(no subject)

[raincitygirl]

I was re-reading Rivers of London (US/Canada title Midnight Riot) recently and I’m curious about something. The protagonist of all the books is Constable Peter Grant, who is mixed race. The author of the series, Ben Aaronovitch, is white. I think Aaronovitch does a great job portraying a character who is not only black but black in a very specific cultural and class context (the London-born child of a white jazz musician father and a Fulani office cleaner mother originally from Sierra Leone). Now, *I* think Aaronovitch does a great job, but I’m a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, so I wouldn’t necessarily notice if Aaronovitch was screwing things up right, left and centre.

For people in my circle who are not white and have read the books, or at least one of the books, how do you think Aaronovitch does?

Comments

[sollers]

I'd just like to mention that anybody of the appropriate generation is likely to have at least one mixed race friend; and the key thing is that Peter Grant's mother is from Sierra Leone rather than the West Indies, which is much more common and very different in many ways. One would have to specifically ask someone who had one parent from West Africa.

Apart from that, there is a great deal in common between people from any minority*, and also between people growing up between two cultures.

*With exceptions. See Mama Thames' comments on there being too many Igbos (also from Nigeria) around.

[raincitygirl]

Good points all.

I should note also that according to Wikipedia, Aaronovitch's father was a Russian Jewish immigrant, so he would likely be able to draw on his own experiences growing up in an immigrant family.

[sollers]

Indeed.

The Guardian has a weekly column "Hideously Diverse Britain" (don't quote me on wording, I've just been dining and wining with my daughter) looking at experiences of various minorities, and a lot of them I can identify with from my own experiences - you don't even have to be foreign (except from the original Anglo-Saxon point of view*) to be unacceptable and mistrusted.

*I really, really dislike the term "Welsh". We were here first, dammit, how dare they call us foreigners?