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What have we here?

I literally had no idea before I started writing what I was going to write. The voice surprised me. It was rather opinionated – and they weren’t my opinions. Odd. The picture of the mother that emerges from the embryo-narrator, well, it resembles a rather jaded view of me.
But the father, where does he come from? Literally, from the other side of the Atlantic. I chose Washington, I suppose, because I have been there and it’s in the news, what with Obama.
I think as well that I’ve been subconsciously influenced by reading The Time Traveller the autobiography of black physicist Ron Mallet. I don’t mean that Jacob W is Ron, just that reading that book opened up imaginative pathways to the experience of a black American scientist. Jacon W is part-Jewish and I think that’s probably influenced by Obama’s mixed heritage.
On a more philosophical note, I am studying, as part of my PhD, different epistemologies and I have been struck by the limiting subjectivism of, for example, certain sorts of feminism. What I mean is those claims that you can know what you haven’t experienced. I reject this idea. I think it’s antithetical to all the good things we can achieve through creative imagination. So I think perhaps Jacob W is a challenge I have thrown out to myself. Can I create a convincing character who is all the things I am not? Black, American, male, Jewish, religious, scientist – oh, and married. You haven’t learnt that yet, but you will when he touches down.