But what is the Human Exotic? It's something that I didn't
discover when composing my book A Company of Moors (and even my latest piece,
The Ghost of Gabriel's Horn), but it's something that I was able to define.
The Human Exotic is what I call the Western-Hollywood
treatment of foreign cultures, or black/people of color. It's where every last
person from a culture of black or brown people (from peasant to king) are
completely absorbed into their culture. Like that's all there is to their
personality. Now regardless of fact or fiction, in writing, again, it can come
off as cliche or stoic.
What I realized when I started writing A Company of Moors,
was that there was a way to present a variety of African cultures that are
often billed as exotic, especially in the time period they're set in (for A Company of Moors, North Africa, 1640), as human. Each character, though are
cliched at their foundation, they grow organically into their respective,
strong and round personalities. (Yes, sometimes cliche isn't bad, it's just
about how you expound on the cliche, or rather, trope). Was it the culture of
the Moors? Was it an interior African kingdom? Was it an nomadic, African
tribe? Yes. I dealt will all three. There were tropes and cliches, but to make
sure the characters (or the entire cultures presented) weren't stale or flat, I
didn't allow their culture to define their personality.
It's what separates The Godfather, Goodfellas, and the
Sopranos as masterpieces than a lot of so-called Urban "Gangsta"
novels that...truthfully...and with no offense...aren't...that well. Written.
Sorry.
Ever notice in real gangster stories or even Westerns, the
characters that allow the cliches to define them end up dead? They walk around
strutting their stuff as gangsters and outlaws, and they either end up arrested
or dead. Michael Corleone and Tony Soprano don't walk around strutting their
stuff as gangsters. And so, they're able to direct their operations
intelligently and use the art of subtlety to maneuver through their clandestine
world. Yes, Tony Soprano had an Alpha Male personality, but he was smart enough
not to flash his criminal activity around.
I allowed the same rule to happen in A Company of Moors. A
character flaunts the fact that he is a descendant of royalty, walking around
arrogantly and demanding to be treated as such. Luckily he's one of the heroes
of the story. He does understand that his lineage means nothing, truly. And he
just uses it as a shield to hide deeper insecurities. But he allows it to
consume him to dire consequences. But he learns his lesson.
In The Ghost of Gabriel's Horn, I delve into the
African-American "Hoodoo"/"Voudon" culture--to some degree.
What I mean by that is, even after doing an intense amount of research, I made
my own rules for the story I was telling. And so, I didn't want to use (or even
define) everything by what I had come across in my research. I used it as
inspiration. I even used older aspects of the culture, and older names of Gods
and Goddesses, to express the story. It made the work its own without being
offensive to its greater African-American/African influences and the people
that practice them. I made them human.
Not to sound arrogant, but the best writers do.
b write black
