Top 5 is a weekly bookish assessment by Gingerreadslainey and today’s feedback is favourite diverse characters.My list includes some characters who are my favourites and some which are the best I have read. One more thing, you can get access to the topics on the Goodreads Group, come join us making Wednesday alive :P.
Othello in Othello by Shakespeare
There are many analysis on the race of Othello, debating what type of dark, he featured. Was he dark as in a shadow European shade or was he black? Since, I have not come across a definite proof of either, I will focus on his Moor identity because it is enough. I do not believe there is another Moor who graced Elizabethan and Jacobean stage in a heroic capacity as Othello. He is a great general, noble and respected by everyone he worked with excepting Iago. Othello is passionate and loyal, characteristics Iago used to slowly poison the Moor’s mind about his wife. Iago language to describe Othello such as barbarous and an outsider, shows the perception for Moors at that time in Europe.
Ingrid, Completely mute girl in Ingrid by Lynnette Kraft
Ingrid is the key to her community of Scot, you can feel it at the beginning of the novel when the author described her birth and Adair’s. Ingrid born without a voice grows up withdrawn and shy in spite of brothers who think the world of her. Her friendship with Adair is her solace and when he is hurt and in danger, Ingrid becomes brave and defiant to save her friend’s life. She slips away without any family member noticing, journeying to foreign villages to help Adair. When she leaves of course her brothers and dad follows. Ingrid finds herself in dangerous positions but she thinks of others before herself.
Shellie in Green Days By The River by Michael Anthony
Shellie goes through the process of adolescent to manhood, growing up in countryside Tobago, in the Caribbean. I choose Shellie because there are not many acclaimed novels depicting the life of a teenage boy growing up in a less affluent Caribbean. Shellie has to choose between two girls, battle transitioning to a man whilst his father is sick and later past away and dodging Mr. Gidharee, the Indian wealthy man with four big dogs.
Iltani in She Wrote on Clay by Shirley Graetz
Iltani wants to join the scribe profession, an industry dominated by men, 3,800 years ago in Sippur on the banks of the Euphrates River. Although, her father fully supports her dream, sending her to a gagû to become a nadītu (which are élite monastic women.), Iltani constantly faces opposition from the people surrounding. It is mandatory that she spends time away from her family and she would not be able to marry with a family. One woman seeks to bribe Iltani through sexual favours and a man appears who she struggles not to fall for given her sacred promise.
Laurel Windsong in A Wedding In Willow Valley by Joan Elliott Pickart
Laurel is of Navajos descent from a small Arizona town. She enters university on scholarship because of her ethnicity. She leaves behind her lover Ben Skeeter, returning 10 years to the same town raising the temperature high from anger, love and sadness between the two. Laurel loves her town, well so does everyone else, the images of the falling leaves in Fall is beautiful. Laurel journeys through her disappointment through the help of her Navajos pa, who holds on to the traditional practices in medicine, death rituals etc. It is a novel I am itching to reread for months especially since I do not remember all the details but a nice[sarcastic] person borrowed my copy and it has since vanish into space.
Please tell me about your favourite diverse characters in the comment section. Are they similar to my diverse characters?
Yelhispressing 