on representation

Richard Price, a white man who wrote predominantly black characters in Clockers:

The job of the novelist—or any creative writer—is to imagine lives that are not your own. And nothing is off-limits. If you’re writing about a group of people, and you do a clichéd job, you deserve whatever’s coming to you. If you’re just contributing to a stereotype. (via)

That's pretty much how I feel.  I get tired of hearing about white people being too "scared" to write a non-white character after they read criticism of some other white writer's usually racist depiction of a non-white character - or men getting too "scared" to write women, does that ever happen? - and the endless "you're saying I can't write X" and "no I'm not saying you can't write X, write whatever you want."  Truly, being a writer means taking huge risks, even if you're scared, and it's no one's job to shield you from your fuck-ups.  If you get scared off that easily, I'm not sure you've got enough of "the burn" in you.  So really: write what you want.  But be prepared for people to respond in a variety of ways.  How you process their responses, then, is up to you as well.  To the victor go the spoils, but like Javert says, "if you fall as Lucifer fell, you fall in flame."  Trial by fire.  If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen, etc.