About Jude being Latina. I don't think it was something Holly did retroactively because her name is Duarte and that was pretty up front. Nor do I think Holly is claiming that Jude is "Latina rep" but I DO think stans of her are trying to give her credit for things she didn't do. There are several characters even IN the Cruel Prince where she specifies that they're women of colour and she didn't do that with Jude/Taryn. She didn't "have to say on Twitter" people asked because of Jude's last 1/2
last name + she clarified where that name was from. But even if she was white Latina or Spanish, there isn't any obvious cultural link either. I think Holly chose the last name to avoid being generic but wasn't really trying to represent anyone. I don't know if she SHOULD have wrote from the 1st person POV of a Latina or if she should have just called Jude Jude Smith bc like there's no real cultural background to Jude beside "white default" but also Holly didn't claim any write the 'rep' 2/2
Followup on the Jude is Latina, technically it's her step-dad who is supposed to be Brazilian thing I think, since his last name is Duarte but we don't learn anything about him other than him being a blacksmith
Wait not her step dad. Vivi's step dad. Justin
Okay, while I can’t recall any characters of colour to say “several”, I’ve been told that Heather and Bomb are women of colour. So. Very poor rep - but fine. At least some textual evidence probably exists, otherwise I wouldn’t have seen so many people saying so. But I can confirm that I don’t recall a single instance of Jude being described as anything but white.
And yes, I’ve heard from @bittenwrath that a lot of stans love to claim that Jude is a women of colour, and like you said, it might have had to do with her dad having “Duarte” as a surname. Again, we don’t know whether Holly intentionally chose a latine surname (and I don’t think it’s confirmed in the text that he’s Brazilian, but correct me if that’s the case) or whether she chose it to make it sound unique (which I think is what actually happened).
Like you said, the problem with claiming that Jude is a latina is that there’s isn’t anything that indicates that she’s latina (which is again a very broad term) to begin with apart from her name. White authors also keep mistaking descriptors like “golden skin” and whatnot for being good rep, but no (even this bare minimum isn’t done to describe Jude). That’s not how it works. There’s more to being a poc than simply having a set of features that can be used to describe more than one type poc. There’s food. There’s legends. There’s customs. There’s traditions. There’s unique occupations. There’s different ways of talking and LANGUAGE (perhaps the easiest way in which she could’ve confirmed that Jude wasn’t white! The MOST cop-out move, and she didn’t even resort to that!).
So all of that is really lacking, and I personally find it very hard to believe that Jude amounts to any representation.
With respect to white authors writing about people of colour, I do feel choosing first person isn’t a good choice because it immediately makes the point of view very personal and I don’t like the idea of that. I’m alright with them writing about them in third person POV, but then again, they still have to do extensive research and hire sensitivity readers which they don’t really seem to care about :/
If there is, however, any evidence that suggests that Jude is a woman of colour apart from her name (descriptions of her dad are also significant) feel free to send an ask.
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