My Character Development Experience: A White Woman Creating A Black Character

(This post includes mild spoilers about elements of Maiden's Path)

I want to use Black History Month as an opportunity to talk about the character creation of Tamika, the prominent secondary character in Maiden's Path, book one of my Spirit Warrior series. Tamika is a Black sapphic woman, and in book one, she is in her 20's and early 30's. The story takes place in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

I want to be totally vulnerable here; developing Tamika's character was the number one source of anxiety I had during the process of writing and publishing Maiden's Path. My commitment to doing right by her runs deep. There is a special place in my heart for Tamika that no other character will ever fill.Especially since she comes off as the main antagonist, even a villain, in Maiden's Path, I know her character won't sit right with lots of readers, and that is something I have come to radically accept. I have always been transparent about the fact that my series is a fiction-to-memoir, and that the majority of the characters in the series will represent someone from my own life. Although highly fictionalized, my purpose for the Spirit Warrior series is to honor my own journey, with my MC, Susan representing myself, and to show the beautiful journey of personal, generational, and collective healing.

Since Tamika is one of the few characters in Maiden's Path who is purely fictional, you can imagine that I was under even more pressure to create a just representation of a Black woman in America. Keep in mind, just like my MC, Susan, does not perfectly represent every White woman or lesbian in America, it is unreasonable to expect that I could represent every Black woman in America through just one character. We all have different experiences and see the world through our unique experiences and truth.

As I write this, I realize that this is a topic that I cannot possibly cover in just one post Therefore, it will be an ongoing feature of my newsletter and my website. I hope you'll come back to read more about Tamika. Let me leave you with these thoughts about her for now - Tamika is not a villain. Ultimately, Susan is her own "antagonist" like most human beings are at one point in their lives. My intention is to show how life circumstances cause every one of us to be a villain at one time or another. Gender, race, sexuality, and so many other factors of generational and societal trauma and conditioning play into the ugly, terrible things we do. So, it's important to me that readers understand that, just as I am telling the story of Susan's personal, generational, and collective trauma and healing, I am also telling the story of Tamika's trauma and healing at each of those levels.

There have been two pieces of feedback that I have received about Maiden's Path that have been the most special to me, as they told me I delivered exactly the sort of story that I had intended to. The first, I have received from multiple readers - they tell me that Susan is relatable. I am thrilled, because I really want folks to see a mirror of themselves when they read about Susan's journey. But more recently, I received a review that went straight to my soul and alleviated a bit of anxiety I had about my creation of Tamika. "Let’s give credit to Tracey for being a white woke woman who understands the value of diversity. There were several phrases that hit spot on with the BIPOC community and I truly think she knows people of color."

If you enjoy reading more in-depth about character creation, please keep checking back in newsletters and on my website for more about Tamika (and other characters from my Spirit Warrior series). I can't wait to share more about her with my readers - I hope that some of you can come to find the compassion and and understanding for her here that I have.

~ Peace and Love, Tracey

©Tracey Love, 2025. All rights reserved.