Fantasy with Subtle Tones of Diversity
Recently, readers and writers have begun to recognize that in many works of fiction, a character is usually white unless otherwise specified. This notable trend also appears in young adult literature. For some, this has been a troubling revelation. For others, it has served as a call to action. The release of the Hunger Games movie in the Spring of 2012 brought a wider attention to the topic when fans reacted to the ethnicity of Rue with surprise and shock. In the novels, Rue’s ethnicity is not explicitly stated.
The narration never says that Rue is white, and gives hints about her ethnicity, yet fans were surprised when the movie came out with Rue being played by an actress of color named Amandla Stenberg. Although the movie release has made the Hunger Games books the spotlight book for not outright stating a character’s ethnicity if they are not white, it is not the only series to present characters in this manner.
Ursula K. Leguin’s Earthsea Cycle books also represent people of various ethnicities without outright saying that a certain person is such-and-such ethnicity. In an article published in Slate to respond to the less than satisfactory casting of mostly white actors in the Scifi Channel’s Earthsea mini series, Leguin states that she wrote her characters as a sort of rainbow that represents many ethnicities. She says, "I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for 'young adults') might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees-hoping that the reader would get 'into Ged's skin' and only then discover it wasn't a white one” when explaining her decision not to directly point out any character’s skin color (Leguin 2004).
Leguin’s Earthsea novels are important works, as far as ethnically diverse fiction goes. Her works are among the handful of progressive works that treat every ethnicity in the same manner. The characters in Earthsea are of different ethnicities, but no single character’s ethnicity is simplified into being a label. Instead, Leguin uses descriptions to tell readers about the shape of a character’s eye, the color of their hair, or the tone of their skin.
Many novels use these descriptive strategies when dealing with white characters, but then place labels of ethnicity on any non-white character to signify that character’s physical appearance. These other novels do not necessarily mean such labels to be harmful— many intend for them to be a positive thing that introduces diversity into the story. In a speech that she gave at a book expo, Leguin mentions that she has received letters from children of color who have read her books. The children wrote that “when they realized that Ged and the other Archipelagans in the Earthsea books are not white people, they felt included in the world of literary and movie fantasy for the first time” (Leguin Expo Speech 2004). Despite there being characters of various ethnicities within young adult fiction, the children writing letters to Leguin did not feel included in the books that they read.
Including ethnic diversity in young adult fantasy is, as with any genre, important. The letters that Leguin speaks of serve as a reminder that readers may feel excluded from works that use only one ethnicity in their central characters, or that single out difference by using ethnic labels rather than descriptions to point out non-white characters. There are young adult fantasy novels out there that are ethnically diverse works of literature, but there are not nearly as many as those works that have none. For every young adult fantasy novel I could name off the top of my head, only one in ten would include ethnic diversity from the real world. If writers of this genre strive to include more diverse literature into the genre, more young adults of color could feel like they’ve found books that include them.
