Race as a literary device

Depending on the story the author wants to tell I think race is incredibly important because either

a) It may explain some of the protagonist's actions
b) It lets you see into a world closed to you by birth

The latter point is exemplified for me by Arundhati Roy's 'God of small things' which provided a view of Indian society I was unaware of.

The flip side of the coin is that ignoring race can make a powerful statement. For example, Robert Heinlein's 'Tunnel in the sky' and other works where he deliberately obscures race until late in the story, apparently trying to 'trick' readers into identifying with a protagonist then revealing his skin colour to be other than what a white teenager in the 1950s would expect.

Hi hingehead!

I really do see your point, and I agree with you. In some books race, or race non-specified is an important point in the way the story is told.

But this book is really different. I wish I could put my finger on what it is that makes race so different in this book.

I suppose that it is possible that the author wants us to realize that there are wealthy black families -- but I knew that. I imagine that most people who might be drawn to read this book are aware enough to realize that there are wealthy and influential black families. Really, this is not the kind of book that is going to be picked up by the kind of person who is unaware of such a thing.

Which I guess is what makes the importance of race so unusual in the book.

I'm going to have to check out "Tunnel In the Sky" that sounds intersting. Its made me thing about another book I really enjoyed - "Push". I'm not sure if the book mentions the race of the character but I assumed that the character was black. Now I can't think of why I might make that assumption. Yet another is "My Happy Life". Again, I don't know if race was mentioned but I assume that the character is white. And again, I don't know why I would make that assumption. Race might have been mentioned but I don't recall.

I'm going to put all three of those on my re/read list!

Hi Boomer

Now you've got me trying to think of a book I've read where the gender of the protagonist isn't obvoius.

Unless you like Heinlein's adolescent 50s science fiction I wouldn't recommend Tunnel in the Sky.

Often his Starship Troopers is referred to as surprising the reader with a black protagonist halfway through the story, but in actual fact Rico is Filipino - not in the movie though.

Gender!

The gender of a character is way more important than race -- or anything else for that matter. Even in books that don't have human characters, books like "The Roaches Have No King" or "Lives of the Monster Dogs", gender still plays a very important role. Even in books where homosexuals star, books like "The Object of my Affection" or "Oranges are not the only Fruit", gender plays a big part.

A genderless novel would be something to read.