooing are another Shotet practice, specifically the markings they make on their arms after causing (or experiencing) loss of life. This was something I personally associated with prisoners—here’s a quote from the Chicago Field Museum’s Tattoo exhibit: “Although tattooing likely began as a way to show one’s status, it has also been used to brand individuals singled out for punishment. In 19th century Europe, criminals were tattooed to identify them as dangerous. However, over time prisoners reappropriated the practice, and used tattoos to defy authority and assert themselves in a hostile environment. In the Soviet Union’s gulags, for example, prisoners tattooed themselves to publicize their crimes.”
As someone with a distinctly Eastern European lens, given my family’s background, this is why the Shotet practice of tattooing interested me—because the tattoos they wear are, to a certain degree, marks of crimes (if not literally, then at least emotionally, for Cyra). However, since the book came out I’ve felt like I didn’t fully consider the associations that most people have with scarification, which is primarily with non-white, non-Western, often marginalized cultures. This is definitely an area I feel I should have tread more carefully. I can’t undo what’s already done, but I think it would be best to de-emphasize this Shotet practice in the next book in the series as much as possible, to minimize its potential damage.
I can’t tell you what to think or how to feel about my work, and I honestly have no desire to. The book is out there now, which means it’s yours to love, or hate, or assess in any way you choose. I am glad that people are considering my work as it relates to important issues like these—glad that people are talking about those issues, period, instead of pretending they don’t exist or affect people. My intention here was only to address reader questions by presenting you with what’s in the book, and to reveal my thought process to the extent that I felt might be helpful. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for bearing with me through a very long and dense blog post—I hope the insights were helpful to you, and feel free to have whatever discussions you choose. I will be listening, but I will try not to impose my authorial voice any further—I feel it’s better to allow people the freedom and the space to feel safe in those discussions.
