Lisa Nicholas | Seeing Through Someone Else's Eyes

“You’re saying you think one of my staff might be a terrorist.” Zoe kept her face neutral, but couldn’t resist asking the next question, like poking at a sore tooth. “Is this the first organization you’ve visited?”

“Yes.” Lee’s easy demeanor had faded, his expression going from puzzled to professional. Good. Easier to think straight when he wasn’t smiling at her.

“I assume because we hire more locals than the other organizations?”

“Well, yes. Our intelligence suggests that foreigners aren’t the likely culprits.”

She couldn’t fault his logic. How could she explain to him that the notion of him coming in as a rich white American man to demand answers from her staff, who—with the exception of Susan—were in varying shades of brown, set her teeth on edge? But what if someone was involved with the bombing? The very idea was a fist around her heart.

AS LOST AS I GET is a romance action movie with danger and sex and true love. It’s about a couple trying to keep the people and places they care about safe and unravel a terrorist plot. And it’s about a woman who finds a partner who cherishes her and will do anything to protect her. It isn't a story about race, but it couldn't have been written without thinking about race.

For AS LOST AS I GET, my hero is CIA operative Lee Wheeler, the twin brother of Lucas, the rock-star hero of my first book, THE FARTHER I FALL. I knew early on that my heroine was a doctor working for a charitable organization overseas, and quickly realized the potentially problematic nature of sending two White characters into a South American country to “fix” things. It didn’t take long for me to come up with Zoe Rodriguez, a third-generation Dominican American who identifies as Black as well as Latina. Writing a Black woman who gets to be by turns smart and tough and vulnerable and tender and valued felt a little bit like stepping outside the usual bounds—and it shouldn’t be.

Writing Zoe was an exercise in examining the various axes of privilege. What did she experience that I, as a White woman, do not? What privilege would she experience as a relatively wealthy American in a poor area of Colombia, and how would that intersect with her experience as a Black woman?

Yes, there was research into the culture she grew up in (A LOT), as well as the culture she might experience in another Latin American country. I caught myself including romantic tropes that made no sense here (in a first draft, I wrote a sex scene that included Lee running his fingers through Zoe’s natural hair) and ended up questioning some common conventions (thanks to Daniel José Older’s fantastic video on the subject, the Spanish in the book is intentionally not italicized). But ultimately, it was in analyzing the intersectional nature of privilege that I was able (I hope) to present Zoe as a real person, not a stereotype or a representative of her entire culture.

Obviously, White writers cannot and should not ever speak over writers of color when it comes to writing characters of color. I can write about a Black woman falling in love and trying to do her job and stay safe in a dangerous situation, but I can’t—and shouldn’t—write about what it means to be that woman. That story isn't mine to tell.

An unexpected consequence of writing about Zoe and the other characters in AS LOST AS I GET was that I became much more aware of my own privilege as a White woman. By considering what Zoe might have experienced in her life, I was forced to look at the things I take for granted in my own life. It made me more conscious of the systemic oppression in the real world, and my unwitting part in it.

This turned out to be a strong and new (to me, at least) argument in favor of White writers including diverse characters in their works, especially main characters. Writing is a way we literally put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Reading is another way. That one of the things that makes diversity so vital. We can’t correct injustices that we don’t let ourselves see, and sometimes to see them, we have to see through someone else’s eyes.

About Lisa Nicholas

Lisa Nicholas lives in Michigan with a ridiculously adorable golden retriever named Maddie and possibly more cats than is sensible. If she's not writing, she's feeding her story addiction any way she can: raiding Netflix, pillaging her local bookstore and library, and (most recently) tearing her way through the comics archive at Marvel.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Tumblr

About AS LOST AS I GET

From the author of The Farther I Fall comes an action- filled romance in which two lovers discover that the best thing about being lost is having someone find you…

CIA operative Lee Wheeler is glad to be back in the field, even if the assignment is at a backwater station in Colombia—what he considers punishment for crossing lines in an attempt to save his brother’s life. Either way, he’s ready for action. But he never could have predicted the action he’s about to get…

Doctor Zoe Rodriguez is in charge of a clinic in a tiny town on the edge of the rain forest. She’s still dealing with a traumatic experience she had in Mexico—a trauma she wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for Lee. So when they unexpectedly cross paths again, unresolved wounds rise to the surface, and their mutual passion flares to life.

But when a new threat reveals itself, Lee and Zoe’s reunion takes on echoes of the past that may ruin their chance for a future.