Several characters of my apocalypse series are traditionally disallowed to be present in a story not about their ethnicities. Irish, Creole, Italian, and Native being the most obvious. All these ethnicities are traditionally relegated to their own genres, all about them. Irish and Italian Americans are usually mob stories. Native about being Native, such as Dances with Wolves and movies made out of Tony Hillerman novels. Creole the “quadroon” romanticized history. To be in a story not about their ethnicities yet having their ethnicities present is exceedingly rare. Usually, all the characters are relegated to generic cooker cutters of the White Anglo-Saxon Atheist from Protestants, on one hand, and the African American non-Southerner, on the other. Some tokens may be thrown in – Hispanic or Asian -- never a Native. Everyone will speak with an accent and dialect that comes from Michigan, even when they are from areas that have famously pronounced accents and dialects.
For Southern rednecks (self-identified usage of redneck), it would be the depiction of acutely racist white trash with no signs of working-hard pride or religion. A person more familiar in the rural South to a meth head than a redneck. Or made into a Michigan hick who will say “goddamn,” a taboo word in the Bible Belt, known as “GD.”
If my series were Hollywood-ized for a TV series, these characters would be made into the same cookie cutters. And America’s real diversity disappears once more.
Since Book One was attacked by Klan on Amazon, a platform that permits such attacks, some of the diversity was eliminated to hold onto the biggies listed above. Syanna Lynn Claiborne was originally biracial and her mother’s issue over straightening her hair had a bigger motif. Syanna was sacrificed for the greater whole. Her race and skin color are left out entirely from any mention in the rewrite.
A novelist is simply not allowed freedom of speech in America. Though we are hearing about mostly one side, the far-left in their wokes, who are by far savvier on how to get their way, the other extreme, the far-right, is also trying to take away the freedom of speech for novelists.
The Klan attack presented for me a possible reason why Hollywood homogenizes and whitewashes America so much. No one is allowed to depict real America or come anywhere close to doing so, or they will be attacked and accused of everything short of murdering puppies and eating babies. Complete lack of honesty and truth is why trouble keeps going, in this author's opinion.
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