Mother of Souls: the research begins
Aug. 14th, 2014 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjHaving identified a number of research topics that I really need to cover before getting too far into the next Alpennia book, I headed off to the U.C. Berkeley library after work today and took out an armload of books on the history of Ethiopia. Ethiopia, you ask? What has that to do with a little invented country in the middle of western Europe? Well, you see, the parents of Serafina Talarico (whom you will meet towards the end of The Mystic Marriage) emigrated from Ethiopia before she was born and settled in Italy. That might sound awfully specific for a character I hadn't really researched in detail yet, but that's what Serafina told me (this was back before she even had a name yet), and a small amount of initial poking around suggested I had enough basis to go with for the brief mention she gets in The Mystic Marriage
To some extent, the background of her character was inspired by a general air of consciousness-raising about "non-default" characters in historic settings, and more specifically by the inspiration of the blog Medieval People of Color, whose mission is to increase awareness of the presence of non-caucasion people in Europe through history. It got me thinking about the cultural mix in Alpennia and what possibilities I might be overlooking due to my own default thinking. At that point, I already knew that Mefro Dominique the dressmaker was a French emigré of African origin originally from one of the French colonies in the Carribean, by way of Paris. I don't think it was particularly clear in Daughter of Mystery simply because she only appears in one scene and the point-of-view characters were too preoccupied at the time to "notice" something they wouldn't have considered unusual. But when I got to thinking idly on the question of which other background characters might be other than white, Serafina waved a hand in the air and said, "Me! Me!"
"But Serafina," I said, "you're 'the Roman scholar'. That's what I have you down as. It says so right here in my notes."
"And this is a problem…why?" Serafina asked, with a characteristic tilt of her head. "I was living in Rome before I traveled to Rotenek, but my parents were from--" and at that point I knew I needed to figure out where her parents were from and what they were doing in Italy. So to brainstorm I started looking through Google Images -- I don't even remember what my keywords were -- and came across a photo of a gorgeous woman from Ethiopia who looked out of the screen and said, "Hi, I'm your Serafina." OK, the geography works plausibly (though the timing is well over half a century too early for the major association of Ethiopia with Italian influence). Now all I needed was a reasonable backstory for how her family ended up there. I didn't want her to be an isolated individual and I wanted a backstory that was less obvious and less clichéd than the African slave trade. Originally I was thinking I might find some sort of merchanting connection that might work, but even my initial browsing through the books I brought home has started me down a different path (involving various reasons why Ethiopian people ended up in Rome during the century or so leading up to my key period) which will be more satisfactory.
I'm going to be a bit nervous about this character -- particularly since she's going to be a point-of-view character in Mother of Souls -- because I have to make her interactions with Alpennian society make sense and feel "real", both as a foreigner and as a woman of color, and I have to do it in a way that contributes to the story, and I have to do it in a way that will make for pleasant and enjoyable reading without glossing over the likelihood that she'd encounter some amount of racial prejudice. But I knew that she was the right character for the job when I realized that being a child of diaspora -- who has never been able to feel "at home" anywhere she's ever been -- gave her exactly the emotional motivation necessary to weave her into the larger story that was taking shape. So wish me luck!
To some extent, the background of her character was inspired by a general air of consciousness-raising about "non-default" characters in historic settings, and more specifically by the inspiration of the blog Medieval People of Color, whose mission is to increase awareness of the presence of non-caucasion people in Europe through history. It got me thinking about the cultural mix in Alpennia and what possibilities I might be overlooking due to my own default thinking. At that point, I already knew that Mefro Dominique the dressmaker was a French emigré of African origin originally from one of the French colonies in the Carribean, by way of Paris. I don't think it was particularly clear in Daughter of Mystery simply because she only appears in one scene and the point-of-view characters were too preoccupied at the time to "notice" something they wouldn't have considered unusual. But when I got to thinking idly on the question of which other background characters might be other than white, Serafina waved a hand in the air and said, "Me! Me!"
"But Serafina," I said, "you're 'the Roman scholar'. That's what I have you down as. It says so right here in my notes."
"And this is a problem…why?" Serafina asked, with a characteristic tilt of her head. "I was living in Rome before I traveled to Rotenek, but my parents were from--" and at that point I knew I needed to figure out where her parents were from and what they were doing in Italy. So to brainstorm I started looking through Google Images -- I don't even remember what my keywords were -- and came across a photo of a gorgeous woman from Ethiopia who looked out of the screen and said, "Hi, I'm your Serafina." OK, the geography works plausibly (though the timing is well over half a century too early for the major association of Ethiopia with Italian influence). Now all I needed was a reasonable backstory for how her family ended up there. I didn't want her to be an isolated individual and I wanted a backstory that was less obvious and less clichéd than the African slave trade. Originally I was thinking I might find some sort of merchanting connection that might work, but even my initial browsing through the books I brought home has started me down a different path (involving various reasons why Ethiopian people ended up in Rome during the century or so leading up to my key period) which will be more satisfactory.
I'm going to be a bit nervous about this character -- particularly since she's going to be a point-of-view character in Mother of Souls -- because I have to make her interactions with Alpennian society make sense and feel "real", both as a foreigner and as a woman of color, and I have to do it in a way that contributes to the story, and I have to do it in a way that will make for pleasant and enjoyable reading without glossing over the likelihood that she'd encounter some amount of racial prejudice. But I knew that she was the right character for the job when I realized that being a child of diaspora -- who has never been able to feel "at home" anywhere she's ever been -- gave her exactly the emotional motivation necessary to weave her into the larger story that was taking shape. So wish me luck!
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