Tag Archives: Cherokee

DNA and our hunt for a more colorful origin story

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Origin stories aren’t always as colorful as we could wish. Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

Every fan of superheroes knows what an origin story is. Every birthday, we celebrate our origin stories. I tell my kids about the day they were born. How I was feeling, how I knew when it was time to go to the hospital, how long I waited there. What the weather was like. How it felt to hold them for the first time. That’s their origin story.

But recently, science—possibly junk science, depending on who you listen to—has made it possible to find out a bit more about your origin story. And which one of us doesn’t hope we can add a little to our origin story by exploring this avenue?

A little color.

Like many others, I have always been told there is Cherokee blood in my ancestry. I remember visiting Cherokee, N.C., as a child. We have pictures somewhere of Native Americans (we called them Indians back then) in full tribal headdress. My mother bought me a little doll from one of the gift shops. A little girl in a fringed leather dress with a feather in her black braids. I loved that doll. I dreamed about one day being a part of that all-too-colorful heritage (if you go back to Cherokee now, you’ll find a much more down-to-earth and realistic celebration of a wonderful civilization). The Tsalagi (Cherokee, originally Aniyunwiya) of North Carolina are the remainder of the proud nation who were forced West on the Trail of Tears by white men, the ones who clung to their traditions and the little bit of land they could lawfully acquire while their families and neighbors were forced on a journey many of them didn’t make it through.

Colorful, tragic, and beautiful. I always wanted it to be true that there was Cherokee blood in my veins because surely it ran a deeper vermillion than the European blood I knew was there.

And yet, when I had my DNA ancestry tested, I came up just about as lily white as can be. 71% England, Wales (this is vaguely interesting) and Northwestern Europe, 27% Ireland and Scotland, and 2% Sweden. Not unexpected at all, but it might have been nice to find something more exotic in my DNA.

I’ve accepted this lily whiteness and the blood that my ancestors have left on my hands. I belong to the most brutal of all races. White Europeans. The ones who destroyed the peaceful civilizations they found in North America and enslaved Africans to work they land they stole.

I saw in today’s news that Elizabeth Warren is being criticized for publicizing the DNA results which showed she has some portion of Native American ancestry in her origin story. Republicans don’t believe her, Native Americans say it’s problematic that she is claiming this ancestry and, hey, why the heck has she not been advocating for Native Americans all along if she wants to believe she’s one of them?

The answer is, I believe, a fairly simple one. All us white folks want to believe we’ve got something special about us. Some of us know we belong to a brutal race and wish we could be one of those our ancestors tortured to ease our guilt. That group includes me and Senator Warren. You’ve got nothing really to fear from us because we see a nobility in your suffering and perseverance. But the others of us want to believe their race is lily white because it’s superior. They won out over all other races not through brutality but because they were chosen. Those are the ones we should all fear.

The art of action in Time Being

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I had great fun writing action scenes in Time Being. This may be the most action-packed book I’ve written so far. Fighting, supernatural beings, and threats galore! Plus a smattering of physics, which is something I know very little about but if you’re going to write science fiction, you better be able to fake it. Two excerpts today illustrate the action content of Time Being. The first is Jack’s first encounter with Drake, Kaelyn’s long-lost uncle who’s not terribly happy about being found.

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I’ll leave it there so you’ll be eager to find out how, exactly, Jack manages to get out of this one. But one more scene, this one featuring Kaelyn and the Raven Mocker you might remember from Out of Time…

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I hope you’ll join me here Wednesday for the all-day release party of Time Being, Book Two of the Synchronicity series. And if you missed out on Out of Time before, don’t worry, I’ll be giving away copies of both books on Wednesday! So join me and find out what Synchronicity is all about.

Read free: “Strange Path: A Synchronicity Story”

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Whether or not you’ve read Out of Time, Book 1 of the Synchronicity Series, you will enjoy a trip to a fantasy land of romance and adventure in “Strange Path”. A prequel to the Synchronicity Series, “Strange Path” explores the adventures of Drake, the Elf who crossed over to Eladi a century before Jack, and Josephine, the Cherokee woman whose family have dedicated their lives to guarding the portal between worlds.

Best of all? It’s free. No charge at all to read the story, and it’s stand-alone, so even if you decide you don’t want to continue your adventures, you won’t be left unsatisfied. So what do you have to lose? Read “Strange Path” here:

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In defense of Ms. Shriver: Cultural appropriation in writing

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Lionel Shriver, author of 13 novels, was criticized this weekend for speaking out in defense of cultural appropriation. “Otherwise all I could write about would be smart-alecky, 59-year-old, 5-foot-2 inch white women from North Carolina.” NYT: Lionel Shrivers Address on Cultural Appropriation Roils a Writers’ Conference

Shriver is right, of course. It’s our job as writers to imagine life from all different points of view. Because we were given the ability to do that. Currently, I—a five-foot-tall white woman from North Carolina—am trying to write from the point of view of a six-foot-six tall Elf from another dimension who finds himself in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the company of a young Cherokee woman. Not really comparable to Shriver’s cultural appropriations of the homeless, African Americans, the elderly and others, but different from my own life, nonetheless.

Imagine if all writers wrote exclusively about their own culture—would the temptation not be for those stories to be consumed by those of the same race and economic class? And would that not contribute to narrow-mindedness and, eventually, prejudice that your way is the only way?

As a librarian, I strive to incorporate stories from all cultures in our independent, globally focused school library. As a writer, I try to keep in mind that the world is a very big place with lots of ideas in it (some would say that my biggest stretch would be to take the POV of a Trump supporter…), and try to channel those ideas through my writing. This is important for me as a writer, as well as you as a reader. Don’t condemn cultural appropriation in the books you read. Celebrate the fact that the author has made an attempt to broaden horizons (their own as well as their readers).

And if we get it wrong…be gentle.