As someone who grew up in a deeply Scandinavian American family—attending weekly language classes at the American Swedish Institute, spending weeks each summer at a Swedish-immersion summer camp, living in a home decorated with Norwegian handicrafts like rosemaling and hardanger that my great-grandparents had made—I remember feeling as a teenager that a lot of YA protagonists I was reading weren’t like me.
Of course, part of this was because I’m autistic and queer, both of which are identities that are underrepresented in young adult literature and were even less written about in the early 2010s when I was in high school. But part of this feeling was also caused by the fact that most YA protagonists I encountered, especially in contemporary settings, were pretty culturally generic white American teenagers without a lot of intentionally identifiable cultural traits.
To be clear, white American culture is a culture. Hamburgers, milkshakes, and delivery pizza aren’t neutral, default foods. But because white American culture is so dominant in the US, it can seem like a neutral default if you’re used to it. And I think this is why there are so many books with culturally generic white American protagonists—for writers who are white Americans, this can seem like the most obvious choice or even the only choice they consider, and for writers with other cultural backgrounds, they’re often told that characters who aren’t culturally generic white Americans are “less relatable,” both by readers and by editors.
This pressure to write culturally generic white American protagonists is part of white supremacy culture. And I think the clearest way for me to push back on that in my own writing, as a white author, is to write characters who are culturally specific, even when they’re white. Part of this is wanting to represent my own experiences as a Scandinavian American. But part of it is also to challenge the notion that white is “normal” and culturally unmarked.
I found this especially important while writing The Girls Will Be Okay, because the relationship at the heart of the book is an interracial and interfaith one. I didn’t want the love interest, Sarah, to be the only one eating unfamiliar foods or celebrating cultural holidays. Yes, Sarah has a Jewish mom and a Sri Lankan dad, and Hanukkah, Passover, rotti, and kottu come up in the book. But Solveig, the protagonist, has specific cultural practices as well, making lefse, attending church five times during Holy Week, and celebrating Syttende Mai.
Another reason I wanted to write a Scandinavian American character in my queer YA book right now is that I refuse to cede Nordic culture to the far right. Nordic imagery and symbolism is frequently used by neo-Nazi groups and other white supremacists, and ideas about the supposed superiority of Scandinavians and Scandinavian Americans abound. As a queer and disabled person, I recognize the urgency of acting in solidarity with people of color to combat white supremacy, which has it in for all of us. And I want to do that solidarity work as my whole self, Scandinavian heritage and all. The white supremacists can’t take away my right to be Scandinavian American and queer and disabled all at once.
Obviously, none of this is to say that culturally specific books by white authors are a substitute for books by authors of color. The fact that I’m writing a culturally specific book in no way negates the structural advantages I have as a white author. If you’re looking for YA books by authors of color, I highly recommend checking out Bethany C. Morrow, Claire Kann, Angie Thomas, Brandy Colbert, Natasha Díaz, Emery Lee, Ann Zhao, Aminah Mae Safi, Nandini Bajpai, Bethany Mangle, Jenny Han, Racquel Marie, Gabe Cole Novoa, Ryan La Sala, and Benjamin Alire Sáenz, as a starting point. But I think there’s also plenty of room for white authors to go deeper into our own cultural experiences when thinking about writing multi-cultural fiction. And that’s what I intend to do.
Linnea Peterson 