The FIRST DRAFT IS FINISHED! IT'S DONE! FINITOOO!!
Now that I got that off my chest, the long haul to edit the second draft begins...
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Stacey and Slash may appear as an ordinary couple, I mean, they're both dogs, right?
However, remember what I am trying to state: they are interracial (one is Black and the other is Italian).
Nowadays, many interracial, inter-religious, as well as intercultural couples, are considered very common and everyday to many folks.
However, such pairings were highly unusual in the 1930s, and even quite dangerous for the pair involved!
There was once what were called 'Miscegenation Laws'.
State officials, as well as other authority figures, had taken it upon themselves to keep, not only their own race, 'pure', but made it unlawful for other types of interracial couplings: this meant NO Asian/Black, NO Black/Native American, NO Native American/Asian.
NO ONE, under penalty of law, could marry OUTSIDE their race.
Even if couples were legally married elsewhere, in certain states, such marriages were considered illegal.
Furthermore, children born in such unions were considered (I HATE this term when applied to people) 'illegitimate'!
During both of the characters' development, not only has each had to fight against society's ideas about who can develop a relationship with whom, but oftentimes, the person has had to fight cultural standards, expectations, and identities.
With Slash, he struggles with his ethnic group's ideas of masculinity as well as how he must behave.
This is both within the gang subculture he has spent much of his adult life, but also the broader, wider culture he originates from.
With Stacey, she struggles with her working life, and with a society that has historically hampered, impeded, and hemmed in Blacks.
Throughout the story, she is underestimated, ridiculed, and misrepresented, by a society's need to separate the black individual from the post-modern world.
