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melannen posting in

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Anybody know any (fictional, but RL would also be great) female detectives who aren't white from the period between ~1880 and 1940? Anywhere in the world, in any period in any medium by anyone (in any language, though the existence of an English translation would be nice)? If she's not the actual detective, at least a major supporting character in a mystery novel or series? Preferably non-faily?

There's Judah Daniel, and some of Benjamin January's friends & family, but they're too early.

Kogoro Akechi was married, but I can't find anything in English about his wife. And a few minor characters in Amelia Peabody, but as far as I can tell they aren't really actively involved in the detectiving.

...surely there are some and I just don't know how to look?

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From:

kathmandu

Offhand, I could come up with characters that fit some of your conditions, but none that meet all of them. You could try checking your local library for the mystery anthologies (often shelved all together at the end or beginning of the mystery section). Collections on a theme (like the Sisters in Crime female-detective anthologies), or set in particular times (like the 'Holmes's contemporaries' collections) would be a starting point. Of course, that's more likely to get you one-off short stories than series characters.

From:

melannen

Yeah, I can find people who fit two of the three requirements (gender, race, and period) but not all three.

Well, there's a trip to the library in my near future anyway; looking for themed anthologies is a good idea, thanks.

From:

kathmandu

As to knowing how to search, meta is your friend. If you can find encyclopedias of mystery stories, or something like the Critical survey of mystery and detective fiction, those will cover lots of stories/series and may have handy indexes with entries for things like 'women detectives' or 'asian detectives'.

From:

melannen

Yeah, I've been looking at indices published through various libraries and overviews that Google Books has on preview; I'm just not finding anything. 90% of 'em are with White detectives in America, England, or Commonwealth countries, and the ones set elsewhere are White detectives going elsewhere and being colonial.

I think at this point my best chance may be to look for stories that *aren't* in English-language Mystery canon : things that are too new/indy/obscure, things that are slipstream enough to have been filed under a different genre, or stories that came out of non-English-language writing communities that, if they do have English translation, are ending up among foreign-language books rather than mysteries. (Fr. ex, almost none of the mystery-genre sources I've found even mention Akechi, who's a classic Holmes pastiche and the opposite of obscure - but apparently only if you're Japanese or an anime fan.)

From:

sashajwolf

The lists here may be useful - sorry I don't have time to go through them myself right now.

From:

melannen

I found that one, I just didn't get any hits from it. ): Historical mystery is even more whitewashed than mystery in general, and there just don't seem to be any on the lists. (Unless they're minor enough characters that a quick google search from the title doesn't talk about them.)

From:

kathmandu

Because when I went to the library this week I found one of those encyclopedias of mystery fiction, and I read the entries on Black Detective Stories, Gay/Lesbian Detective Stories, and Women Detective Stories, and the only female nonwhite detective having anything to do with that time period was written in 1901-1902, but set in the Civil War era.

It was a novel called Hagar's Daughter, serialized in Colored American Magazine. According to my notes, the author, Pauline Hopkins, "introduces 'Venus Johnson, a black female detective, in this novel about a black woman 'passing' as white."

All the other combinations of black-and-female were written no earlier than the nineteen-sixties, and usually set in the time they were written. Of course, the encyclopedia only really covered English-language publications; other countries may be a better bet.

From:

melannen

I was hoping for "set", but "written" is better than nothing. Yay! I will have to see if I can find a copy anywhere. Thank you! Actually, Pauline Hopkins sounds fairly deeply awesome, and not nearly well-known enough; I might have to look into *her* instead. And searching on "Venus Johnson" has got me some more overviews to check.

(Though it is sad how many of the stories about black women I found from that period are about women passing as white. Some of them are even fairly good, on their own, but as a pile it gets depressing fast.)