: Re: How to find authenticity in a character of color I am working on a book. I am aware that, being a white guy, I always perceive characters as white men. I want to push myself into building

@Sarah872

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Note: By complete coincidence, I recently had a chance to attend a Q & A session with author Michael Chabon --who I referenced in my prior answer as a white author who does a good job writing black characters-- and I took the opportunity to ask him this question. I had originally edited this into my original answer, but it's really a separate answer, from a difference source.

Chabon said that (in addition to having grown up in an well-integrated community) the biggest prep work he did for writing the black characters in Telegraph Avenue was to read a lot of work by black authors, and to imitate the way they approached their black characters (in preference to the way white authors typically approach black characters).

One of the biggest "lessons learned" he cited (and I'm really paraphrasing and interpreting here!) is that being black is normalized in black authors' works, problematized in white authors' works. In other words, the black character in the black author's book is not thinking about being black unless there is some specific reason to do so (because to her it is not an intrinsically exceptional condition of existence). She is also not thinking about race in general, or about white people in particular, unless there is some valid reason for her to do so.

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