A Brief Note about Diversity in the Divergent Series

I still don’t do as well as I ought in actively seeking out stories with diverse perspectives (though I have expanded my “palette,” so to speak,) but I do keep my eye out for diversity in whatever stories I consume.  While Divergent is definitely about the Straight White Able-Bodied Girl Who Becomes a Heroine, I did notice a fair amount of variety within the series.  (A few spoilers.)

Many characters are described as being people of color, including personal favorites Christina, Tori, Uriah, and Johanna.  All are supporting characters without a ton of individual focus, but the PoC supporting characters don’t get less attention than their white or unspecified counterparts.  Christina is Tris’s best friend, and while the Black Best Friend of the White Protagonist trope has its own issues, she’s a tough, likeable character with flaws and struggles.  Similarly, though Tori’s role isn’t huge, it’s a fascinating one, and I’d have loved her even if Maggie Q wasn’t playing her in the movie.  Uriah is hugely entertaining, and Johanna is by far my favorite of the faction leaders (true, not a hard contest, but that doesn’t diminish her coolness.)  Plenty of other characters are mentioned as being PoC, even down to the briefest bit-character descriptions.  And Tris’s boyfriend Four, the second lead, is biracial.  From the books’ descriptions of him, he’s probably white-passing, and it’s true that his PoC mother was out of the picture for much of his life, but it’s at least a bit outside the typical Attractive White Leads at the Center of Everything.

It’s interesting that, while their descriptions imply it, no one is identified as a certain race.  I get the sense that the City inhabitants no longer have names for race groups.  Thus, Tris has no words for “Black” or “Latina;” she only has colors (and eye shape in the case of Asian characters like Tori and Jack, which is super awkward to read.)  It’s logical; like many other words her society, these concepts have fallen away.  Still, it makes me a little torn on Tris’s descriptions of race-identifying features.  What does it say that Tris notices people’s races so particularly in a society that has no words for race?  If race is a social construct, would citizens even register racial distinctions?  On the other hand, describing characters’ races prevents readers from auto-assuming them all as white.  So, it has real-world benefit, but the in-story implications are weird.  Which wins out?  (The films do fairly well with keeping the PoC characters PoC – except for Four and his mom.  Granted, Four’s not described as noticeably biracial, but his mom definitely isn’t white, unlike Naomi Watts.  The series missed a chance to put an interracial couple at the heart of their franchise.  Additionally, I get a whiff of colorism from Christina being portrayed as a light-skinned Black girl when the books describe her as having “dark brown skin.”)

The books also have three queer characters:  Lynn, Amar, and George.  They’re all minor characters, and they all imply their sexuality without explicitly naming it; Lynn, in fact, is this close to a posthumous outing, vaguely confessing her love for Marlene as she dies.  Amar and George are a couple, but their physical affection is limited to hugs and some significant looks.  One could say the minimized visibility is justified – it’s possible that, as with race, society has lost these words, and Amar and George have valid reasons to be discreet in a procreation-obsessed culture – but it’s still annoying.  However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen characters in YA literature of this sort written so definitively as queer.  Yes, it’s vague, but I’d wager it’s pretty hard to miss; if I hadn’t heard J.K. Rowling’s post-series announcement about Dumbledore, I’m not sure I’d have caught the hints in The Deathly Hallows, and at any rate, that was very late in the game to bring it up.  So, Divergent gets my regard as at least a step in the right direction.