When a White Woman Writes a Brown Character

Why am I writing characters of color? And is it okay?

When I started my MFA studies at UC Riverside, Palm Desert, I expressed to a fiction professor, a woman of color, that I didn’t plan to write any characters of color. I didn’t feel it was my place to do so as a white writer. I didn’t think it was right for me to do so. I planned to stay in my lane, and for some reason, I felt compelled to assure her of that. Much to my surprise, the professor told me I had to write outside my own experience. If I didn’t, she said, I would be perpetuating the vastly lopsided canon of books by white writers filled only with white characters. But, she warned, I had to put in the work to get it right. At the time, I thought I knew what that meant.

A couple of years later, I had the opportunity to submit two of the stories from my novel-in-collected-stories to an agent. The protagonist in one of the stories is a Californio woman—a woman descended from the Spanish and Mexican peoples who settled California, long before it was annexed by the United States after the Mexican-American War. The agent, a white woman, told me the opposite. She said I couldn’t write characters of color. The agent meant well. At least I think she did—I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt. I’m paraphrasing liberally—she was much blunter, and she didn’t offer much of an explanation for her directive. So, I’m not exactly sure of her reasoning—whether it was socially driven or market driven or perhaps both. But this was the year after American Dirt was published, and this was the gist of her message:

“The pendulum has swung too far against it right now. It was too far in the opposite direction before—white writers were writing characters of color with impunity. But now, it’s swung too far in the direction of white writers not being able to write characters of color without being cancelled. It will eventually swing back and settle in the middle, but you can’t do it right now.”

—white agent person (paraphrased)

I came out of that meeting thinking I needed to get back in my lane, shred my manuscript, and start over from scratch, rewriting it with only white characters. But when I talked with my thesis advisor about it, he disagreed with the agent. He told me he believed in my ability to do the work. He told me I am a strong person who has been through some shit. He told me he had confidence I could handle it. He advised me to be prepared for criticism and to be ready to meet it. In other words, I must be prepared to explain why I am writing characters of color and what work I’ve done to earn the right to do so.

When I was young, much of what I knew or thought I knew about other cultures came from television shows like Chico and the Man (1974-1978), which was set in East Los Angeles and starred Jack Albertson and Freddie Prinze.

My thesis advisor talked me off the ledge, as he has kindly done several times in the half dozen years I’ve known him. So, I went back to work, I tried to avoid writing stereotypes, and I sought out opportunities to learn. A year or so after I talked with the agent, I heard author Myriam Gurba talk about white writers writing characters of color. I’m going to paraphrase again here, but what she said blew my mind, made so much sense, and was one of those things I couldn’t believe I hadn’t considered before:

“Writers of color in the US have been immersed in the white experience all of their lives because white culture has been the dominant culture they’ve grown up in and lived in. So they have that knowledge and experience to draw upon when they write white characters. White writers generally have not been immersed in the experiences of people of color or cultures other than their own, so they have extra work to do in order to write characters of color.”

—Myriam Gurba (paraphrased)

What Gurba had to say completely changed the way I approach my work as a writer and even the way I live my life. It was a lightbulb moment for me—I realized in that moment that, for example, I’d read lots of books by white authors, and even Black authors and Asian authors, but I hadn’t read many books by Latino authors beyond The House on Mango Street¹ from a college reading list. I was working to avoid writing stereotypes, yes, but I was in danger of writing Latino characters who were basically white characters with Latino names. My work was only beginning.

I had gone into the writing of my book thinking I knew something about Chicano culture. After all, I spent much of my life in the Salinas Valley. I’d gone to a predominantly Chicano high school, I’d attended a couple of quinceaneras, and my first marriage was to a Chicano husband who taught me the proper way to make a burrito. Because he’d married a white girl, his Chicano friends and his family teased him and called him “el coco”—coconut—someone who is brown on the outside and white on the inside. Looking back, despite our city’s demographics, he was immersed in white culture, but my knowledge of Chicano culture was superficial at best. This is exactly the kind of thing that garnered criticism for the author of American Dirt. I certainly hadn’t immersed myself in Chicano culture, or any culture other than my own, and when I was young, most of what I knew or thought I knew about Chicano culture came from television.

Chico and the Man premiered when I was fourteen. It was the first television show to include a Chicano as a main character. The sitcom was considered progressive at the time and was motivated at least in part by its white creator’s desire to combat racism and to depict non-white cultures on television. But the show faced backlash from the Chicano community for many reasons, including the casting of Freddie Prinze (1954-1977), who was Puerto Rican and German, not Chicano; the use of stereotypical and even racist language and slurs in the guise of humor; and the depiction of Chicanos as lazy—“It’s not my job, man” was Chico’s most famous catch phrase. Another criticism was that the creator and writers were white and knew nothing about Chicano culture. There were no Chicano writers on staff. One letter to the FCC complained that the show’s creators “probably knew as much about Mexican American culture as I know about the culture of Lithuanian Aborigines.”

In other words, even if their hearts were in the right places, critics felt the show’s white creator and white writers had not put in enough work. Critics didn’t argue that white screenwriters didn’t have the right to write Chicano characters. They argued that they hadn’t earned that right. The proof of that fact was in the pudding, they said. A West Coast Chicano didn’t have the same accent as Prinze, who was an East Coast Puerto Rican. A West Coast Chicano didn’t exercise the same word choices and turns of phrase the screenwriters had written for Prinze. The language and accent were stereotypical and wrong, they said. Prinze’s gestures and body language were not Chicano either, they said, and Chicanos living in East Los Angeles didn’t live the lifestyle Prinze’s character was depicted as living.

As I wrote and rewrote my book, I gave a lot of thought not only as to why I had decided to include Californio and Chicano characters in my book but also as to whether I’d put in the requisite work. Even if my heart was in the right place, that wasn’t enough. I thought about something Mexican poet Octavio Paz said:

“Deserve your dream.”

—Octavio Paz

Part of deserving my dream, I realized, is putting in the work to make sure I get it right, whether it’s contacting Kelly Sorensen at the Ventana Wildlife Society to find out whether there are any turtles in the Ventana Wilderness (there are—the western pond turtle), or researching the aftermath of the Mexican-American War and its effect on the Californios who had lived in California since the 17th century, or reading more books by Latino writers, or studying Alex Espinoza’s guidelines for including Spanish words in fiction (hint: don’t use them as “seasoning,” Espinoza says).

Alex Espinoza (Still Water Saints and Sons of El Rey) recently wrote this to me:

“Writing from the perspective of someone whose background differs from our own is always a complicated, delicate task—and one that requires humility, rigor, and a deep sense of responsibility. … [E]ven with the best of intentions, these choices will often invite pushback. That’s part of the work. What matters is that we have good reasons for the choices we make—and that we’re prepared to stand behind them thoughtfully and honestly.”

So, basically, what my thesis advisor had told me: I must be prepared to explain why I decided to write characters of color. I must be ready to defend that choice. But more importantly, I must be humble enough to learn, open enough to accept criticism, and brave enough to enter the conversations about cultural appropriation, representation, diversity, and writing the other.

I include Californio characters in my story “Trees.” Californios are Californians of Spanish and Mexican descent. They originally settled and lived in what is now California in the 17th through the 19th centuries, before the United States annexed California after the Mexican-American War. So they lived in California long before it became a part of the United States, and an estimated 320,000 to 500,000 descendants of Californios are living today. There are other contemporary characters in my novel who the white characters assume are Mexican immigrants but who are in fact descendants of Californios, so their families have a much longer history in California than the white characters do.

I’ve chosen the term “Chicano” to refer to the few contemporary characters I’ve written who are not descended from Californios. They are contemporary immigrants from Mexico who have permanently settled in the United States or have become American citizens, or people of Mexican descent who were born in the United States. The terms “Chicano” and “Chicana” are a preferred ethnic identity for many and are more empowered terms. They are a divergence from the term “Mexican American,” which signals a required assimilation away from Mexican culture and toward white culture. The terms were reclaimed during the social and political Chicano Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. I know that some of my characters are Chicano because I wrote them, but it’s a mistake to assume any and every Latino person you meet in California has Mexican roots.

I am nowhere near an expert, but here is my understanding based on the work I’ve done: The terms “Latino” and “Latina” refer to a person who comes from a Latin American country, which includes Mexico but includes other countries as well. The term “Latinx” is unpopular and even offensive to many Latinos, who consider it to be an anglicization. Also, the “x” is considered a remnant of colonization by many. The term “Latine” is more accepted because it follows the Spanish language structure for non-gendered nouns. The term “Hispanic” refers to a person who comes from a Spanish-speaking country, but this term, too, is considered a remnant of colonization, and author Sandra Cisneros, in her lecture “Why I’m Not Hispanic,” explains that it erases the indigenous and African origins of the majority of people of Latin American origin. Cisneros has dual citizenship in Mexico and the U.S. and describes herself either as American with Mexican roots or Mexican with American roots depending on which side of the border she is on.

“‘Hispanic’ is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. ‘Latino’ is the word we have always used for ourselves.”

—Sandra Cisneros

Of course, as with pronouns, it’s an individual choice. Myriam Gurba, who was born thirty miles south of me in Santa Maria, is a co-founder of the hashtag #DignidadLiteria, which was born after the publication of American Dirt and Gurba’s iconic essay “Pendaja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature.” The #DignidadLiteraria movement uses the terms Latinx and Chicanx, presumably for purposes of gender neutrality. Other co-founders of the movement were Robert Lovato and David Bowles.

I’m not familiar with Bowles, but I admire Myriam Gurba and Robert Lovato tremendously. Lovato attended my MFA grad lecture! If you think seeing him in the Zoom gallery threw me off my game, you’d be right. Am I a little concerned that Gurba and/or Lovato will read my book and conclude that it’s “trauma porn that wears a social justice fig leaf?”² I’d be lying if I said I’m not. I hope not. And I’m going to continue to work my ass off with my editor over the next year or so, heed the notes of sensitivity readers, and work on myself to do my best to make sure it’s not that. But I’m also mindful of Espinoza’s comments that my “choices will … invite pushback” and that, “[t]hat’s part of the work.” It is, right? That’s how we learn from one another and make progress. I have to be open to the pushback. That part is not within my control, and I don’t even have ownership of that—once you put something out into the world, it belongs to the readers.

I felt compelled to include Latino characters in my book because I have lived in California all of my life. The Latino population in California is 40%. The white population is 34%. My family came from Oklahoma and settled in the Salinas Valley. My grandparents on both sides lived in Soledad, and that’s where I spent much of my childhood. The population of Soledad is 70% Latino. I was born in King City, a city in southern Monterey County, where the population is 90% Latino. I went to high school and spent my twenties in Salinas, where the population is 80% Latino.

For me to set my stories in California, against the backdrop of California’s turbulent history, but not to include Californio and Chicano characters, would amount to an erasure. Plus some of the stories in my book were inspired, at least in part, by California’s history in relation to Mexico and immigrants and by current events. I do hope to shine a light on parts of California history that have been erased or overlooked. And I am doing my best to represent the characters in my book well, so their real-life counterparts would be proud. But I am mindful that I must continue to do the work, I must continue to be thoughtful and respectful, and I must be prepared to have that conversation when the time comes.

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old,
they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

—Gabriel García Márquez

NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

My short story “Lullaby” is coming soon! It will be included in Better Off Dead: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin Volume 1 (coming 8/25/25). It was a challenge to write a noir story inspired by my favorite Elton John/Bernie Taupin collab—“Your Song”—but I think I pulled it off! The Kindle edition is available for preorder now, and the print edition will be available soon.

Please join me at the Central Coast Writers’ Conference September 26th & 27th in sunny San Luis Obispo, California! Friday afternoon, Brenna Humphries, M. Golda Turner, and I will host a panel on the benefits of finding your writing community. Saturday, I’ll be presenting on two topics: Strengthening Your Brand & Resume by Publishing Short Pieces and Funding Your Writing Career with Grants, Fellowships, and Residencies.

“A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared.”

—Gloria Anzaldúa

SOME THINGS FOR READERS

Shortcomings: Adrian Tomine’s Graphic Novel Is the California Book Club’s August 2025 Selection
(Caleb Lee Adams for Alta)

The Mortal Perils of Being an Instagram Influencer: “The Blue Room”
(fiction by Lena Valencia for Electric Literature)

The Living Mountain: Pioneering Scottish Mountaineer and Poet Nan Shepherd’s Forgotten Masterpiece About Our Relationship with Nature
(Maria Popova for The Marginalian)

“Write what should not be forgotten.”

—Isabel Allende

SOME THINGS FOR WRITERS

The Query Checklist You Didn’t Know You Needed
(Erin C. Niumata for Erin’s Third Act)

Enhancing Readability with White Space
(Michael Costaris for Lit Mag News)

Why Your Book’s First 10 Pages Matter More Than the Next 100: And how to make them shine (Stephanie Wheeless for Wheeless Edits)

Willie Nelson and the Three G’s of Literary Citizenship
(Áine Greaney for The Brevity Blog)

I Won a Writing Award. Does It Matter?
(Eleanor Vincent for Jane Friedman)

How and Where to Build Your Literary Community
(Star Wuerdemann for Jane Friedman)

“It’s like my whole world is coming undone, but when I write, my pencil is a needle and thread, and I’m stitching the scraps back together.”

—Julia Alvarez

SOMETHING TO MAKE YOU SMILE

I’m the Word “Just” in a Piece of Writing, and I Just Want You to Give Me a Chance
(Kerry Elson for The Brevity Blog)

“I tell people to write the stories that you’re afraid to talk about, the stories you wish you’d forget, because those have the most power. Those are the ones that have the most strength when you give them as a testimony.”

—Sandra Cisneros

Leanne Phillips
Writer | Book Coach | Editor
​leannephillips.com

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1. Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984).

2. Myriam Gurba, “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature,” Tropics of Meta, December 12, 2019, accessed August 8, 2025, https://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/