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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Everyday Canvas
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
This is my supplementary blog in which I will post entries written for prompts.
November 7, 2016 at 12:33pm November 7, 2016 at 12:33pm
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Prompt: When writing fiction, is showing the race of a character important especially when it has no bearing on the plot? Why or why not?
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I find the showing the race of a person to be unnecessary unless the author is writing about a racial issue or a historical fact such as the Selma March. After all, saying that character A is purple, character B is blue, character C is green will take away from who these characters really are as to their core values, personalities, and the way they relate to the others and the settings in the story.
On the other hand, I am not putting down those writers who employ such character portrayals as they may have been looking to create more diverse representation; however, when the character’s race is mentioned only when he or she is non-white, this practice may be taken as a referral to the fact that white race is the norm. This is especially damaging to the self-images of the children of any race.
In addition, the readers are cheated out of their own imaginings of what the characters are like. For this very reason, a good number of noted writers do not show the facial and bodily make-up of their characters, unless a certain asset or defect has a direct connection to the plot.
With the specific situation of race relations in the USA, I believe, it is better not to perpetuate unconscious biases by singling out racial elements unnecessarily, and instead, to let the readers imagine the looks of the characters they are reading about, unless identifying the race of a character is important to the plot or the theme.
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