Is a Black wet nurse full of Unfortunate Implications?

One of the stories I'm working on (in its first draft) is set in a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Morocco and Algeria. The protagonist is a teenage Bedouin chieftain of mixed-race West African (from fantasy-Liberia) and Arab ancestry, who's been raised by his Black wet nurse ever since his mother died in childbirth. The foster mother's family (from fantasy-Mali) have been slaves to his father's family for generations and her own child died when he was a baby, so she treats him like her own child. References I've found suggest that West African women were common as slaves in North Africa from the 11th century (Slavery in the Sahara ended in the 1950s).

Is a Black wet nurse who loves her charge like her own racist?

edited 14th Oct '12 3:51:36 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

If you're worried about this, there's a very easy solution - acknowledge these issues and make them part of their relationship dynamic. Whoever said our characters' lives had to be simple?

laculus: Well, since the whole thing is in first person I'm not sure how to work that in.

edited 14th Oct '12 12:09:18 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

Personally, I don't think concept-wise that it is a problem. Based on what you've described, it's very much in keeping with the backstory and setting you've constructed. As for whether it is racist for a slave caste to be specific to one race, with a master caste as another, again: no. Very often, that's how things like that happen. Plus, these particular cultures have parallels with their counterparts in reality.

Of course, I can't speak for others and I might in the minority for all I know.

However, some ways to get around this (and I believe this is the direction you're already going with) is to make it so that the relationship dynamic between your protagonist and wet nurse is very much not master-slave even if by technicality/legality, it probably is supposed to be.

Maybe drop hints through her dialogue, actions, and so on that things weren't as fun and rosy from her end as he thought they were, or have him subconsciously associate 'black person' with 'servant' for much of the story? You have quite a number of options.

@peasant: Thanks. I thought it might be problematic because of the Mammy trope. You know, the Black female servant/slave who is devoted to her White charge, often to the exclusion of her own children? Arabs and Berbers are considered White, so this is the equivalent of writing about a teenage Creole boy from a country that's supposed to be Haiti.

Fortunately, I think this is averted in the sense her child has died and hence, she has no other family. And he is as much a Replacement Goldfish to her as she is a surrogate carer to him; making the relationship much more symbiotic. Both needed the other to help move on after their respective tragedies.

Yes, it's a stereotype. However, it's all in the execution of it. And from the sounds of it, you do have a solid foundation from which to build from.

edited 14th Oct '12 4:48:24 AM by peasant

@peasant: Actually, he doesn't remember his mother at all, because of Death by Childbirth (I meant to write "childbirth").

edited 14th Oct '12 6:10:57 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

Whether he remembers his mother or not, not having a mother is bound to have an effect on one's life, I feel.

Yeah, like... being closer to the wet nurse and his father, possibly. BTW, I emailed a bit of the story to a teacher who said it reminded her a bit of an old sheik romance novel. My avatar is a screenshot from the earliest movie version of the operetta which inspired the story (very loosely).

edited 15th Oct '12 3:21:29 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

I imagine a wet nurse of any race would be full of breast milk. Unfortunate implications do not sound like they'd be good food for little kids.

... I'll leave now.

Take a look at how Calpurnia is portrayed in "To Kill a Mockingbird." She's the black housekeeper to a white family, and she clearly feels familial affection for the two children, Scout and Jem. This is a classically stereotypical role, and yet Calpurnia herself is by no means a racial stereotype, nor has she ever been accused (to my knowledge) of being one.

@Robbery: IIRC, Calpurnia is strict and no-nonsense, yet with a soft side. She's actually my favourite character in that book.