Ethnicity and Fantasy
Young adult fantasy works such as Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games and Ursula K. Leguin’s Earthsea represent different ethnicities without labeling those characters with a diversity marker, but this is not the only way that diverse ethnicity is represented in the genre. Some books represent real-world ethnicity by including it in a context that makes sense in the given world context. Others create ethnic groups based on the real-world rainbow of ethnicity and make up new ethnic labels for that ethnicity.
D.J. MacHale’s Pendragon series is one such work that creates ethnic groups. In the first book, Bobby Pendragon travels to a territory, or parallel world, called Denduron, where he finds himself living among the Milago people. The Milago people are repressed under the rule of the Bedoowan tribe, who consider themselves superior in customs, language, and looks. Like the works of Leguin and Collins, it is not clear what the Milago or Bedoowan look like, but it can be inferred from Bobby’s interaction with them that they are ethnically different from one another, and both have very different customs. The Bedoowan treat the Milago poorly in order to keep them in a position of subordination, and force them to preform hard labor to build up the Bedoowan civilization.
Interactions between the two tribes is reminiscent of various events in the history of humans in which one ethnic group asserted power over another with beliefs of false superiority. Bobby makes it clear that he does not feel that the Bedoowan should repress the Milago because neither tribe is superior. As he tries to free the Milago tribe, events begin to domino and both tribes are pitted against one another in a revolutionary war for freedom, not unlike events in our own history.
The fact that one tribe is subordinate to the other may be seen as problematic rather than diverse. It has been argued that novels that present an ethnic minority in a position of servitude does nothing but further alienate young adult readers of color, as well as perpetuate stereotypes and negative connotations. While this can be true in some cases, this first book of the Pendragon series presents the plight of these people as an issue that needs to be overcome rather than something naturally occurring to the world.
What Bobby discovers over his time in this world is that the Milago people have not always been enslaved by their neighboring tribe. Their servitude happened only recently, after a wicked Traveler named Saint Dane entered the world with the intention of causing chaos in the world’s social and natural workings. This twist implies that the oppression of one group of people by another is not a naturally given right, and is not something that was bound to happen. The people of Denduron likely would not have fallen into this cycle of oppression if the villain of the series had not set it in motion.
Ethnicity in the Pendragon is not only found in the plight of the people of Denduron, but also in two of the main traveler characters. MacHale treats the ethnicities of the travelers Loor and Spader in much the same way as Leguin and Collin. Throughout the books, readers can piece together an image of Loor that reveals that she is brown, and from a strong tribal background, while Spader is more Asian. Both characters come from territories other than where Bobby is from.
Another way that young adult fantasy novels may work to include ethnic diversity is by creating a world context in which a character’s ethnicity may be compared to real-world ethnicities, but with an invented ethnic label applied. In SharonShinn’s Gateway, she creates three diversity groups in the parallel world that her half-Chinese heroin, Daiyu, visits. Daiyu compares these ethnic groups to familiar ones back in her home world, which would be terms that are familiar to the real-world as well.
The Han, who are culturally dominant in this new world and view themselves as superior to all other ethnicity groups, are compared to the Chinese. Daiyu recognizes Cangbai people, like Daiyu’s new friends Kalen and Aurora, as white. She also comes to understand that Shinn people, like Ombri, are black. In the parallele word’s context, the Han are the people with social privilege derived merely from their ethnicity. The Cangbai and Shinn are forced to live in the dilapidated housing of the city, taking physical labor jobs or jobs that serve the Han.
Throughout her time in this parallel world, Daiyu is constantly reminded that her new friends are seen as socially inferior. As she is taken in by an affluent Han woman in order to get closer to the novel’s antagonist, she encounters several situations where she expresses distress at relying on the services of a Cangbai or Shinn laborer merely because she is part of the ethnic majority.
Shinn’s novel is an interesting one because it changes what the dominant ethnicity in the United States is based on a chance altercation in history. Readers may find this flipping over of ethnic majority enlightening, as Daiyu has insight into how each character lives based on their ethnicity. This novel is also a good representation of young adult fantasy literature that has ethnic diversity because it follows main characters of three different ethnicities.
Both MacHale and Shinn’s works present diverse ethnicities in different manners. While MacHale takes the path of implied ethnicity to include more readers in his works, Shinn creates a new context from which to view ethnic diversity. These two strategies are often used in young adult fantasy literature that represent diversity.