Back in 2014 I participated in an online group sharing their writing processes. We all answered three questions and posted our answers. Ten years later they are still reasonable answers, although the novel I mention went back into the archives and I have another one done that I’m sending around.<\/p>\n
I have a story collection<\/a> out. I work in the area that\u2019s generally called \u201canthropological\u201d or \u201cethnographic\u201d fiction. I was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawai\u2019i, in Hilo, and I\u2019ve returned there after many years living in Buffalo NY, where I was a professor at a four-year state college.<\/p>\n What am I working on (2014)?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m getting back to work on an \u201cethnographic\u201d or \u201canthropological\u201d novel called News of Elsewhere<\/em>. It\u2019s set in 1969-70 among a people called the Nagovisi, on a Southwestern Pacific island called Bougainville. Bougainville and the Nagovisi are real; I lived there among the Nagovisi for several years, doing anthropological fieldwork.<\/p>\n The left side of the header image is from 1972 (me, Pasikolu, Tevu, and Postuge) and the right side is me in 2013. Only the surveying instrument and machete are unchanged. Pasikolu and Postuge are adults now, but Tevu has died. Pasikolu and many other young Nagovisi have Facebook pages and I interact with them there.<\/p>\n I finished the first draft in late 2011, more than two years ago. It ran to over 300,000 words — way too long. Why am I only now getting back to it?<\/p>\n I spun my wheels for a few months because I was exhausted and I couldn\u2019t see how to cut it. My friend, the poet Irving Feldman<\/a>, suggested that I try shortening it to novella length \u2013 by rewriting from scratch, not by cutting what I already had. He thought this would expose the aspects of plot and character that were essential to the story. Then I\u2019d see how to revise.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t like the novella idea, but I was sure Irving was right — turning it into something else would help. So I extracted some of the characters and scenes from the novel, added new material, and produced a set of linked stories. This took about four months. The novel had multiple narrators, so linked stories were faithful to my concept. It was harder than I expected, but with the help of the wonderful writer Ann Pancake<\/a> I produced A Red Woman Was Crying<\/em><\/a> (henceforth Red Woman<\/em>).<\/p>\n The process, as Irving predicted, gave me a much better understanding of what I had to do with the novel \u2013 and I\u2019m about to get started doing it.<\/p>\n How does my work differ from others of its genre?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n There are well-received novels, advertised and reviewed as \u201canthropological,\u201d that are about as anthropological as a Tarzan comic book.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not talking about non-Western writers writing about their own people (for example, there are Bougainvilleans writing fiction about Bougainville people<\/a> too) and I\u2019m not talking about novels where indigenous people make cameo appearances.<\/p>\n I\u2019m talking about literary fiction where the \u201ctribal\u201d people are center-stage, or the anthropologist is, or both.<\/p>\n A novelist has to be free to imagine anything. I wouldn\u2019t think of quarreling with a writer who wanted to wholly invent<\/em> a culture or a place and the people in it, but usually the novelist stakes a claim to a particular place or group of people, in name at least. And then butchers them. It\u2019s not just obvious to me<\/em> \u2013 anybody with anthropological training, even Anthro One, will see the problems, which (I think) all emerge from the novelist\u2019s not having bothered to learn anything about people and place.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m going to state the \u201cdifference\u201d bluntly: I understand the people and place I\u2019m writing about very well, I treat them with respect, I give my characters all the complexity they have in real life; I\u2019ve lived among the people I write about, and I\u2019ve been in communication with them for more than 55 years.<\/p>\n A recent novel, which I won\u2019t name, was billed as \u201canthropological.\u201d The tribal people were offensive caricatures and so were the anthropologists. The geography and ecology were bizarre, the political setting ridiculous, and the description of the anthropologists at work was ludicrous. The parts that were set in the US, apart from a couple of serious stumbles, were well-done. The prose was fine.<\/p>\n This is typical. The novelist probably figured that no one would question the exotic sections, and just winged it \u2013 evidently an effective strategy, because it was published by a major publisher, widely talked-about, and got decent reviews.<\/p>\n Writers who want to write anthropological novels should do research. A few days in a library, or online; a visit to an anthropologist who worked in the area. Even a few emails – I\u2019m not talking graduate level work. But they don\u2019t seem to do it.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to be misunderstood. I\u2019m only trying to answer the differs <\/em>question. Some of the writers I\u2019m complaining about are better writers than I am, and their novels read well. But what I write comes from a deep understanding of a place and the people who live there, and intimate friendships with some of them, and theirs doesn\u2019t. I take writing about indigenous people very seriously, and, overwhelmingly, other fiction writers don\u2019t.<\/p>\n