I once worked in a playreading group with an Irish-Mexican-American woman named Mari Osuna, and she said she'd never, ever once walked into an audition run by standard-issue Anglos without everyone expressing great amazement that she wasn't Japanese.

I'm afraid, Barb, that you will be running into that over and over again.

Eh, I know, Sail. I knew going in that as long as I wrote with a distinct cultural slant, yet one that wasn't noticeably "exotic" that I'd run into this sort of attitude. It seems to be one of the most difficult things for many readers to get-- the idea that there can be characters that are fully assimilated yet still retain a strong sense of cultural identity It's as if a character has to be one or the other.

It's headdesky, but I've more or less come to accept that it's going to happen.

It seems to be one of the most difficult things for many readers to get-- the idea that there can be characters that are fully assimilated yet still retain a strong sense of cultural identity It's as if a character has to be one or the other.

I'm sadly unsurprised, given the number of people I see outside of reading contexts who make the same wacky assumptions. The one bright side is that work like yours can be a major part of the cluesticking.

And there are a number of Japanese.

ie, President Fujimora of Peru.

Though my favorite cultural mash-up are the Freiherrs MacNevin O'Kelly, German-Irish nobility. I try to imagine an accent that's a combination of German and Irish lilt.

It seems to be one of the most difficult things for many readers to get-- the idea that there can be characters that are fully assimilated yet still retain a strong sense of cultural identity.

Hmm, I wonder if the analogy of secular Jews would help? I (like a lot of US Jews), don't speak Hebrew, have only a few words of Yiddish, seldom go to synagogue, don't eat Kosher, and yet retain a strong sense of Jewish identity, do eat lots of traditional food, celebrate Jewish holidays, tell traditional jokes and stories. I have run into people who were not familiar with the whole "secular Jew" thing, but not many. At any rate, whether this particular analogy would be useful, I wonder if an author's note at the beginning of your submmisions would work as a gentle cluestick?

First prize was a nice contract so I figured what the hell. First step in the contest was submitting a "pitch" of your story. Got through that phase Second step was having a five thousand word excerpt reviewed by two Amazon Vine reviewers.

I think the problem here is that this is not the way any other submission would work. If you submit on proposal, an editor would get three chapters and a synopsis. If you submit a full manuscript, well, the editor has the full manuscript to see how things turn out.

I'm surprised it was based on only two opinions, frankly. And the problem is, since this is not a traditional submission, the second reviewer doesn't have a chance to call an agent or the author and say, "Hey, let's talk about this, I like your writing, but..."

I'm sorry, babe.

You might hate me for asking this, and it might even be a fucking stupid question on the level of opening my work and going "Oh, dag, wheelchairs again?!" but would you feel like you were prostituting your work if you *did* name them Lupe and Paco?(or, you know, something people could glom onto that you like more) I mean, if the name thing is shorthand for people not understanding about Hispanic culture, that is not likely to help much, but maybe their names are creating unintended static? Margaret Mitchell initially had Scarlett O'Hara as "Pansy" but her publisher said, outside the South, that meant a dude that had the gay.

I'm surprised it was based on only two opinions, frankly. And the problem is, since this is not a traditional submission, the second reviewer doesn't have a chance to call an agent or the author and say, "Hey, let's talk about this, I like your writing, but..."

Well, and another part of the problem is that we're talking two people who might've gotten their top reviewer status for reviewing toasters, for all I know. On the one hand, the thought that it wasn't a traditional submission was an appealing one if only because (in theory at least) we're talking real readers. On other, however, it's clear that many of these reviewers don't have a clue in hell HOW to review. Mine, at least, were coherent and on the offensive scale, fairly low down. If you want to be simultaneously entertained and appalled, check out this thread on the amazon board where people were posting their reviews. The first one alone is a lulu, but by no means is it the only one:

[link]

would you feel like you were prostituting your work if you *did* name them Lupe and Paco?(or, you know, something people could glom onto that you like more)

First off, not a stupid question and definitely not hating you. And yeah, I think in this particular case, it would feel like prostituting because the names are very deliberately chosen. Libby is short for Liberty because her mother is a Cuban hippy and in fact, Libby's middle name is Estrella. And Nick's full name is Nicholas Miguel Azarias which is mentioned fairly early on-- the point is, these two have names that reflect their backgrounds-- that of being second generation, Cuban-Americans who are assimilated yet maintain a strong cultural identity.

Besides, the reviewer glomming onto the names and use of Spanish as something that bothers them-- I'm not sure that opinion would be changed even if they'd had more of the manuscript to read. I had people who read Adiós and objected to ANY of the Spanish in there-- didn't understand why it was in there at all because who would understand it anyway and why didn't I just write the whole book in Spanish?

And Typo, no, I wouldn't put anything like that in the author's notes-- I prefer not to use the Clue-by-Four quite so obviously and frankly, again, with the entire manuscript, it shouldn't be necessary.

Well, I wish they'd have asked me. But I have about twelve Amazon reviews.