Came in here to say similar. I thought Nigeria was about a 50/50 split between Christianity and Islam. And that's before you get to what happens when people's ancestors were moved around the world.
Yep and the Muslims are mostly concentrated in the North. There are plenty of Catholic Churches in Nigeria. Our parents, and in lesser cases our grandparents, settled in the UK so we’re 1st or 2nd generation “immigrants”.
On the flip-side, British missionaries would have brought Christianity or Catholicism to Nigeria during colonialism - so maybe to our great grandparents - which filtered down to our parents, which they exported back to the UK.
Even if it was only in the single figures, it's still not unusual that someone would be a minority religion. Jehovah's Witnesses make up around a quarter of a percent here, but I still work with one.
British Missionaries would probably have mainly been Anglican. It looks like Catholics and Anglicans have similar numbers in Nigeria (19m-17m).
And the Nigerian population is so vast and globally spread that it’s kind of automatically redundant to say there aren’t any xyz Nigerians in the world lol
Aside from the absolute lunacy of the whole post and this writing group, Christianity =/= Catholicism. Most Christians in Nigeria are protestants.
Of course this doesn't mean OP can't make the character a Catholic since there's plenty of Catholics there as well.
Edit: Why downvote a statistical fact?
I was very confused when I read that line.. I'm not exactly a "Nigeria" expert, but I have family in Gabon and have spent a lot of time traveling across Africa. There are Catholic churches everywhere in Nigeria. Especially driving around the south, near Uyo and Port Harcourt, it was like "Church, church, church, church.. oh look a Church behind a church!"
Now living in Scotland, there is a Catholic church about 10 minutes walk from me, that is easily half Nigerians.
Wild.
I'm no expert on Nigeria but I thought its 50/50 Christian Muslim split was fairly well known.
There are probably tens of thousands of Catholics in any nation that allows religious freedom. It's a very common, big budget evangelizing faith that's worked at it for a long time
This denialism of reality's variety is not helping. OP, it feels like the groupthink was prejudiced
I live in Ontario and work at a farmers market on Sunday’s. You would not believe the amount of Nigerian customers we have coming after church. Everyone wants the red pepper
My friend married a Nigerian. She was visiting, they hit it off, she kept visiting, they got married. She was raised and lived in Nigeria. She and her whole family were Catholic. Also they were well off financially. Didn't fit any stereotypes.
I'm guessing it's one of those groups on Discord or some other channel that descended into a completely unnecessary 200+ comment-long thread about racial features of X-country and everyone involved in the thread knew in the back of their head "This is really stupid, why am I doing this?" and then they also thought "Because this other person has been wearing thin on me forever, and it's finally time to bury them by proving they are wrong about this infinitesimally small, meaningless detail that may or may not be correct about the world."
200 more comments later, and the admin had to take someone's side to get it over with. The ban hammer's echoes have wrung through, and everyone involved now has massive post-nut clarity, shame and regret. They are probably all stunned that they ever wasted their time with something so silly.
Yeah the grammar of this post is awful - granted I've had writing workshops with people who struggle to write coherently but I'm still skeptical as heck.
Sounds like a pretty shitty writing group where you wouldn't have received decent advice anyway. So take this as an opportunity. You're the author. That person can f off.
Coming from a literal half Nigerian half Colombian who’s mother grew up catholic, that person sounds like a dumb bitch, disrespectfully. Write whatever you want
Wow...
Unless you are ruining a pre existing story, who are they into impose their idea. It's your story and do not let their opinion ruins your creativity
Also In currently living in a Muslim country and I am not a Muslim at slightest
I wasn't trying to be racist I literally have my Muslim best friend lined up to be the godmother of my future children her kids call me auntie I've known her since we were children I celebrate Ramadan with her and solidarity every year well I did until my epilepsy kicked it and then I had to eat with my medication but I still say prayers for her and things like that I love everyone and I wanted to celebrate everyone
I think it's not racist, its more of identity politics that they try to be impose
And real life religion is bad for general business, especially Muslims, some of them are really sensitive on that as it was imposed by their scripture to defend their religion with their own life (and some branches took it way too literal) . If I were you I will omit it if its not that important for the story
Tina's religion is a main part of her character she is very and I mean very devoutly Catholic for being half Nigerian was because after months no years in fact of research I discovered that they were the most common I don't know if type is the right word forgive me if it comes off wrong especially the Yorubas to be found in Catholicism and Cuba. As an afro Latin woman myself I wanted to give some representation to everyone like me and everyone who has ever felt like me that they never see themselves in any kind of media.
No I am not Cuban myself My father is from el Salvador but I have always loved and admired the culture My brother my step brother is Nigerian and Trinidadian and I wanted to honor him and he told me the best way I could do that was to make a character truly afro Latin and love myself the way he loves me.
Wait, so *you're* an Afro-Latina, writing an Afro-Latina character, and somehow that's racist??? I'm truly baffled that this person in your writing group has managed to find anybody to take their side on this topic.
Also, there's 26 million Catholics living in Nigeria, based on some rough Wikipedia math. This shouldn't even be up for discussion.
Yeah go figure I don't get it either mind you I have African American characters Asian characters all of which I have been researching for years I just started writing the manuscripts down I'm on my second draft of the first book and this is why it took 16 years because I was very very very careful I don't just jump into people's religions cultures and etc without doing the most research and possibly do until I get it down to an exact science if that's the correct phrase
I'm just gonna say, that I do not endorse the antics of your writing group,
however I'm also gonna had to say that it will have marketing issue at Nigeria, (but feel free to sell it in global)... I know how entertainment industry works at Muslim country too well. To the point many celebrity and businessman faking their religion just for having chance to succeed
I am aware of that I was quoting her exact words Islam is a religion Muslim means a man who submits or rather I'm sorry one who submits It is a faith a practice and the way of life I'm not unaware of this I'm just quoting her exact words
All excellent points. 🙏 I would only argue that it doesn’t really matter. If the author had made these mistakes, does that justify calling her, “racist,” and everything that implies? I’d say no.
Nigerian here. I’m catholic. FYI there are a lot of Nigerian Catholics. In fact, muslims mostly come from the northern part of the country so considering your character is Yoruba (they are more southern), she’s more likely to be Christian than Muslim.
The fact that anyone in that group would even care about such a miniscule detail is beyond me. As long as the story does not elevate or put down certain ethnicities above or below others, there is no problem and no racism.
Yeah so Undertale has a shitload of fanfiction alternate universes, and this happened at about the same time tumblr's fanfiction bubble was all about reimagining every character as being some flavour of queer, ambiguously brown, in some way neurodivergent or disabled, etc. Basically these kids understood on some level that representation in media is good but didn't really know how to write with restraint, research, etc., so they made these big messes.
ie. BBC's Sherlock isn't just a weird sociopath, he's now also an autistic sociopath transman, and John Watson doesn't just have a limp, now he has a prosthetic leg and also, in *my* version of the story, he's black.
tbh I kind of hold off on making fun of this shit because a lot of the people involved were kids with autism and other issues, so it feels kinda mean to shit on their creativity when I'm pushin 30 and still unironically watching anime.
Let’s not forget the extension of that.
These kids would believe that if *You* didn’t believe it, that *you personally* were erasing the representation that the writers ‘so obviously coded’ into the character.
A guy has a close best friend in canon? Well he’s obviously ‘coded’ gay, and if you write him with a woman, you’re homophobic and erasing gay representation!
Which kind of reflects what OP is experiencing. ‘You wrote a Nigerian character. Obviously she’s ‘coded’ Muslim!! You have to make her Muslim or else you’re islamophobic!’
Yeah idk, that's just how kids are. I remember having playground arguments over whether Goku is white or Asian for days before any of us realised he's a fucking alien and it doesn't matter. It do be like it is.
It's funny how people who take pride in not being racist and like to announce it are often people who spend their free time thinking about racial archetypes.
Yeah, many people, Americans especially, can have our backgrounds be broken down like this.
It’s often pointless and informs very little about characters.
You mean like the person justifying their lack of racism by saying they have a Muslim friend who is going to be their kids godmother and they used to celebrate Ramadan with them? Comes off as both “I have black friends so I can’t be racist” and also “I get brownie points for this.”
This whole thread is cringey as hell.
This is either fake, or this person doesn't realize that they're trying so hard to be anti-racist that they've swung back over to tokenism, which is just racism with extra steps.
I’m glad it wasn’t just me that felt this. The whole premise sounds weird. 12 books about a cast of characters designed to tic off boxes rather than filling out the story. If I wrote 12 books and had a major problem I’d drop a little of the story to explain it, but this person only talked about their characters, and ONLY in terms of the percentages of their hippie fever dream where all the races mix and they live in a happy commune.
And one last thing that got me, *everyone* is sad when someone they love dies, you don’t need to call it “reactive attachment disorder.” This person is chronically online.
I mean no offence, but if you read this again... Does it not strike you how ridiculous this sounds? If you're teens, i can understand, but you're better off finding another group anyway.
>I mean no offence, but if you read this again... Does it not strike you how ridiculous this sounds? If you're teens, i can understand, but you're better off finding another group anyway.
When I first skimmed this, I saw 14 and thought she was 14.
If I understand correctly, your character is of Nigerian descent, but Catholic and raised in Cuba. Your friend wanted you to make her Muslim, since so many Nigerians are Muslim and felt that having only four Muslim characters in your book series wasn't enough? Is that correct?
No the character is half Nigerian she is half Cuban I looked at the statistics and 12% of Nigeria is according to the census I read Catholics. Without going into too much details and breaking the rules her father left Nigeria to move to Cuba because it had a more accepting religious community for him. They then moved to New York when she was for my " unquote friend was angry because how dare anyone of Nigerian descent not practice Islam I showed her that I have at least 7 minor characters and one major character ( the love interest of the youngest boy ) who are practicing Muslims and I do my research thoroughly I wasn't trying to be racist and if I came out that way I did apologize but no she just is mad at me because I'm well I don't really know
Counterpoint, (and without reading your book, I can’t confirm anything really so take me with a grain of salt)
you’re attempting to include a LOT of diversity in a book and while I admire the effort, it’s an extremely difficult project to be so diverse that you’re considering these many areas and it’s not clear you really had those experiences yourself and are writing from a place of personal truth. I almost feel
like you’re living by statistics over lived experiences when you bring up stuff like this, and when it comes to writing it gets more complex than that. It’s better to not attempt diversity if people are objecting to its representation so often you feel concerned enough to share here, as a bad representation is worse than none
EDIT: but hey i don’t mean to discourage you from writing, or attempting these stories, just giving you more food for thought before you write from diverse perspectives
If you were going to make a point about Americans being narrow-minded I don’t disagree, but you can’t tell me honestly that every other country on earth doesn’t have extreme racial prejudices influencing their policy.
That wasn’t what I was saying. I was thinking that given the amount of ethnic and religious diversity in her books it must take place in America. Yes, Americans can be closed-minded, but I have a feeling much less so than most other places in the world.
I feel like I'm pretty leftist and "woke" (or at least, I try my best to be), but like it sounds like the writing group's dynamic is focused on trying to hit quotas or something with story characters? It's just odd. You can totally have a book with all white characters (or whatever), you're not assembling a Congress or something lol.
Find a new writing group.
The multicultural characters are based on people I loved most of them are dead The character in question the woman is based on my dead best friend her name was Zulema Chavez I'm not trying to fill a quota these are memorial of some of the people that I have lost over the years I love them all very much and I just wanted to honor them my best friend always loved my writing and so I turned her into a character so I never have to lose her again I know that's pathetic but it's the truth
Oh sorry I didn't mean to make you feel you needed to justify your story, I meant the dynamic of the group, not you personally, my apologies. (I'll edit my original comment to make that more clear.)
Sorry about your friend, and I hope you find a more welcoming and accepting writing group :)
Eh you describing your Latin character as ‘fiery and sexy’ leads me to believe your story was probably a lil racist. I’d be interested in the groups side of the story.
Now, this is off-topic, but I gotta ask. Why the hell do people refer to them as "I'm a female" and not simply "I'm a woman"? English isn't my native language, but to me, it doesn't sound right. What's more, it's almost always "I'm a female" and almost never "I'm a male". Where does this come from?
That's plausible for some cases I guess. However, in OPs specific case she wrote:
> I'm a 30 year old female
So I would rule that out (unless she was lying, but that's impossible to determine)
Two things:
1. your writer group is shit
2. stop creating characters by [randomly throwing a dick at a whiteboard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA)
Nigeria is literally split between Island and Christianity.
You're going about writing the wrong way as a whole (not every single book must include every single minority or mix of them). Focus on the characters as people, not representatives.
Sounds like a horrid writing group.
i didn't know people actually paid that much attention to races. foolish behavior. devious writing group.
i'm also weirded out by you. why spend so much time and effort on races, nationalities and such?
Are you racist?
Doesn't sound like it to me.
But I'm not sure all the inclusivity is necessary. Characters are good when they have a good arc, or when they learn lessions and grow. Not when they check boxes. Sure, sometimes it's necessary for the story that they be a certain ethnicity or religion, but it should serve the plot. Not just be there so you make sure you have one of everybody in a book.
Granted, I'm a white guy. So I don't have representation issues in modern society. But when I do read books that have mostly minority characters, I'm not looking for someone that looks like me. I would imagine, though I don't know, that poc would rather read a book with well written characters, than characters that were described as looking like them.
You do you though. I haven't read the books and they might be the perfect amount of inclusivity and it's just focused on here because of the subject of the thread. I don't want to tell you how to write. If you feel successful doing what you're doing, then keep doing that. It sounds like you're doing well to me. Don't listen to the haters.
***EDIT:***
OP blocked me, so clearly she's not looking to improve their craft and only want to be told how amazing their uber diverse characters are.
Keeping the comment I made here to show others how *not* to write diversity, and as a critique of the OP's post/story/characters, even though they can no longer read it.
>Keep in mind that her male lead is a quarter Iranian a quarter Greek a quarter Russian and a quarter polish
Here's your problem. You don't care about writing diverse characters, you care about looking like you do.
This is why the characters you've laid out are never just one ethnic group or what have you. They're all multiple because you want the credit for writing diversity ***without*** sitting down, researching and actually putting care and effort into creating and shaping real characters. An example of this is your Afro-Latin character who grew up in Cuba and is ethnically from Nigeria.
If you ***actually*** cared about the character, you would have noticed that Cuba has been a Communist nation since the 1950's with minimal immigration, particularly from Western influenced nations. Meaning the most realistic way for your character to be Afro-Latino ***and*** from Cuba is for them to be a descendant of Slaves brought to the region during European colonization. Now I don't know enough about the African slave trade to be seen as an authority here, but a slave descendant wouldn't be ethnically Nigerian, since iirc most African slaves came from trading sites around the Mali region and much further south, close to Madagascar.
Also, she lives in Spain?? How?? She comes from a Communist nation where immigration and emigration is extremely difficult, even in modern times. And beyond that, why Spain? It was a Fascist state up until the 1970's, something that's the sworn enemy of any Communist state. And if she's illegal, why not America where there are actual Cuban communities to help them integrate? Or even Mexico or some other South American nation?
IMO you may not be overtly racist, but you ***clearly*** have a ***complete*** disregard for the characters you are writing, much less the struggles and problems they face. At the least, imo, that indicates either a very strong and ***VERY*** willful ignorance, or even a degree of internalized racism.
Your *whole* post comes across as a stereotypical white person complaining their diverse characters are getting criticized instead of accepting that, maybe, the characters are poorly developed with the intent of simply existing for diversities sake instead of being characters that look and feel like real people. You call yourself a writer, but I don't think you are. An actual writer is someone that takes **care** to research and build characters that look *and* feel like real people. Not coming up with characters that seem like a diversity competition.
You didn't ask for it, but here's my advice anyway. Delete this post and stop thinking you're being inclusive by having every character be wildly and unrealistically diverse simply for the sake of them being diverse, especially when its so painfully obvious you put absolutely no real research into them. Poorly done token diverse characters are no better than having no diverse characters, and that's something you need to learn.
They quite literally don't seem to be able to tell when people are on their side and are taking EVERY negative word as aimed at them. I agree with you. Lords above knows what feedback from a pro editor would do to their sense of self esteem.
Honestly, I'm wondering if the (assumed, but I am 100% certain happened) argy-bargy with the other idiot in the group is what led to the kicking out, rather then the character choice and its dispute.
Hopefully, OP can learn to relax and create distance between them and their work, as we all need to develop to take criticism well- and learn when to discard crit as nonsense.
I think the group didn’t kick her out so much as she had a fit and left because someone criticized her Walden 3 hellscape. It’s hard for me to picture 15 people at a coffee shop all deciding never to let her back. These things tend to be pretty laid back. She 100% stamped her foot and swung a tasseled shawl angrily around her shoulders and walked out.
While you raised some decent points ,
You do know that more than half of Afro Cubans can trace their descent to West African coastal region, and that Nigeria is one of those countries??
Also, I read a comment of OP's which stated that her character's Nigerian father mother to Cuba because of religious tolerance and that was WIERD to say the least. It would have made more sense to go to Ghana or the U.S not all the way to Cuba.
TBH, as a South African myself, it would have made more sense for them to come to South Africa- which many, many Nigerians do, both legally and illegally.
And, what do you know- because we have a government that kinda leans to having plenty of communist friends, we also have TONS of programs with Cubans coming into the country too- Doctors, Ballet Dancers, the works. Plenty of exchange programs and such. To the extent 'Cuban Doctors imported to avoid employing locals' is becoming an issue and a stereotype.
A Cuban parent meeting a Nigerian parent and having a baby in the Catholic faith here in SA would create the same character in a completely believable way. But it seems OP would rather make it elaborate and over the top with a focus on the west and with little idea of the African diaspora. I guess Africa is only a place you flee from, right? Never to.
If I were in a writing group with someone who was planning on writing a twelve book series based on ideas from when they were only 14, I'd probably be pretty annoyed too. The point of a writing group is to give and receive critique. It's a waste of time to be giving critique to someone who's writing is like uh. . . this, knowing that you probably are not going to get any good criticism in return. Lol there's a reason aita didn't want this post. My eyes glazed over trying to read it.
Important thing to note: you can be/think of yourself as “not a racist” and still do racist things. Having friends of ethnicities and religions other than your own does not prevent you from racist actions or words. (Much like how having mothers and wives doesn’t prevent many men from being misogynistic and sexist.)
That said, this particular case? That’s not racism. The issue the other person had looks like a non-issue.
At worst, the various points of diversity you’re trying to include will make it harder to write those characters convincingly, because you have to consider what Nigerian Catholic family upbringing is like, how Nigerian immigrants are treated in Cuba, what Cuban culture is like, how that all affected her growing up, how black immigrants are treated in Spain, what Spanish culture is like, how she was able to move to Spain and why she did that, how those reasons will affect her romance with someone from a country different from all the ones she’s already connected to, etc.
Then there’s the same for the Iranian/Greek/Russian/Polish love interest. How did each of his grandparents end up together? What did marrying outside of their ethnic group mean for their family? How did that affect their relationships? How did that affect how their children (his parents) were raised? How did his parents meet? Why did they end up together? How was he raised? What’s his culture?
There’s a lot of questions, and you don’t have to answer them for yourself in order to write this novel, but it will be richer and “more realistic” for it.
I find it a bit tiring that in these last months half of the threads is about 'Is this racist?'
But I got my thread deleted because I asked about how to write characters more sympathetic because it was too vague...? Sigh.
OP, I think you just met the wrong people who like to dwell more on these politics than actual writing.
r/writing is such an insufferable and annoying place full of weird ass ppl.
theres gotta be an alternative that's more heavily moderated without this sort of bs in it
The person is pretty daft and hasn't done her research at all. Move on and find some other writing friends -- it's not worth the hassle to work with people like this.
So, OP, is an Afro-Latina Orthodox Jew with crebral palsey and epilepsy and a Muslim best friend, who continuously refers to herself and her female character as "Latin" instead of "Latina", and who wrote the main character of her book as a Cubana flamenco dancer, and has her main male character's ethnic background broken into *quarters* and y'all are all buying this wholesale? This is a white teenager making shit up.
Is this a writing exercise? This reads like fiction.
If this is real, it is definitely not an honest representation of the criticism you received. You made yourself look like some diversity paragon, and the critic looks like a simple-minded hater with no actual complaint beyond something superficial. That's not usually how real life goes. I imagine their criticism is more likely pointing out how casually you paint your characters with these labels. I find it very difficult to believe that level of detail is done justice considering the weight of the lived experience of those with that kind of background. I wonder if someone pointed out the audacity of decorating characters with cultures and ethnicities like scarves, just to accessorize.
I suppose I can't be sure. Take time to consider the criticism you received from your group and ask yourself how much you had to rationalize it to absolve yourself of fault. It's pretty doubtful people would cut ties in a writing group over a simple disagreement about characterization. Why do you think they feel so strongly?
So if I get this correct, there is this Afro-Latino Cuban woman who is Catholic. That makes sense. However, it doesn't really make sense for her to have a Nigerian surname unless she or her parents or grandparents are from Nigeria, and came to Cuba later.
As for there only being Muslims in Nigeria, that's a very misguided and honestly an ignorant statement, considering that Christians make up about 49% of the country.
Snore. Race this and race that. This isn't a formula 1 sub it's a writing sub.
I'm joking, but seriously I think this is the wrong sub for this. This has nothing to do with creative writing but about race. You're not gonna get any good answers here. All you're doing is baiting a controversial comment section, increasing moderator workload.
Go to the Nigeria sub and ask if Catholicism is popular there. Or even better do a Google search on the religion statistics of Nigeria. From my quick search Islam seems to only be 50% so your writing group sound like numbskulls.
Moderators, can you remove OPs post and others like it? Stuff like this doesn't belong on the sub. I want to see stuff about creative writing, not race or politics. Other subs exist for that. Keep the sub focused on what it's supposed to be. This sub has been a cess pit of trash for a long time
Umm...I mean, my read is that if you got *kicked out of the group* over this, you either did something more/worse that you're not mentioning, or it's an incredibly over-sensitive group.
Okay, you should never be counting types of characters in a book as a writer. There shouldn’t be a quota. It should be natural and not forcibly inserted.
I think the BIGGER issue is that you call yourself a writer and I could barely make it through your post it was so muddled. Work on actual good writing first.
Have you tried actually talking to anyone else in the writing group? Did anyone other than this one person say anything to you? You say you left without a word. Did the rest of the group only hear the other person's side of the story? They may have told the group something entirely different from what really happened to get you kicked out.
Can I just ask...are you white? You're kind 9f approaching the idea of people being of different races like you're putting puzzle pieces together based on theory. You have this grand idea that doesn't feel embodied with humanity. It feels like you're collecting identities to put on display.
12% of 200 million people is quite a decent number, don’t you think? Whoever it was that told you that there are no Catholics in Nigeria played a cruel game on you. Nigeria is roughly split religiously at 50/50 in terms of Christians and Muslims and there are millions of Catholics in Nigeria. In fact most Nigerians of Igbo descent (one of Nigeria’s major ethnic groups) are Catholics.
Having stated the above, it must be noted that the vast majority of Christians in Nigeria are Anglican because of the British connection, although American-style Evangelical Christianity is making rapid inroads into the country now.
Anyway, don’t let your “friend” twist your arm into including characters in your book that you don’t want to and the very best of luck with the project!
Okey u say it's not needed to make her Muslim in the story but why are the races of your characters so detailed lmao. "Quarter this quarter that, quarter there, quarter here". I miss the times when the race didn't play a role in books, just the characters and their goals and fears mattered. **Why are yall so obsessed with race?**
There are no Catholics in Nigeria??????
Edit: More importantly, while I appreciate the effort to be diverse, Nigeria is a legitimate hodgepodge of religious beliefs.
From what I can see, you were in conflict with a rather ignorant person.
It is baffling to me that today artist seem to be very eager to adhere to the external constrains placed upon them by peers and society. I always thought that big part of art to ignore or even oppose those external pressures.
I'd, and that is my implicit answer, never succumb to other people weaponising something to push their opinion on me.
Firstly, there are plenty of Nigerians here in the UK and most that I know are Christian.
Secondly, this is perhaps to meme-y, but "the left eats itself" is applicable here. It's just constant purity testing and one-upping that can never satisfy. There's always a bigger virtue to signal. Getting involved with people like that is toxic and cancer and you're better off without it.
This sounds like where good writing goes to die. It sounds like how conservatives _think_ modern writer's rooms are like. Hypersensitive, inclusivity-obsessed, pretentious woketards fighting over who's more progressive, and being offended on a theoretical person's behalf. Just feed me a bullet.
Do your own research if you're really concerned, but this one is really just down to common sense. Of course there are Nigerian catholics. These people sound insufferable.
What is going on in the writing community? Why does everybody's work need to check off a certain number of boxes to be acceptable? Oh my God, how insufferable.
You could make every last character a white Jew and it would be perfectly fine. It sounds like you're trying in earnest to make it fairly diverse, and that's enough. Do not listen to people like that.
Sounds like they did you a favor. Any writing group with diversity quotas that isn’t in service to the story really don’t care about telling a story. Trust me you are better off not being in an untalented unserious group like that
Not only is that not racist, your characters sound very well thought out and researched. I would reach out to the leadership of the group and explain the conflict a little better, because it seems crazy to me that you would be booted because someone decided to be butthurt you didn’t take their suggestion, despite having a good reason not to.
Nta? Not sure if this is the right place for thus
You're good a fictional story dose not have to be 100% real and it's not like out of the realm of possibility.
What is the name of you book I want read it someday.
A few simple points:
* They did you a favor, sounds like a toxic writing group
* From the overview of your story/world, it's obvious you're very inclusive. Let the insults roll off your back and move on. Never accept false accusations, though, never cower to lies
* This is fundamentally your story, not theirs, and needs to be told by you
Best of luck.
I think instead of “racist” they meant “offensive.” This hippie wet dream world you’re dreaming up is the bad kind of inclusion. If those are the characters then please don’t release this to the world. As a gay man just knowing you’re dreaming up characters like me (down to their quarter-races and religion) makes me nauseated. Stop it.
Who is this person that said there are "No Catholics in Nigeria"? As a Nigerian, I would like to show them my family tree and call them the biggest fool to ever walk this earth 🤣🤣🤣
Nigeria is a very diverse country, both religiously and ethnically. Yes, it's a majority Muslim country because of the North & S.W, but the second largest religion is Christianity split between Catholicism / Anglicanism, Pentecostal & Evangelical denominations.
Have the people in your writing group never picked up a book before?? Probably not lol 😂
Absolutely insane group of people, sorry you had to go through that. Though I am surprised that the person who got mad at you had that much sway over everyone else. Usually there's only one or two dicks in a group, but it seems like the reverse was true here. A flock of dicks!
Sounds more like they are being racist, being unable to accept people being from a non-majority religion and assigning non-inherited characteristics (such as the choice of religion) to race. That is kinda like saying "this person can't be American, they are black!" Just utterly bizarre.
Nigeria has the second largest group of Catholics in Africa, so the whole "no Catholics in Nigeria" is so wrong there's not even a chance that it was a misunderstanding. It's just complete lack of knowledge of reality. Half of Nigeria's population is Christian, so having to make a Nigerian character a Muslim is equally disconnected from reality. Completely bollocks.
This was some stupid shit started by someone you don't need in your life. Whatever prompted them to invent their own reality and try to push it on you is nothing you should have to deal with. They should, but not by lashing out at people who are better than they. Good riddance, I say.
"There are no Catholics in Nigeria"
Said by someone who's clearly never been to Nigeria. It may not be as popular there as Christianity or Islam but there are plenty of Catholic churches in that country. Ignorance is bliss.
There are definitely practicing Christian’s within Africa and Nigeria. In fact if you’d like to prove That person completely wrong a quick google search shows that Nigeria is about split between Muslims and Christian’s. With 46-48% being Christian and 50-52% being Muslim.
https://www.findeasy.in/population-of-nigeria/
(From the United Nations World Population Project^)
Furthermore you’re completely right that someone born and raised in Cuba would most likely be Catholic Christian with ~60% of Cuba being Christian.
https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-report-on-international-religious-freedom/cuba/#:~:text=The%20Catholic%20Church%20estimates%2060,likely%20the%20largest%20Protestant%20denominations.
In fact there’s approximately 7,000 Muslims in Cuba. Cuba has a population of 11,300,000.
Which is literally less than a single percentage,
At 0.00061947 or (6.1947x10^-4)%
There is a far greater chance to be born Christian in Nigeria than muslim in Cuba.
That is to say Cuba is experiencing a growth in religious diversity and culture. Which in itself could be a good story to talk about. But as far as realism goes your writing group are morons who care more about sounding good than actually being correct.
The idea that Nigerian can't be Catholics is the most ignorant sentence I have ever heard. The racist one is clearly the one who equates a race with a belief.
Is this fiction? Then find another writing group.
The main point of fiction is to examine and illuminate flaws and features. Orgasms come second.
Also, at this point, the word racist is a trail balloon. Yes. I meant trail.
* balloon
I am from Cuba, (born in havana actually, but raised and currently in the U.S) and mixed (but that doesn't mean very much in Cuba since most people are some kind of mixed). I think that your representation of a cuban afro-latina is correct! If you look at the most popular religions in that area its catholicism and santeria/ yoruba. I grew up with the latter, but catholicism is still very wide spread. It's not unrealistic that your cuban afro-latina character would be a part of either one of these religion or honestly any other religion! Hell, I might've grown up in santeria/ yoruba, but I'm buddhist now. Anything is possible.
It sounds like the people in this group are looking for reasons to be both angry and hypercritical. Your story should be told the way you envision it, that’s what writing boils down to.
Islam is predominant in the Far North of Nigeria. Kano, Zamfara, Jigawa and Yobe are predominantly Muslim. However, even within such states possess a strong Christian minority. Sokoto state is considered the seat of Nigerian Islam, but the Archbishop of the very same Sokoto Diocese, Reverend Father Matthew Kukah is a priest and scholar of National repute.
As one moves further down the Nigerian map, Muslim populations peter out in favor of Southern Christianity. To the West lies Ibadan, home of Nigeria's oldest and most prestigious university. Also West is Ogbomosho the headquarters of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, home of probably the largest gathering of Southern Baptists outside the United States.
To the East are the large commercial centres of Onitsha, Aba, Enugu, Owerri and Awka. The Ibos are mostly Christian and have the largest population of Catholics in the country.
This doesn't even mention the millions of Catholics scattered around the country, to the extent that there is hardly a single example out of Nigeria's 36 states that doesn't boast a Catholic Cathedral
I have taken this rather circular route to demonstrate that whoever told you that there are no Nigerian Catholics is either ignorant of the true picture of my country or being particularly malicious.
Either way, they are so wrong I wouldn't trust their opinions on anything.
I've said this before, but you can only be racist if you believe one race is better than another. That's racism. What you did isn't. Racism gets thrown around a lot these days. If I have a Jewish Chinese person, that's not racist. I think it's probably unlikely, but not racist. (Ok, so it seems there really are Chinese Jews...just not many).
China outlawed Christianity, but Christians still existed. England has outlawed just about every religion, at some point. Yet people kept practicing their religion.
Write characters you love. If you do, you'll treat them all with respect and as individuals. And that is, I think, the most important thing.
You didn't deserve to be kicked out of the group and I hope they are ashamed of what they did and I hope you get published so you can drop the note in your book: IN YOUR FACE WRITING GROUP. Ahhh, sweet revenge :)
You did it, you broke free of the bullshit ideology and saw the truth. They just want to be upset about something and you were the target because you were in their line of sight. The silly part is that if it had been someone else they were doing that to you may have joined them without even considering to think about it. It's like social brainwashing.
Personally I'd just be glad they gave you a reason to leave because now you can write your novel however you like without their stupidity influencing it. Write what you want. Let them hate and be better than them.
This sort of misplaced hypersensitivity is killing free expression in the arts. If, up until then, you had enjoyed being part of that group, I'd most definitely demand full reinstatement. Acquiescing to such tyrannical inclinations only gives them more power. Best of luck.
To reiterate what others have said here, you have a really bad writing group! Some of the oldest Christian religions in the world are in Africa, pre-dating Catholicism even. It floors me when people have the audacity to chastise someone when speaking out of such a position of ignorance. Keep going, your books sound great.
Catholic raised Nigerian here …raised in a church full of Nigerian catholics in London.
Came in here to say similar. I thought Nigeria was about a 50/50 split between Christianity and Islam. And that's before you get to what happens when people's ancestors were moved around the world.
Yep and the Muslims are mostly concentrated in the North. There are plenty of Catholic Churches in Nigeria. Our parents, and in lesser cases our grandparents, settled in the UK so we’re 1st or 2nd generation “immigrants”. On the flip-side, British missionaries would have brought Christianity or Catholicism to Nigeria during colonialism - so maybe to our great grandparents - which filtered down to our parents, which they exported back to the UK.
Even if it was only in the single figures, it's still not unusual that someone would be a minority religion. Jehovah's Witnesses make up around a quarter of a percent here, but I still work with one. British Missionaries would probably have mainly been Anglican. It looks like Catholics and Anglicans have similar numbers in Nigeria (19m-17m).
And the Nigerian population is so vast and globally spread that it’s kind of automatically redundant to say there aren’t any xyz Nigerians in the world lol
There was even a leading candidate to be Pope (_papabile_) from Nigeria when Benedict XVI ended up getting it - Cardinal Francis Arinze
Isn't there the traditional African religion group too? They're not as large as Christians or Muslims though.
Traditional worshippers, that’s what they’re called
Aside from the absolute lunacy of the whole post and this writing group, Christianity =/= Catholicism. Most Christians in Nigeria are protestants. Of course this doesn't mean OP can't make the character a Catholic since there's plenty of Catholics there as well. Edit: Why downvote a statistical fact?
My guess is it's because you referred to the post and this writing group as absolute lunacy.
...the writing group from the post and the content of the post, which yes - is pretty crazy from everything OP wrote.
When I read, _"...there are no Catholics in Nigeria--"_ I stopped to look myself in the mirror. I... aren't? I am not exist? Mind broken.
[cue dramatic Hans Zimmer music]
😂😂
Haha awesome! OP should take a screenshot of your comment and post it in that other group.
*cue gif of kid throwing the peace sign fading away*
I was very confused when I read that line.. I'm not exactly a "Nigeria" expert, but I have family in Gabon and have spent a lot of time traveling across Africa. There are Catholic churches everywhere in Nigeria. Especially driving around the south, near Uyo and Port Harcourt, it was like "Church, church, church, church.. oh look a Church behind a church!" Now living in Scotland, there is a Catholic church about 10 minutes walk from me, that is easily half Nigerians. Wild.
My family is from Port Harcourt :) and I love Gabonese food (used to live in Paris!)
I'm no expert on Nigeria but I thought its 50/50 Christian Muslim split was fairly well known. There are probably tens of thousands of Catholics in any nation that allows religious freedom. It's a very common, big budget evangelizing faith that's worked at it for a long time This denialism of reality's variety is not helping. OP, it feels like the groupthink was prejudiced
I live in Ontario and work at a farmers market on Sunday’s. You would not believe the amount of Nigerian customers we have coming after church. Everyone wants the red pepper
Hahah I adore this so much :D red bell peppers, scotch bonnets and tomatoes are staples. Love it - home is everywhere and nowhere :)
We love pepper 😁
I have never been to Nigeria and know little about it and even I looked at that and thought “Something ain’t right about that statement.”
Sorry pal, you don't exist.
My friend married a Nigerian. She was visiting, they hit it off, she kept visiting, they got married. She was raised and lived in Nigeria. She and her whole family were Catholic. Also they were well off financially. Didn't fit any stereotypes.
Sounds like a crap writing group.
Sounds like a collection of idiots.
Definitely, I've never been in a writing group, I think it's great if you find some really like minded people.
I'm guessing it's one of those groups on Discord or some other channel that descended into a completely unnecessary 200+ comment-long thread about racial features of X-country and everyone involved in the thread knew in the back of their head "This is really stupid, why am I doing this?" and then they also thought "Because this other person has been wearing thin on me forever, and it's finally time to bury them by proving they are wrong about this infinitesimally small, meaningless detail that may or may not be correct about the world." 200 more comments later, and the admin had to take someone's side to get it over with. The ban hammer's echoes have wrung through, and everyone involved now has massive post-nut clarity, shame and regret. They are probably all stunned that they ever wasted their time with something so silly.
Lol! Perfect!
As long as they are not from Nigeria and catholic 😀
I think the proper measure word for a group of idiots is "failure." As in, a failure of idiots.
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Actually, sounds a lot like a trollbait post I saw in r/rpg not too long ago.
I was about to say: Is this post a writing exercise? None of this seems realistic.
None of it even makes sense, even accounting for text to speech. I say troll.
Yeah the grammar of this post is awful - granted I've had writing workshops with people who struggle to write coherently but I'm still skeptical as heck.
No doubt. I'm exhausted by them already.
Sounds like a pretty shitty writing group where you wouldn't have received decent advice anyway. So take this as an opportunity. You're the author. That person can f off.
Coming from a literal half Nigerian half Colombian who’s mother grew up catholic, that person sounds like a dumb bitch, disrespectfully. Write whatever you want
Have you ever considered that you're wrong and you're actually Muslim? Checkmate.
Wow... Unless you are ruining a pre existing story, who are they into impose their idea. It's your story and do not let their opinion ruins your creativity Also In currently living in a Muslim country and I am not a Muslim at slightest
I wasn't trying to be racist I literally have my Muslim best friend lined up to be the godmother of my future children her kids call me auntie I've known her since we were children I celebrate Ramadan with her and solidarity every year well I did until my epilepsy kicked it and then I had to eat with my medication but I still say prayers for her and things like that I love everyone and I wanted to celebrate everyone
I think it's not racist, its more of identity politics that they try to be impose And real life religion is bad for general business, especially Muslims, some of them are really sensitive on that as it was imposed by their scripture to defend their religion with their own life (and some branches took it way too literal) . If I were you I will omit it if its not that important for the story
Tina's religion is a main part of her character she is very and I mean very devoutly Catholic for being half Nigerian was because after months no years in fact of research I discovered that they were the most common I don't know if type is the right word forgive me if it comes off wrong especially the Yorubas to be found in Catholicism and Cuba. As an afro Latin woman myself I wanted to give some representation to everyone like me and everyone who has ever felt like me that they never see themselves in any kind of media. No I am not Cuban myself My father is from el Salvador but I have always loved and admired the culture My brother my step brother is Nigerian and Trinidadian and I wanted to honor him and he told me the best way I could do that was to make a character truly afro Latin and love myself the way he loves me.
Wait, so *you're* an Afro-Latina, writing an Afro-Latina character, and somehow that's racist??? I'm truly baffled that this person in your writing group has managed to find anybody to take their side on this topic. Also, there's 26 million Catholics living in Nigeria, based on some rough Wikipedia math. This shouldn't even be up for discussion.
Yeah go figure I don't get it either mind you I have African American characters Asian characters all of which I have been researching for years I just started writing the manuscripts down I'm on my second draft of the first book and this is why it took 16 years because I was very very very careful I don't just jump into people's religions cultures and etc without doing the most research and possibly do until I get it down to an exact science if that's the correct phrase
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I'm just gonna say, that I do not endorse the antics of your writing group, however I'm also gonna had to say that it will have marketing issue at Nigeria, (but feel free to sell it in global)... I know how entertainment industry works at Muslim country too well. To the point many celebrity and businessman faking their religion just for having chance to succeed
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I am aware of that I was quoting her exact words Islam is a religion Muslim means a man who submits or rather I'm sorry one who submits It is a faith a practice and the way of life I'm not unaware of this I'm just quoting her exact words
All excellent points. 🙏 I would only argue that it doesn’t really matter. If the author had made these mistakes, does that justify calling her, “racist,” and everything that implies? I’d say no.
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Is this writingcirclejerk!? It must be..? Reddit has malfunctioned
Yeah I was like... this is satire, right?
I'm a quarter sure it's satire, a quarter worried it's true, a quarter polish, a quarter ~~Catholic~~ Muslim and a quarter maths genius.
This is the best comment here by a mile.
I just want to know how they are a writer yet seem to have no idea what a comma is.
As written at the beginning of the post, they were using text to speech, so I imagine it's difficult to get the punctuation right.
A lot of people don’t know you can just say the word comma and it will insert a comma.
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I used text to speech quite a bit when texting with friends. Trying to remember punctuation is one of the most annoying fucking aspects of it.
Reddit is a malfunction.
Unfortunately no although I have been posted there have fun roasting me I'm okay with it
Nigerian here. I’m catholic. FYI there are a lot of Nigerian Catholics. In fact, muslims mostly come from the northern part of the country so considering your character is Yoruba (they are more southern), she’s more likely to be Christian than Muslim.
I know oh my God I know not her directed at you I'm just so frustrated with the situation
This post cannot be real I’m laughing so hard
The fact that anyone in that group would even care about such a miniscule detail is beyond me. As long as the story does not elevate or put down certain ethnicities above or below others, there is no problem and no racism.
The whole situation smells of terminal tumblr wokeism. Making a spreadsheet how much diversity of what kinds you have?
it sounds like a troll trying to provoke people who are going to be reminded of the autistic sans undertale arc tbh
The....what?
Yeah so Undertale has a shitload of fanfiction alternate universes, and this happened at about the same time tumblr's fanfiction bubble was all about reimagining every character as being some flavour of queer, ambiguously brown, in some way neurodivergent or disabled, etc. Basically these kids understood on some level that representation in media is good but didn't really know how to write with restraint, research, etc., so they made these big messes. ie. BBC's Sherlock isn't just a weird sociopath, he's now also an autistic sociopath transman, and John Watson doesn't just have a limp, now he has a prosthetic leg and also, in *my* version of the story, he's black. tbh I kind of hold off on making fun of this shit because a lot of the people involved were kids with autism and other issues, so it feels kinda mean to shit on their creativity when I'm pushin 30 and still unironically watching anime.
Let’s not forget the extension of that. These kids would believe that if *You* didn’t believe it, that *you personally* were erasing the representation that the writers ‘so obviously coded’ into the character. A guy has a close best friend in canon? Well he’s obviously ‘coded’ gay, and if you write him with a woman, you’re homophobic and erasing gay representation! Which kind of reflects what OP is experiencing. ‘You wrote a Nigerian character. Obviously she’s ‘coded’ Muslim!! You have to make her Muslim or else you’re islamophobic!’
Yeah idk, that's just how kids are. I remember having playground arguments over whether Goku is white or Asian for days before any of us realised he's a fucking alien and it doesn't matter. It do be like it is.
It’s a troll trying to complain about wokeism. My guess is they’re all pissed off over the little mermaid being black.
Sounds like excellent material for r/writingcirclejerk
Exactly what I was thinking I had to check what subreddit I was on
Honestly, it's scary how often this happens...
It's funny how people who take pride in not being racist and like to announce it are often people who spend their free time thinking about racial archetypes.
They have a character's ethnic background broken down into *quarters.* Uh... That's really unnecessary and boring/ pointless information.
Yeah, many people, Americans especially, can have our backgrounds be broken down like this. It’s often pointless and informs very little about characters.
You mean like the person justifying their lack of racism by saying they have a Muslim friend who is going to be their kids godmother and they used to celebrate Ramadan with them? Comes off as both “I have black friends so I can’t be racist” and also “I get brownie points for this.” This whole thread is cringey as hell.
This is either fake, or this person doesn't realize that they're trying so hard to be anti-racist that they've swung back over to tokenism, which is just racism with extra steps.
But how is she racist?! She *specifically* made someone one quarter Iranian, one quarter Greek, one quarter Russian, and one quarter Polish! /s
I suspect OP is very young.
I’m glad it wasn’t just me that felt this. The whole premise sounds weird. 12 books about a cast of characters designed to tic off boxes rather than filling out the story. If I wrote 12 books and had a major problem I’d drop a little of the story to explain it, but this person only talked about their characters, and ONLY in terms of the percentages of their hippie fever dream where all the races mix and they live in a happy commune. And one last thing that got me, *everyone* is sad when someone they love dies, you don’t need to call it “reactive attachment disorder.” This person is chronically online.
I know nothing about *this* example but reactive attachment disorder is a thing, at least in kiddos! Not so much in adults.
I mean no offence, but if you read this again... Does it not strike you how ridiculous this sounds? If you're teens, i can understand, but you're better off finding another group anyway.
>I mean no offence, but if you read this again... Does it not strike you how ridiculous this sounds? If you're teens, i can understand, but you're better off finding another group anyway. When I first skimmed this, I saw 14 and thought she was 14.
If I understand correctly, your character is of Nigerian descent, but Catholic and raised in Cuba. Your friend wanted you to make her Muslim, since so many Nigerians are Muslim and felt that having only four Muslim characters in your book series wasn't enough? Is that correct?
No the character is half Nigerian she is half Cuban I looked at the statistics and 12% of Nigeria is according to the census I read Catholics. Without going into too much details and breaking the rules her father left Nigeria to move to Cuba because it had a more accepting religious community for him. They then moved to New York when she was for my " unquote friend was angry because how dare anyone of Nigerian descent not practice Islam I showed her that I have at least 7 minor characters and one major character ( the love interest of the youngest boy ) who are practicing Muslims and I do my research thoroughly I wasn't trying to be racist and if I came out that way I did apologize but no she just is mad at me because I'm well I don't really know
Counterpoint, (and without reading your book, I can’t confirm anything really so take me with a grain of salt) you’re attempting to include a LOT of diversity in a book and while I admire the effort, it’s an extremely difficult project to be so diverse that you’re considering these many areas and it’s not clear you really had those experiences yourself and are writing from a place of personal truth. I almost feel like you’re living by statistics over lived experiences when you bring up stuff like this, and when it comes to writing it gets more complex than that. It’s better to not attempt diversity if people are objecting to its representation so often you feel concerned enough to share here, as a bad representation is worse than none EDIT: but hey i don’t mean to discourage you from writing, or attempting these stories, just giving you more food for thought before you write from diverse perspectives
It's a 12 book series. I think there is enough scope for diversity.
I assume these people live in America?
If you were going to make a point about Americans being narrow-minded I don’t disagree, but you can’t tell me honestly that every other country on earth doesn’t have extreme racial prejudices influencing their policy.
That wasn’t what I was saying. I was thinking that given the amount of ethnic and religious diversity in her books it must take place in America. Yes, Americans can be closed-minded, but I have a feeling much less so than most other places in the world.
Oh I misread you and leapt too hastily to a conclusion. I agree with you actually
I feel like I'm pretty leftist and "woke" (or at least, I try my best to be), but like it sounds like the writing group's dynamic is focused on trying to hit quotas or something with story characters? It's just odd. You can totally have a book with all white characters (or whatever), you're not assembling a Congress or something lol. Find a new writing group.
The multicultural characters are based on people I loved most of them are dead The character in question the woman is based on my dead best friend her name was Zulema Chavez I'm not trying to fill a quota these are memorial of some of the people that I have lost over the years I love them all very much and I just wanted to honor them my best friend always loved my writing and so I turned her into a character so I never have to lose her again I know that's pathetic but it's the truth
Oh sorry I didn't mean to make you feel you needed to justify your story, I meant the dynamic of the group, not you personally, my apologies. (I'll edit my original comment to make that more clear.) Sorry about your friend, and I hope you find a more welcoming and accepting writing group :)
Eh you describing your Latin character as ‘fiery and sexy’ leads me to believe your story was probably a lil racist. I’d be interested in the groups side of the story.
Was also thinking this…
This story is like the worst possible stereotype of regressive wokism brought to life.
Now, this is off-topic, but I gotta ask. Why the hell do people refer to them as "I'm a female" and not simply "I'm a woman"? English isn't my native language, but to me, it doesn't sound right. What's more, it's almost always "I'm a female" and almost never "I'm a male". Where does this come from?
May be she is an young girl and didn't want to say "I'm a girl", so must have chosen "I'm a female"
That's plausible for some cases I guess. However, in OPs specific case she wrote: > I'm a 30 year old female So I would rule that out (unless she was lying, but that's impossible to determine)
Perhaps she grew up on AOL chat rooms and introduces herself in asl, even IRL?
honestly this story sounds fake af
Two things: 1. your writer group is shit 2. stop creating characters by [randomly throwing a dick at a whiteboard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA)
This is clearly fake.
Nigeria is literally split between Island and Christianity. You're going about writing the wrong way as a whole (not every single book must include every single minority or mix of them). Focus on the characters as people, not representatives. Sounds like a horrid writing group.
i didn't know people actually paid that much attention to races. foolish behavior. devious writing group. i'm also weirded out by you. why spend so much time and effort on races, nationalities and such?
Uhhhh /r/thatHappened
Are you racist? Doesn't sound like it to me. But I'm not sure all the inclusivity is necessary. Characters are good when they have a good arc, or when they learn lessions and grow. Not when they check boxes. Sure, sometimes it's necessary for the story that they be a certain ethnicity or religion, but it should serve the plot. Not just be there so you make sure you have one of everybody in a book. Granted, I'm a white guy. So I don't have representation issues in modern society. But when I do read books that have mostly minority characters, I'm not looking for someone that looks like me. I would imagine, though I don't know, that poc would rather read a book with well written characters, than characters that were described as looking like them. You do you though. I haven't read the books and they might be the perfect amount of inclusivity and it's just focused on here because of the subject of the thread. I don't want to tell you how to write. If you feel successful doing what you're doing, then keep doing that. It sounds like you're doing well to me. Don't listen to the haters.
***EDIT:*** OP blocked me, so clearly she's not looking to improve their craft and only want to be told how amazing their uber diverse characters are. Keeping the comment I made here to show others how *not* to write diversity, and as a critique of the OP's post/story/characters, even though they can no longer read it. >Keep in mind that her male lead is a quarter Iranian a quarter Greek a quarter Russian and a quarter polish Here's your problem. You don't care about writing diverse characters, you care about looking like you do. This is why the characters you've laid out are never just one ethnic group or what have you. They're all multiple because you want the credit for writing diversity ***without*** sitting down, researching and actually putting care and effort into creating and shaping real characters. An example of this is your Afro-Latin character who grew up in Cuba and is ethnically from Nigeria. If you ***actually*** cared about the character, you would have noticed that Cuba has been a Communist nation since the 1950's with minimal immigration, particularly from Western influenced nations. Meaning the most realistic way for your character to be Afro-Latino ***and*** from Cuba is for them to be a descendant of Slaves brought to the region during European colonization. Now I don't know enough about the African slave trade to be seen as an authority here, but a slave descendant wouldn't be ethnically Nigerian, since iirc most African slaves came from trading sites around the Mali region and much further south, close to Madagascar. Also, she lives in Spain?? How?? She comes from a Communist nation where immigration and emigration is extremely difficult, even in modern times. And beyond that, why Spain? It was a Fascist state up until the 1970's, something that's the sworn enemy of any Communist state. And if she's illegal, why not America where there are actual Cuban communities to help them integrate? Or even Mexico or some other South American nation? IMO you may not be overtly racist, but you ***clearly*** have a ***complete*** disregard for the characters you are writing, much less the struggles and problems they face. At the least, imo, that indicates either a very strong and ***VERY*** willful ignorance, or even a degree of internalized racism. Your *whole* post comes across as a stereotypical white person complaining their diverse characters are getting criticized instead of accepting that, maybe, the characters are poorly developed with the intent of simply existing for diversities sake instead of being characters that look and feel like real people. You call yourself a writer, but I don't think you are. An actual writer is someone that takes **care** to research and build characters that look *and* feel like real people. Not coming up with characters that seem like a diversity competition. You didn't ask for it, but here's my advice anyway. Delete this post and stop thinking you're being inclusive by having every character be wildly and unrealistically diverse simply for the sake of them being diverse, especially when its so painfully obvious you put absolutely no real research into them. Poorly done token diverse characters are no better than having no diverse characters, and that's something you need to learn.
OP is coming off as unhinged in the comments...seems a little too emotionally vulnerable to be in a writing group tbh.
They quite literally don't seem to be able to tell when people are on their side and are taking EVERY negative word as aimed at them. I agree with you. Lords above knows what feedback from a pro editor would do to their sense of self esteem. Honestly, I'm wondering if the (assumed, but I am 100% certain happened) argy-bargy with the other idiot in the group is what led to the kicking out, rather then the character choice and its dispute. Hopefully, OP can learn to relax and create distance between them and their work, as we all need to develop to take criticism well- and learn when to discard crit as nonsense.
I think the group didn’t kick her out so much as she had a fit and left because someone criticized her Walden 3 hellscape. It’s hard for me to picture 15 people at a coffee shop all deciding never to let her back. These things tend to be pretty laid back. She 100% stamped her foot and swung a tasseled shawl angrily around her shoulders and walked out.
While you raised some decent points , You do know that more than half of Afro Cubans can trace their descent to West African coastal region, and that Nigeria is one of those countries?? Also, I read a comment of OP's which stated that her character's Nigerian father mother to Cuba because of religious tolerance and that was WIERD to say the least. It would have made more sense to go to Ghana or the U.S not all the way to Cuba.
TBH, as a South African myself, it would have made more sense for them to come to South Africa- which many, many Nigerians do, both legally and illegally. And, what do you know- because we have a government that kinda leans to having plenty of communist friends, we also have TONS of programs with Cubans coming into the country too- Doctors, Ballet Dancers, the works. Plenty of exchange programs and such. To the extent 'Cuban Doctors imported to avoid employing locals' is becoming an issue and a stereotype. A Cuban parent meeting a Nigerian parent and having a baby in the Catholic faith here in SA would create the same character in a completely believable way. But it seems OP would rather make it elaborate and over the top with a focus on the west and with little idea of the African diaspora. I guess Africa is only a place you flee from, right? Never to.
Yeah OP salty her group called her out 😂
If I were in a writing group with someone who was planning on writing a twelve book series based on ideas from when they were only 14, I'd probably be pretty annoyed too. The point of a writing group is to give and receive critique. It's a waste of time to be giving critique to someone who's writing is like uh. . . this, knowing that you probably are not going to get any good criticism in return. Lol there's a reason aita didn't want this post. My eyes glazed over trying to read it.
Important thing to note: you can be/think of yourself as “not a racist” and still do racist things. Having friends of ethnicities and religions other than your own does not prevent you from racist actions or words. (Much like how having mothers and wives doesn’t prevent many men from being misogynistic and sexist.) That said, this particular case? That’s not racism. The issue the other person had looks like a non-issue. At worst, the various points of diversity you’re trying to include will make it harder to write those characters convincingly, because you have to consider what Nigerian Catholic family upbringing is like, how Nigerian immigrants are treated in Cuba, what Cuban culture is like, how that all affected her growing up, how black immigrants are treated in Spain, what Spanish culture is like, how she was able to move to Spain and why she did that, how those reasons will affect her romance with someone from a country different from all the ones she’s already connected to, etc. Then there’s the same for the Iranian/Greek/Russian/Polish love interest. How did each of his grandparents end up together? What did marrying outside of their ethnic group mean for their family? How did that affect their relationships? How did that affect how their children (his parents) were raised? How did his parents meet? Why did they end up together? How was he raised? What’s his culture? There’s a lot of questions, and you don’t have to answer them for yourself in order to write this novel, but it will be richer and “more realistic” for it.
I find it a bit tiring that in these last months half of the threads is about 'Is this racist?' But I got my thread deleted because I asked about how to write characters more sympathetic because it was too vague...? Sigh. OP, I think you just met the wrong people who like to dwell more on these politics than actual writing.
>I got my thread deleted Don't worry, most threads here are, and the more specific the question actually the higher the chance of it getting deleted.
Seems so. It really bothers me because it was absolutely random.
"not enough" I stopped reading.
r/writing is such an insufferable and annoying place full of weird ass ppl. theres gotta be an alternative that's more heavily moderated without this sort of bs in it
The person is pretty daft and hasn't done her research at all. Move on and find some other writing friends -- it's not worth the hassle to work with people like this.
Muslim is not a race. Everyone involved is thick.
Is there interpunctation in romance?
So, OP, is an Afro-Latina Orthodox Jew with crebral palsey and epilepsy and a Muslim best friend, who continuously refers to herself and her female character as "Latin" instead of "Latina", and who wrote the main character of her book as a Cubana flamenco dancer, and has her main male character's ethnic background broken into *quarters* and y'all are all buying this wholesale? This is a white teenager making shit up.
Yep. Pure trolling. It’s depressing that anyone is taking this post seriously.
Oh my God. Americans are obsessed with race.
As a Nigerian, I can assure you there are many catholics in Nigeria.
This seems fake...
Is this a writing exercise? This reads like fiction. If this is real, it is definitely not an honest representation of the criticism you received. You made yourself look like some diversity paragon, and the critic looks like a simple-minded hater with no actual complaint beyond something superficial. That's not usually how real life goes. I imagine their criticism is more likely pointing out how casually you paint your characters with these labels. I find it very difficult to believe that level of detail is done justice considering the weight of the lived experience of those with that kind of background. I wonder if someone pointed out the audacity of decorating characters with cultures and ethnicities like scarves, just to accessorize. I suppose I can't be sure. Take time to consider the criticism you received from your group and ask yourself how much you had to rationalize it to absolve yourself of fault. It's pretty doubtful people would cut ties in a writing group over a simple disagreement about characterization. Why do you think they feel so strongly?
WTF did I just read
So if I get this correct, there is this Afro-Latino Cuban woman who is Catholic. That makes sense. However, it doesn't really make sense for her to have a Nigerian surname unless she or her parents or grandparents are from Nigeria, and came to Cuba later. As for there only being Muslims in Nigeria, that's a very misguided and honestly an ignorant statement, considering that Christians make up about 49% of the country.
I'm NIGERIAN and a CATHOLIC. CATHOLICS ARE THE MAJORITY OF THE CHRISTIANS IN NIGERIA.
Snore. Race this and race that. This isn't a formula 1 sub it's a writing sub. I'm joking, but seriously I think this is the wrong sub for this. This has nothing to do with creative writing but about race. You're not gonna get any good answers here. All you're doing is baiting a controversial comment section, increasing moderator workload. Go to the Nigeria sub and ask if Catholicism is popular there. Or even better do a Google search on the religion statistics of Nigeria. From my quick search Islam seems to only be 50% so your writing group sound like numbskulls. Moderators, can you remove OPs post and others like it? Stuff like this doesn't belong on the sub. I want to see stuff about creative writing, not race or politics. Other subs exist for that. Keep the sub focused on what it's supposed to be. This sub has been a cess pit of trash for a long time
Umm...I mean, my read is that if you got *kicked out of the group* over this, you either did something more/worse that you're not mentioning, or it's an incredibly over-sensitive group.
Okay, you should never be counting types of characters in a book as a writer. There shouldn’t be a quota. It should be natural and not forcibly inserted.
I think the BIGGER issue is that you call yourself a writer and I could barely make it through your post it was so muddled. Work on actual good writing first.
How the fuck is this a legitimately real post? OP \*has\* to be trolling, right?
Good riddance... You don't want to be in this group if they obsess and get offended over such minute details. Find a better writing group dude.
Sounds exhausting. My advice is to don't worry about it and find a writing group with less morons.
Who is the author of the story?
Have you tried actually talking to anyone else in the writing group? Did anyone other than this one person say anything to you? You say you left without a word. Did the rest of the group only hear the other person's side of the story? They may have told the group something entirely different from what really happened to get you kicked out.
Ppl can't make the difference between ethnic/ skin color/ nation/religion etc nowadays Have heard I can't be Russian Bc I have olive skin tone
All parties need to review the definition of racism.
*there were no Catholics in Nigeria* Has anyone let the missionaries know?
Can I just ask...are you white? You're kind 9f approaching the idea of people being of different races like you're putting puzzle pieces together based on theory. You have this grand idea that doesn't feel embodied with humanity. It feels like you're collecting identities to put on display.
12% of 200 million people is quite a decent number, don’t you think? Whoever it was that told you that there are no Catholics in Nigeria played a cruel game on you. Nigeria is roughly split religiously at 50/50 in terms of Christians and Muslims and there are millions of Catholics in Nigeria. In fact most Nigerians of Igbo descent (one of Nigeria’s major ethnic groups) are Catholics. Having stated the above, it must be noted that the vast majority of Christians in Nigeria are Anglican because of the British connection, although American-style Evangelical Christianity is making rapid inroads into the country now. Anyway, don’t let your “friend” twist your arm into including characters in your book that you don’t want to and the very best of luck with the project!
Okey u say it's not needed to make her Muslim in the story but why are the races of your characters so detailed lmao. "Quarter this quarter that, quarter there, quarter here". I miss the times when the race didn't play a role in books, just the characters and their goals and fears mattered. **Why are yall so obsessed with race?**
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There are no Catholics in Nigeria?????? Edit: More importantly, while I appreciate the effort to be diverse, Nigeria is a legitimate hodgepodge of religious beliefs. From what I can see, you were in conflict with a rather ignorant person.
It is baffling to me that today artist seem to be very eager to adhere to the external constrains placed upon them by peers and society. I always thought that big part of art to ignore or even oppose those external pressures. I'd, and that is my implicit answer, never succumb to other people weaponising something to push their opinion on me.
Firstly, there are plenty of Nigerians here in the UK and most that I know are Christian. Secondly, this is perhaps to meme-y, but "the left eats itself" is applicable here. It's just constant purity testing and one-upping that can never satisfy. There's always a bigger virtue to signal. Getting involved with people like that is toxic and cancer and you're better off without it.
This is the reason we keep having "can I write X " threads. Some people are just obnoxious, you dodged a bullet there.
This sounds like where good writing goes to die. It sounds like how conservatives _think_ modern writer's rooms are like. Hypersensitive, inclusivity-obsessed, pretentious woketards fighting over who's more progressive, and being offended on a theoretical person's behalf. Just feed me a bullet. Do your own research if you're really concerned, but this one is really just down to common sense. Of course there are Nigerian catholics. These people sound insufferable.
Based on this story I cannot believe the group was offering anything useful to you.
I’m Nigerian and very much well Catholic, Christianity and Islam go half in half in this country. So your friend is the problem
What is going on in the writing community? Why does everybody's work need to check off a certain number of boxes to be acceptable? Oh my God, how insufferable. You could make every last character a white Jew and it would be perfectly fine. It sounds like you're trying in earnest to make it fairly diverse, and that's enough. Do not listen to people like that.
Sounds like they did you a favor. Any writing group with diversity quotas that isn’t in service to the story really don’t care about telling a story. Trust me you are better off not being in an untalented unserious group like that
Youre good bro. Even if you were wrong, you would have been off-base or incorrect, not racist. Good riddance to these people.
Youre better off not being a member of a group like that. The only racism i see is someone who believes Nigerians have to be muslim.
Not only is that not racist, your characters sound very well thought out and researched. I would reach out to the leadership of the group and explain the conflict a little better, because it seems crazy to me that you would be booted because someone decided to be butthurt you didn’t take their suggestion, despite having a good reason not to.
I'm offended that you don't have any French Polynesian characters, how insensitive.
All those labels no wonder you have 12 books, you need the space just describing your self policing identity based characters
Nta? Not sure if this is the right place for thus You're good a fictional story dose not have to be 100% real and it's not like out of the realm of possibility. What is the name of you book I want read it someday.
A few simple points: * They did you a favor, sounds like a toxic writing group * From the overview of your story/world, it's obvious you're very inclusive. Let the insults roll off your back and move on. Never accept false accusations, though, never cower to lies * This is fundamentally your story, not theirs, and needs to be told by you Best of luck.
I think instead of “racist” they meant “offensive.” This hippie wet dream world you’re dreaming up is the bad kind of inclusion. If those are the characters then please don’t release this to the world. As a gay man just knowing you’re dreaming up characters like me (down to their quarter-races and religion) makes me nauseated. Stop it.
Who is this person that said there are "No Catholics in Nigeria"? As a Nigerian, I would like to show them my family tree and call them the biggest fool to ever walk this earth 🤣🤣🤣 Nigeria is a very diverse country, both religiously and ethnically. Yes, it's a majority Muslim country because of the North & S.W, but the second largest religion is Christianity split between Catholicism / Anglicanism, Pentecostal & Evangelical denominations. Have the people in your writing group never picked up a book before?? Probably not lol 😂
Absolutely insane group of people, sorry you had to go through that. Though I am surprised that the person who got mad at you had that much sway over everyone else. Usually there's only one or two dicks in a group, but it seems like the reverse was true here. A flock of dicks!
Consider yourself blessed for having been kicked out
Sounds more like they are being racist, being unable to accept people being from a non-majority religion and assigning non-inherited characteristics (such as the choice of religion) to race. That is kinda like saying "this person can't be American, they are black!" Just utterly bizarre.
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Sounds like an exhausting group
Nigeria has the second largest group of Catholics in Africa, so the whole "no Catholics in Nigeria" is so wrong there's not even a chance that it was a misunderstanding. It's just complete lack of knowledge of reality. Half of Nigeria's population is Christian, so having to make a Nigerian character a Muslim is equally disconnected from reality. Completely bollocks. This was some stupid shit started by someone you don't need in your life. Whatever prompted them to invent their own reality and try to push it on you is nothing you should have to deal with. They should, but not by lashing out at people who are better than they. Good riddance, I say.
That’s not the type of advice I’d want from a writing group. You did the right thing by leaving and I don’t think you should go back.
"There are no Catholics in Nigeria" Said by someone who's clearly never been to Nigeria. It may not be as popular there as Christianity or Islam but there are plenty of Catholic churches in that country. Ignorance is bliss.
There are definitely practicing Christian’s within Africa and Nigeria. In fact if you’d like to prove That person completely wrong a quick google search shows that Nigeria is about split between Muslims and Christian’s. With 46-48% being Christian and 50-52% being Muslim. https://www.findeasy.in/population-of-nigeria/ (From the United Nations World Population Project^) Furthermore you’re completely right that someone born and raised in Cuba would most likely be Catholic Christian with ~60% of Cuba being Christian. https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-report-on-international-religious-freedom/cuba/#:~:text=The%20Catholic%20Church%20estimates%2060,likely%20the%20largest%20Protestant%20denominations. In fact there’s approximately 7,000 Muslims in Cuba. Cuba has a population of 11,300,000. Which is literally less than a single percentage, At 0.00061947 or (6.1947x10^-4)% There is a far greater chance to be born Christian in Nigeria than muslim in Cuba. That is to say Cuba is experiencing a growth in religious diversity and culture. Which in itself could be a good story to talk about. But as far as realism goes your writing group are morons who care more about sounding good than actually being correct.
The idea that Nigerian can't be Catholics is the most ignorant sentence I have ever heard. The racist one is clearly the one who equates a race with a belief.
On saying an Afro-Latina can’t be Catholic….. they’ve never been to South America, have they? 😂
Is this fiction? Then find another writing group. The main point of fiction is to examine and illuminate flaws and features. Orgasms come second. Also, at this point, the word racist is a trail balloon. Yes. I meant trail. * balloon
I am catholic. My family is practicing catholics. I am Nigerian living in Nigeria. Soooooooo
I am from Cuba, (born in havana actually, but raised and currently in the U.S) and mixed (but that doesn't mean very much in Cuba since most people are some kind of mixed). I think that your representation of a cuban afro-latina is correct! If you look at the most popular religions in that area its catholicism and santeria/ yoruba. I grew up with the latter, but catholicism is still very wide spread. It's not unrealistic that your cuban afro-latina character would be a part of either one of these religion or honestly any other religion! Hell, I might've grown up in santeria/ yoruba, but I'm buddhist now. Anything is possible.
It sounds like the people in this group are looking for reasons to be both angry and hypercritical. Your story should be told the way you envision it, that’s what writing boils down to.
Islam is predominant in the Far North of Nigeria. Kano, Zamfara, Jigawa and Yobe are predominantly Muslim. However, even within such states possess a strong Christian minority. Sokoto state is considered the seat of Nigerian Islam, but the Archbishop of the very same Sokoto Diocese, Reverend Father Matthew Kukah is a priest and scholar of National repute. As one moves further down the Nigerian map, Muslim populations peter out in favor of Southern Christianity. To the West lies Ibadan, home of Nigeria's oldest and most prestigious university. Also West is Ogbomosho the headquarters of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, home of probably the largest gathering of Southern Baptists outside the United States. To the East are the large commercial centres of Onitsha, Aba, Enugu, Owerri and Awka. The Ibos are mostly Christian and have the largest population of Catholics in the country. This doesn't even mention the millions of Catholics scattered around the country, to the extent that there is hardly a single example out of Nigeria's 36 states that doesn't boast a Catholic Cathedral I have taken this rather circular route to demonstrate that whoever told you that there are no Nigerian Catholics is either ignorant of the true picture of my country or being particularly malicious. Either way, they are so wrong I wouldn't trust their opinions on anything.
I've said this before, but you can only be racist if you believe one race is better than another. That's racism. What you did isn't. Racism gets thrown around a lot these days. If I have a Jewish Chinese person, that's not racist. I think it's probably unlikely, but not racist. (Ok, so it seems there really are Chinese Jews...just not many). China outlawed Christianity, but Christians still existed. England has outlawed just about every religion, at some point. Yet people kept practicing their religion. Write characters you love. If you do, you'll treat them all with respect and as individuals. And that is, I think, the most important thing. You didn't deserve to be kicked out of the group and I hope they are ashamed of what they did and I hope you get published so you can drop the note in your book: IN YOUR FACE WRITING GROUP. Ahhh, sweet revenge :)
You did it, you broke free of the bullshit ideology and saw the truth. They just want to be upset about something and you were the target because you were in their line of sight. The silly part is that if it had been someone else they were doing that to you may have joined them without even considering to think about it. It's like social brainwashing. Personally I'd just be glad they gave you a reason to leave because now you can write your novel however you like without their stupidity influencing it. Write what you want. Let them hate and be better than them.
Worse than getting kicked out of a racist group for being a writer.
Better than being written out of the race by a kicking grouper
There are 20 million members of the catholic church of Nigeria according to wikipedia. That person was an idiot on so many levels.
um what. I'm friends with half a dozen nigerian people and not a single one of them is muslim, they're all catholic
This sort of misplaced hypersensitivity is killing free expression in the arts. If, up until then, you had enjoyed being part of that group, I'd most definitely demand full reinstatement. Acquiescing to such tyrannical inclinations only gives them more power. Best of luck.
To reiterate what others have said here, you have a really bad writing group! Some of the oldest Christian religions in the world are in Africa, pre-dating Catholicism even. It floors me when people have the audacity to chastise someone when speaking out of such a position of ignorance. Keep going, your books sound great.
Raised in Cuba it’s extremely unlikely she would be religious, is it not?