All Feelings are Universal by Paty Jager

I'm Paty Jager, a generista who tends to write characters who are a different culture or way of life than I am, but who I empathize with and try to show the injustice.

It's hard to follow B.A. Binn's post from last Saturday on writing diversity. She had some excellent points and comments.

In grade school there was a classmate who used crutches. I stuck up for him when others were not so nice. I've always been the friend of the classmate who was picked on and as a writer I tend to have characters in my books that have suffered an injustice and I try to show they are no different and in some cases even more deserving of the reader's attention.

My first novel, which was a mystery, had a next door neighbor who was in a wheelchair. He was an integral secondary character. I didn't know anyone in a wheelchair, but I could empathize with how it would feel to not be able to do everything you wanted. That's how I tackle writing diverse characters.

While I may not have lived through what they have, I can read books by people who have or did live through historical experiences and put myself there-feeling, experiencing. The one thing I came away with from a one day conference last year on writing diversity was the comment, "All feelings are universal." By putting myself in the character and writing the emotions I feel, I hope I am capturing them well enough to show the reader not only the character but how they would respond given their upbringing.

But I know I can't rely on reading and my own emotions. I also have used "Sensitivity Readers" when I'm dealing with another culture. These are people of the culture or religion I write about that I don't know. They read my rough draft and give me tips on how to make the characters more authentic. They are a huge help.

As I said before, when I wrote my first book I had a wheelchair bound character, which I knew little about. Having had an elderly blind relative stay with us several summers, I watched her and listened to her complaints about being blind and then I wrote not only one hero, but two, who were blind. I felt, through her, I understood enough about being blind that I could portray a character with that disability.

I have several African American characters in my books. Some are historical and some are contemporary. While these are secondary characters and I used book research for the historical books and just my interactions with friends of that race, I am using a sensitivity reader for my current work in progress that has an African American heroine. I want to make sure, because she is a main character and I have to get into her internal thoughts that I make sure, I do it correctly.

My Spirit Trilogy that has 80% Native American characters, both main and secondary, I read a lot on the history and how they lived and personal accounts by some of the warriors and chiefs. Then I contacted a woman and a man of the same tribe and asked them questions to better portray the tribe and the people. While I had one person being rude when I was on a blog tour, I had the council for the tribe tell me they knew about my books and that they were a good portrayal.

Now, I have two Mystery series. One with a half Native American main character and a full Native American character in the other. I also have a friend who is married to a Native American and lives on a reservation who is my sensitivity reader. She helps me keep my characters real to the life that is on the reservation even though my characters only visit. And she helps me keep my characters grounded in their heritage.

I believe that while I would love to read more books written by writers of diversity, that those of us who don't make our books "white" should do all we can to make sure the characters we portray who are not like us, should be given more research to make sure we are giving an accurate accounting of their life.

I spent two years as the assistant to Myrlie Evers Williams. She is an African American who had gone through a lot of tragedy in her life , including the murder of her first husband in the South in the 60s to become the Chairwoman of the NAACP. We'd sit and talk nearly every day before I'd start working. One day we were talking about something that was happening in the news. She had told me some stories that many didn't know about political people she'd met. She shook her head and said, "There are good and bad people in all races."

I agree with this statement and that is why you will find good and bad people of all cultures in my books whether they are historical or contemporary, romance or mystery.

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 37 novels, 6 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

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