Choosing the Protagonist Gender by Ruben D. Gonzales

 

Protagonist

A recent controversy among authors, editors, publishers, and reviewers surrounded the book, American Dirt. The question, “can a non-Mexican write about the Mexican experience” surfaced amid the southwestern border crisis. In this case the book of fiction detailed a mother and child experience of fleeing Mexico and trying to get to the U.S.A. The author is not Mexican. Nor was the author an immigrant who personally experienced what at times can be a harrowing journey. She was however a good writer. She had successfully published before and has won awards for her writing.

The old dictum, “Write what you know,” is good advice, but do you have to be an old submarine commander to write a thriller about a Soviet nuclear submarine? Do you even have to be a sailor? Do you have to be a nuclear scientist? Most would agree no, although thorough research could be essential. I’m sure John Grisham’s legal experience helps him write those great court scenes, but was every writer on the Perry Mason series an attorney? Do you have to be a woman to write about a woman? Do you have to be a man to write about a man?

I found myself in a similar dilemma when writing my just released, Murder on Black Mountain. I wrote in first person and the first person in my story is a female. If you need to check my name again, go ahead, I’m definitely a male. Just ask my wife. So writing from a woman’s perspective was a new experience for me, although all writers write from both points of view, even from the point of view of fury animals. But it is fiction, isn’t it? And it is writing.

My protagonist in the first draft of my story was indeed a man. But the tired trope of a male detective just didn’t take off. We can however find a great many female protagonists in the cozy genre and spilling over into main stream publishing, more like a hurricane at that.

I am always amazed by actors who can play a character so different from what we see as their “real” persona. Again, that’s why they call it acting. Oh, there are one dimensional actors that always play the same type, with different shadings for sure, ie, John Wayne, but great actors seem to flow in and out of different characters with little or no effort, although the effort is probably quite enormous and they only make it look easy.

I’m not sure if all my future protagonists will continue to be female. My latest book making the rounds to publishing houses and literary agencies is written in two first persons, one female and one male. For the little success I’ve achieved to date writing in the first person of a female I probably owe to raising three daughters, although truth be told, it helped that they are all fairly independent characters and of the “Throw Like a Girl” persuasion. But if I ever write a book from the perspective of a vampire it won’t be because I got bitten by a bat one dark night while walking through a graveyard, it will be because of my imagination.