Last night I finally read Mike Duran’s debut novel, The Resurrection.
It’s a Christian horror story (“…and they hired a MUSLIM plumber” heh. I kid.) and like any book found in the Christian Fiction market it wears its doctrine on its sleeve. Where else can you find a book where the villain is a Magic Negro trope who practices syncretism? Where else would an author even MENTION syncretism?!?
Update well, this is interesting. Looks as though I might be harboring some latent prejudice. In a conversation with the author he tells me that he never envisioned this character as being black. I guess I was really on a post-Shack high horse when I assumed that dark eyes and an Afro indicated a black man. My apologies to the general zeitgeist for my attitude, but more importantly to Mr. Duran for inferring an issue he had NOT created.
I did like the book, though, because it was compelling enough to keep me reading through a bad bout of chemo-related nausea, and that in and of itself is enough to warrant praise. But it also got me thinking.
I’ve read Mike’s blog for awhile now and he says over and over again that he hopes non-Christians read his book and are reached by it. Yet he still refuses to hide the aspirin in the pudding, as it were. He’s so upfront about the doctrine and theology woven into his story that he uses the book’s Afterward as a brief apologetic for an aspect of the story some Christians may find at odds with their belief.
Contrast that, if you will, with authors like Stephanie Meyer, Orson Scott Card, Jonathan Kellerman, Stephen King and scores of others whose books are rife with the author’s personal religious beliefs, but only if you know where to look and what you’re looking for. To this day I meet people who think there is NO Mormanism in Twilight, even though the entire series is Mormon to its core.
The worst non-Christian piece of proselytic fiction I’ve read to date still remains Mists of Avalon. Marion Zimmer Bradley either hates Christianity as a whole or just the part of the faith that drove the Druids out of Britain. Either way, the book is quite packed with her beliefs.
I suppose as disjointed as this post is, the point I’m trying to get across is that I’m not sure how I feel about authors who sneak their political and religious doctrines into an otherwise unmarked novel. At least Mike’s book is upfront with the fact that it is a Christian story.
I write. I know from personal experience that any work of fiction is going to contain pieces and parts of an author’s worldview. That’s often what I like about them, getting to see through another person’s eyes. But when a book (like Meyer’s) is clearly proselytizing I wish publishers would be honest about that.
Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Katherine.
If I ever publish, I have thought to include a forward or an author’s note about typology because I am “hiding the aspirin in the pudding” (love that phrase), but I guess I want to let people know there’s something to look for. I don’t know if that’s a good plan or not, and I suppose some of these decisions belong to the publisher (as, I believe, was the decision to include the Afterword in Mike’s book).
Becky
Becky,
If and when I publish my personal plan is to just let the book out there and see if folks can spot the bits that are in homage to one thing or another. Part of the fun of writing this book has been how I hide the aspirin. 🙂
One note about MZB: as far as I can tell, the only narrative she knows is the one where a nasty centralizing system persecutes non-conformers. And her good nonconformers come in all flavors, as do her nasty centralizers. So I doubt she hates Christianity based on that one book; she just doesn’t know any other story to write.
Aha. That would make sense.
I haven’t ever been able to sit through any of her books long enough to follow a thread of thought. They’re always so…angry? Or something.
Yeah, and it’s always the nasty conformists she’s angry at. What’s funny is that she used to write some pretty straightforward SF stuff that I didn’t mind reading, and later went back and “expanded” all her early novels by stuffing all those angry tropes into them where they hadn’t been before. She is now on my “tell people never to read” list.
Of course, if you’ve noticed, Card also has only one narrative: the poor misunderstood magical hero who never meant any harm by all the harm he did but no one understands him, and he’s suffering so much!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who noticed that about Mists of Avalon. I loved the book before I became a Christian, but after I got saved, it gave me the heebie-jeebies. Just couldn’t stomach it anymore. The TV adaptation was ok, though.
Oh, man, I am so torn. Is it worth re-reading that pile of poo (Twilight) to find the Mormon stuff in it? Hmmm, maybe I’ll just ask the internet for a summary. I seriously had no idea.
No. I’ll fill you in. It won’t take long and we can have snacks.
Katherine, thanks so much for taking time with my novel. I read your review on Goodreads and, obviously, this post. I really appreciate your candor and am fascinated (perhaps enlightened) by your take on the possible racist elements. I would really love to hear more about why you viewed my syncretistic Prof as a “Magic Negro trope.” Seriously.
Regarding wearing my doctrine on my sleeve: The Resurrection was shopped for two years through the CBA, with marginal interest. The repeated reasons for non-acceptance (at least, the reasons we heard of (1) Too creepy, (2) Too ambiguous. It’s funny because some of the folks who reviewed The Resurrection thought that the “Christian” characters were pretty messed up (see pastor and his board), even to the point of being “spiritually” smarmy, that the critics of the “Christian” POV in the story (see Keen) were given far too much unanswered leverage, and that the “Christian” pastor couldn’t seem t screw his head on right. (In fact, some thought he was NOT a Christian.) I was not shy about letting my worldview show in the story. That’s true. But I made sure to toss a number of other worldviews into the pot.
The “ghost” was the other controversial element that seemed to repeatedly garner me a “pass” from CBA publishers. Becky is right, my publisher requested the Afterword which I was happy to do. I recently met with a book club. One of the girls said her husband refused to read “Christian fiction,” but after reading the Afterword, decided to read the book. So… I dunno.
Anyway, thanks so much for reading, reviewing, and discussing my stuff, Katherine. Grace to you!
I think it’s fair that I admit upfront that I didn’t read the novel under the best of circumstances so I may have brought something too seemingly negative to the equation. But I did go back and double-check myself so that I could write a thorough and cogent response.
Let me be really clear about one thing. I did enjoy the book. It featured a lot of things that pique my interest naturally and did so in a fast-moving way. And, frankly, I don’t think you’re wrong to wear your doctrine on your sleeve. The point of this post is my realisation that I think I’d prefer that to all the sneaking around other authors do.
But the racist (I’d lean more toward saying “monocultural”) elements set me on my ear a bit.
1. Magic Negro
I double-checked, and nowhere did you actually say Keen was black. I realize I cobbled that assumption out of the multiple mentions of his Afro, the description of his mother’s church and the fact that when you talk about him photographed with the Iluaco(?) tribesmen you say he is set apart by his khakis and grey Afro. I suppose he could be white and I could have jumped to conclusions. But I’m betting maybe I didn’t. So to have this black guy be a Shamanistic source of enlightenment who eventually is proven to be leading the main character astray…it just made me uncomfortable. Too much of a cross between _The Shack_ and _True Blood_.
A Magical Negro character, as I assume you know, is a kindly, avuncular black man or Jemimahesque black woman who is there to enlighten the white protagonist. They do so in part with folksy wisdom they bring from their cultural background. For at least the first third of the book this is how Clark sees Keen. Right down to drinking the magic tea.
2. Dark skin=Dark Ways
I don’t think you meant to do this. It seemed to me during the denouement at the Obsidian Altar, while Keen is explaining their Wicker Man deal they’ve got going on, all the bad stuff is coming from dark skinned people, whether it be the presumably black Keen, the Mesos who called for the first Stonetree sacrifice, the Iluaco tribesmen, etc. All the hero people seem to be white. So it looks uncomfortably like you’ve set up a world where the good white people are being led astray by the evil ways of the dark-skinned outsiders. What I know of you from your writing I really believe that this is an unfortunate coincidence.
This explains why I was puzzled at your “monocultural” reference, Katherine. I never envisioned Keen as a black man. In fact, I always pictured him as an evil Philip Yancey, scraggly goatee, frizzy hair, and “sinewy.” Although I could see how the reference to his “afro” would throw you off. Probably the closest I come to hinting otherwise is on page 60, where the Prof is “surrounded by dark-skinned men,” he being of the lighter variety.
And while “All the hero people seem to be white,” I’d mention — and this feels weird to be pointing out empathetic people of color in my story — Beeko, the Nigerian criminologist was a kindly soul, Mondo and his mother, and…
* Spoiler alert! *
…even Cellophane,the Peruvian native who was murdered by Keen and took revenge on the demented doc.
But it brings up loads of questions in my mind, like the need for racial attribution in our tales. Thanks for the great discussion, Katherine!
Oh, and totally off-topic, but this: It’s a Christian horror story (“…and they hired a MUSLIM plumber” heh. I kid.) made me laugh, because all over NYC there are mezuzot painted over by gentile painters the supers hired without warning the tenants that painting was gonna happen.
I’ve read far preachier books, even though I get what you’re saying. I do wonder, however, how an author would approach writing a books w/ Christian characters who don’t think about/talk about their faith. This is an honest question I have. I don’t tend to get very preachy in my writing, and one of my Catholic critique partners wanted to see my Christian characters actually discussing their faith. But whenever I attempted conversations like that, they seemed over the top silly. Ideas?
I think maybe I wasn’t clear enough about what I meant…and maybe I should not blog on the iPad, as the typing is a handicap that messes up my delivery.
I’m not saying this book is “preachy”. Far from it. I’m saying that this book is a good example of how an author handles the parameters placed on them by the CBA. I’ve read many other CBA books where the preachi g actually stops the flow of the story by changing tenses, POV, etc.
As an author who has Christian, Jewish and Pagan characters in her current novel I’d have to say that I hope to handle such a motley cast in a way similar to other authors with the same set up, ie. Ken Follett, Edward Rutherford, Herman Wouk, Michael Gruber. I like to show how religion shapes a nd motivates a character without stopping the natural flow of the story to include a dissertation on doctrine, apologetics or exegesis.
I realize I didn’t answer your quest for ideas about a faith dialogue. I’m not sure how, to be honest, since I’m not familiar with the story.
But the books where I’ve seen faith dialogue most smoothly all have three things in common:
1. The dialogue is between a Christian and a LONG-TERM friend.
2. The long-term friend is a skeptic of sorts.
3. The faith discussion is brief but ongoing.
In Michael Gruber’s mainstream books his central character is a Cuban detective who solves crimes with a supernatural element to them. His mother is a practitioner of Santeria and one of his best friends is Christian. The detective himself remains a skeptic, though The novels are remarkably adroit at having a good dialogue about the role of faith in every day life, and the Christian characters are a wonderful representation.
In Pillars of the Earth you have my favourite fictional Chrisrian of all time in Brother Phillip. He gets to have internal monologues and external dialogues about his faith that add to his growth as a character. His challenges come from both pagans and corrupt members of the church. And he himself is flawed, so the conversations don’t come off as fakey and cloying as they otherwise might.
I think that’s the key. If every good novel is a journey from innocence to experience it helps if you, the writer, accept that your character has more to learn. With Christians writing Christian characters there seems to always be the temptation to say “well, they’re saved and that’s the endpoint of the journey.” so the “saved” character comes off as smug and pedantic. Kind of like I’m afraid this comment will.
Hah! An evil Phillip Yancey! I used to work with a guy who thought the original PY was evil. Interesting; I wonder what it says about me that I automatically assumed he was black… As tired as I do get of reading authors talking about “cafe au lait” and “smooth caramel” skin, I guess I do rely on them to be clear about the race of a character. I’m more comfortable having it told to me straight than having to glean appearance from context. And while race of some characters isn’t germaine at all (Ruby’s husband could have been any ethnocultural group without disturbing the balance of the story) with some characters it’s a little bit more important.
In fact, thinking about this, I should bring up one of my newer issues with commercial fiction.
There is always a TON of description about the setting, but the trend in commercial authors (outside of straight up fantasy, where they’re forever giving people freakish attributes as part of the scenery) is to purposely leave the characters’ appearance vague. One author (blast you, Scalzi!) even left a character’s GENDER vague. Sometimes they do this, like Scalzi did, to act as a sort of litmus test of readers’ openness. Other ties they do it so that the book is easier to shop to filmmakers, who want to be able to envision Movie Star N in the role. But as I reader I feel wrong footed when I don’t have a clear and complete description of a person.
I love, love, LOVE Stephen King. But I gotta say, he has ticked me off as each passing book barely masks his hatred of anything political that is not on the left. I just ignore that part.
[…] in an interesting exchange between us, which you can find in the body and comments section of THIS POST. But the whole incident has caused me to ponder the issue of handling race in our fiction. These […]