To Blush or Not To Blush...That is the Question: The Struggle Describing Black Characters

So I felt the need to write this post based off of criticism myself and other authors have received. I am a Black female and believe that my race of women are hands down, some of the most beautiful women in the world. But when it comes to describing characters, it is very difficult to articulate into words the nuances of our facial features without making every single heroine look exactly the same in every book.

My character Lexi in my Damaged Souls Series, has green eyes. This is a rare occurrence, but it does happen in our race. Along with blue, gray, and hazel. The reason I gave her green eyes was to differentiate her from my other heroines in past and future novels. I have a relatively good grasp of what every heroine and hero is going to look like, even for my future books and I don't want them all to sound alike.

I lived in Japan for a year and I find this to be true of many East Asian people. Before I lived there, I would've said that they all looked similar. After being there a while though, I realized that they all looked very different, but found that trying to describe one Japanese person in the middle of a crowd of other Japanese people was next to impossible, aside from what they were wearing. Straight dark brown hair (unless dyed or permed), dark brown eyes, fair olive skin, flat broad faces.

So yes, when it comes to my Black heroines, I can have fun playing around with weight, height, body type, skin tone and hair, but when it comes to our facial features, we've got limited descriptions. I.e. full lips, almond shaped dark brown eyes, high cheekbones, etc. Maybe next time around, I'll have to study some pictures and see if I can come up with other adjectives to describe my next characters. But aren't the eyes, the windows to the soul? Eyes are big descriptors when expressing emotions, and I don't want every single book I write to say, He looked deeply into her dark brown eyes. Her beautiful brown eyes filled with tears. Her light brown eyes widened with shock. Her chocolate brown eyes sparkled with joy. So on and so forth. And if I'm lucky enough to be in this profession 20+ years from now, you could see how it could become a bit redundant without throwing in a curve ball every now and again. In fact; Latinos, Arabs, Indians, and Native Americans all fall into the dark eyes category as well. And if I wrote more characters of these nationalities, I would also write them with different colored eyes eventually. Because at this point in time, races have been mixing for centuries. And as Black Americans, we are rarely made up of pure African blood anymore.

Now on to the subject of Black characters blushing. First, I'd like to say that, if you are human, you can blush. EVERY single person on the planet can blush unless you have some medical issue. Now whether you can see the blush or not is another story. I am a medium dark skin color and I blush ALL the time. People have even pointed it out to me that they can see my cheeks turn pink. So when I describe a dark-skinned female that blushes, I am describing bashfulness, embarrassment, etc. Just the look on someone's face can tell you that they're blushing, even if you can't see it. But to my readers, I will try my best to find other ways to describe the feelings associated with blushing on my darker skinned characters.

I can't speak for all of my fellow authors who write black characters, but I did want to give some insight into why I describe my characters the way I do. I hope this helps.

Til next time...