Romancing the Tome
Several Blog posts back, I commented that moving forward in my book series, particularly with volume three, was going to require some research on my part. "Why?" you might ask. Because I don't want to become one more U.S American, white, cis-gendered male writing about topics and people I don't know the first thing about. Don't get me wrong, I'm not wholly clueless on the topics that are coming up in my books, but basic awareness and empathetic understanding can only get me so far. Without some degree of research, I have a strong probability of perpetuating stereotypes and false information about groups of people who are already misunderstood and marginalized. I don't want to be one more guy that is ok with making up random crap as I go along because "Hey, it's just a fantasy book, right?" I want to learn and be better for it. If I can swing it, I'd like to give my readers a chance to do the same.
Simply put, I don't want somebody to read my books and have this experience:
What I wasn't anticipating in this endeavor was the level of impact that this research would have on me personally.
I'll be the first to admit, everything that's going on right now (6/29/18) with the current immigration situation has me pretty screwed up mentally and emotionally. Human rights violations and abuses light my fuse in a very big way. When they follow certain historical patterns... (unclenching teeth) But I digress.
I've been intermittently gathering information on Native American culture with emphasis on the Great Plains region. What I'm learning is really interesting, but it's difficult to find truly meaty resources online that remain relevant to the type of information that I'm looking for. It dawned on me after I started paying more attention to the web addresses that were coming up repeatedly and banging my head against the desk at how poorly written some of these articles were, that half of what I'm finding are the remnants of some high school kids' homework assignments. While not without value (Yay learning efforts!), these aren't the academically reviewed sources I was hoping they might be. Evidently I need to dig a little deeper to find what I'm searching for. The hunt continues. (But seriously, how friggin' hard is it to determine "Did Native American people historically sleep with pillows or not?")
This week, though, I've been focused on learning about the Romani people. (I'm not going to dumb it down for you with the pejorative term. Open another tab and look it up.) A dear friend of mine helped to steer me toward some reputable (if slightly dated) resources (I didn't know GeoCities still had archived material out there!). What I found left me significantly shaken up and with even more questions.
I have long understood that the Romani have been a persecuted and poorly treated people. What I did not fathom was how brutal and disturbing their history truly was. They endured centuries of enslavement after leaving India (complete with beatings, torture, killings, rape, separation from children and families, being sold and traded like merchandise) only to face ongoing racism and prejudice once they were freed (sound like anybody else we know?). Everywhere they went as they moved west into Europe, they were denied work or trade opportunities. Without trade they couldn't access food and other necessities by typical means. Without better options many of them did what they had to in order to survive and feed their families. An ongoing cycle of abuses and persecution continued and escalated. One country after another shuffled them along, reacting more and more violently each time the tribes got shoved back across a border. Accusations flew and grew more grandiose and exaggerated. Possessions were stolen "to pay fines." Caravans were attacked and wagons were destroyed. The Romani were even hunted for sport in some areas. Countries created laws permitting and often encouraging wholesale slaughter of Romani men and mutilation of the women and children before running them off into the next country only for them to face the next round of persecution from another government. Children were frequently and forcibly removed from Romani families to be brought up in "civilized" households, a practice that is still happening today in some (otherwise progressive) countries. Even the most brutal of these atrocities aren't ancient history, either. This was going on well into the 1900s, and it's barely any better now in many places.
Thousands of Romani people were rounded up in Germany for mass execution well before it was Nazi Germany. They were tested on and butchered, gassed, and immolated, and buried alive in mass graves seemingly as a practice run for nearly 20 years before the Jewish people were officially targeted. They continued to die by the thousands right along with the Jewish victims in the name of "ethnic cleansing."
The biggest thing I've learned in my research thus far is that humans are slow learners. We repeat the same atrocities, for the same reasons, based in the same fears and ignorance, over and over again. And every time we justify it in the same ways, citing the same prejudices, and telling ourselves the same lies to rationalize our responses.
I don't understand what's so difficult about treating other people with dignity and respect. I really don't. I can't fathom the notion of looking at another person and somehow believing that they're "less than" or "barely human" or "just an animal."
While I academically understand the instinctual response to analyze somebody or something unfamiliar to us with suspicion (it's a scientifically proven adaptive trait imbedded in our evolutionary process that creates responses like "Shit, is that a snake? No, it's a stick. I hope it's a stick. Wait, IS that a snake?"), living perpetually in that state of fear and paranoia is not a healthy or productive way to live.
I truly wish people would wake up en masse all around the world tomorrow, and realize that all of these things we use to divide ourselves are absolutely trivial. Color, religion, nationality, orientation, gender, ability/disability, philosophy: none of it matters. Nobody is better than anyone else. Your perception is not anyone else's perception. Your will has no business being imposed on somebody else will. The sooner we, as people, figure this out, the sooner we can start solving our REAL problems, together, with a significantly better outcome for survival. Hell, we might even be able to live better lives working together instead of against each other. Wouldn't that be neat?
But, in the meantime...
I've got books! I've got "Ash to Ashes," I've got "Wolfkin: A Fairy's Tail," and, more importantly, I want to get these books to YOU! So make plans to find me at Cornerstone Coffee Haus in Seneca, KS on July 14th between 10 AM and 2 PM! I'll have books. They'll have coffee drinks. You can get breakfast or lunch while you're there. They even have air conditioning, and who doesn't love air conditioning in the middle of a blazing hot Midwest summer? Am I right? Of course I am! So get here on Saturday, July 14th, and start your weekend adventures right! I'll see you there!
