Writing Across Cultures
By Dave King | October 17, 2023 |
Photo courtesy of Lost Places
As so often happens, last month’s comments section inspired this month’s column.
The commentor had written a fantasy story for a competition, and in order to create a sense of a strange and exotic world in as little space as possible, pulled a number of details from ancient China. The judges liked the story but ultimately rejected because they felt the commentor was writing about a culture not her own. As the judges said, great writers had done this in the past, but “nowadays, ethnicity and authenticity are more significant.”
So . . . when it is appropriate to create characters who belong to another culture or race or gender or orientation – someone with very different life experiences from your own?
First, a caveat. I am a 63-year-old straight white man who grew up in a thoroughly homogeneous culture – Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania. Nearly the entire population was white, primarily settlers from Connecticut and Philadelphia overlaid with immigrants who came over from eastern Europe in the nineteenth century to work the mines. A mixed marriage at the time was Polish Catholic marrying Italian Catholic. I’ve never had to worry about the possibility of being shot during a traffic stop or that my family would cut off contact because I fell in love with the wrong person, and I’m sure I take that privilege for granted.
But given that caveat . . . part of the art of writing is putting yourself in someone else’s head. It should be possible to do that even with a character who has had very different life experiences from your own. That is, after all, what imagination is for. Abandoning this approach to fiction is what gave us the old joke about MFA programs producing a lot of first novels about MFA students struggling with their first novel.
On the other hand, stretching your imagination too far can present some dangers. Cultural appropriation is a thing. If you try to place your story in a culture different from your own or center your dramatic tension on the hardships faced by characters very different from yourself – i.e. write about experiences you haven’t lived – you run the risk of being shallow or exploitative or both. How do you put yourself in the head of someone very different from yourself without offending the very people you’re writing about?
First, this largely applies to realistic stories set in the modern world. If you’re writing from the point of view of a twelfth-century French peasant and get the attitudes wrong, you’re only going to upset a group of medieval historians. If you’re writing from the point of view of a methane-based floating jellyfish living in the clouds of Jupiter, then you don’t have to worry.
And most of the time, the question never arises. Most writers base their characters on themselves, so they tend to not stray too far from their lived experience to get their stories told. But sometimes, for dramatic reasons, you’re called on to write about someone who is further from yourself in critical ways. What should you watch for?
Back in 1999, I read an article in The Atlantic Monthly that stuck with me: “Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat and Black College Students.” In it, Claude Steele, a Stanford psychology professor, told of work he and colleagues did on why Black students often underperform in college compared to their record of achievement after they graduate. Steele and his colleagues focused on what they called “stereotype threat,” the danger that people will judge you, not by your own character (over which you have some control) but by their preconceived prejudices (over which you have none).
To understand stereotype threat, they gave a test designed to be difficult – graduate-level questions given to sophomores – to various groups of Black and white students. One group was told that the test was simply a way to gauge various cognitive approaches – that the answers didn’t matter as much as the way students got to them. Another group was told it was an intelligence test. Both Black and white students did equally well in the first group, but Black students fared worse in the second. Steele and his colleagues argued that this was because the Black students were afraid of inadvertently conforming to the stereotype that Black people were less intelligent (this was when The Bell Curve was making the rounds). That fear led them to withdraw and not give the test their best efforts.
But Steele’s most intriguing finding – and I think this is why the article stuck with me for more than 20 years – was that stereotype threat is common to all humans. In another experiment, a deliberately difficult math test was given to various groups of white students. In one group, the proctor happened to mention that Asian students had done particularly well on the test. That group fared worse.
And I think finding that common humanity may be the key to writing about people with different lives without condescension, misappropriation, or simple myopia. I’ve sometimes felt stereotype threat myself, not as seriously as someone who’s lived in a culture full of prejudice, but in ways that might let me imagine myself into the head of someone who has. And you can always learn about the lived experiences of people different from yourself by talking to them, reading what they’ve written, doing the work of imagining yourself into their heads. If you invest enough work into it, you can create characters who are recognizably human to everyone who reads them.
It may even be that acts of imagination like this could help heal some of the rifts that keep us apart.
So what’s your most striking cross-cultural experience, either reading, writing, or in real life?
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
[coffee]
Nice post
“Finding our common humanity.” You nailed it.
Thanks, Carol.
I think people of all cultures are so sensitive these days that you have to be incredibly careful in how you approach a storyline or the repercussions could seriously damage your career.
Stereotypes are harmful. They are simple minded. They are an easy shorthand for lazy thinkers. At worst they are dehumanizing, a tool of war.
Portraying people as human is the opposite. What we have in common connects us. It is helpful because it is true. It is compassionate above all.
Is it permissible to write characters not of one’s own culture? As a reader I am not alienated or offended when a character is human. The differences are intriguing and the commonality is welcome.
The complaint of cultural appropriation, I think, has its root in a misrepresentation. When a character is fully human, though, what is wrong? We are all human.
The idea that white writers take up space where others could publish is, nowadays, belied by publishers’ lists, and increasingly by their staffing. The industry is making a strong effort, for the better of authors and literature.
Authors are advised to “get it right”, if they attempt it at all, and I would add to that “get it human”. Rather than label others, see them. Share the space but even more share your heart. Send love in all directions and we will one day have a writing culture not at war but one overflowing with truth.
There is probably not more important topic in our business today, thanks for not ignoring it today, Dave. (I’m on the road and owe you an e-mail!)
“There is probably no more important topic in our business today”
That’s probably true, and your remark about the increasingly diverse list of people in publishing and authors being published suggests that’s an undeniable good. But the whole issue of “cultural appropriation” is problematic.
Most of what we call culture is an amalgamation of influences from both inside and outside the “culture” at issue. This is especially true of music. People who think country & western wasn’t profoundly influenced by Black musicians are seriously misinformed. Ry Cooder is a musician I’ve always admired for his curiosity about other musical traditions and his eagerness to perform with Cuban, African, Arab, Latin and Asian musicians. Was this cultural appropriation? To some, yes, and they have too often been the loudest if not the most convincing voices. Artists are magpies, and putting them in conceptual, thematic, structural, or stylistic straitjackets only serves the purposes of moral scolds and power-hungry zealots.
That said, there is an increasingly visible industry of consultants to reach out to for the purpose of ensuring that you aren’t making obvious or embarrassing errors. Salt and Sage Books is one such source. I’ve already written a post here at WU about the inconveniently named “sensitivity readers,” who recognized the touchy-feely drawbacks associated with the term and rechristened themselves “authenticity readers.” One major problem with this phenomenon is thinking that one person, on the basis of their “lived experience,” can speak for an entire culture, race, group, etc. But this has become a part of the editorial process, and one has to learn to navigate suggestions on this front just as one has to learn to work with developmental and copy editors.
There is also, however, an increasingly vocal counter-movement — on the Left, not just the right — about the misconceptions that have led us to this juncture. The philosopher Susan Neiman’s latest book articulates how Leftists need to reclaim their commitment to universalism vs tribalism, justice over power, and the possibility of progress, all of which have been attacked by Foucault and his acolytes. (For an excellent review of Neiman’s book, see Fintan O’Toole’s “Defying Tribalism” in the NYRB.)
The problem, as Neiman puts it, is this:
“It begins with concern for marginalized persons, and ends by reducing each to the prism of her marginalization. The idea of intersectionality might have emphasized the ways in which all of us have more than one identity. Instead, it led to a focus on those parts of identities that are most marginalized, and multiplies them into a forest of trauma.”
O’Toole, in his review, points out that Neiman “is not for a moment seeking to minimize those traumas but rather to critique the emphasis on suffering as the most important marker of collective identity.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. never shrank from delineating the suffering Black people have endured in the U.S. but he added, “Let us not satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness.” Similarly, Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks stated, “I am not the slave of the Slavery that dehumanized my ancestors.” But too often, in publishing at least, the voices of victimhood drown out the voices of agency, courage, resilience, and healing. And much of the “cultural appropriation” argument all too often reduces to, “How could you possibly understand my pain?”
I look forward to the time when the “human” is indeed recognized as the ultimate measure of authenticity. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand how the concept of a generalized “human nature” has not been used as an imperialistic tool to oppress non-European cultures. But we are not prisoners of the past any more than Frantz Fanon. And arguments used for the purpose of silencing others are intrinsically illicit.
David, I have recently been teaching the elements and methods that make stories universal, reaching across cultures, languages and time. (My approach definitely is not the Hero’s Journey, with all respect to my pal Chris Vogler.) One of the important points is that what connects us to very different world is the very small human experiences that are true everywhere and in every time. There’s more, of course, but it’s a point that can lead us out of our polarization, I think.
I will definitely read Susan Neiman’s book, sounds like a push back as well argued as John McWhorter’s Woke Racism.
If you like McWhorter, Neiman’s book is right up your alley. It takes a more philosophical view, defending the Enlightenment against its naysayers, but it’s still a valuable contribution to the discussion.
BTW: a few years ago at the San Miguel de Allende Writers Clambake, I attended a talk by screenwriter Keith Ellis on humanism in film. He highlighted the work of the post-war Italian realists and especially the work of Indian filmmaker Satrayjit Ray, whose films include wonderful (often wordless) depictions of just such small, human moments: savoring the rain, for example.
There’s a catch, though. He used Casablanca as an example of how most of the world thought a good movie should be made until the post-war auteurs went a different direction, eschewing “story” for experience. I’ll be interested in seeing where your analysis of universal stories goes, because I know, for example, that Chinese stories are structured much differently than western ones, and they do not emphasize the individual as much as we do.
David, you and Don have clearly put a great deal of thought into this topic, and thanks for sharing those thoughts with us.
I’ve been reading McWhorter on woke racism, and agree with much of what he says. There was also a recent piece in The New York Times (which I can’t locate at the moment) on how defining a person in terms of their victimization goes against MLK’s standard of the content of their character.
You’re also right about musicians incorporating influences from all cultures to fold into their music. Within a more racist society, though, cultural appropriation is a lot more common, though. I think of the way Black artists were doing rock and roll, and society at large didn’t notice until white guys started singing it. And a C&W performer who lives in a gated community singing about the hardships of the common man seems off to me.
I am still a little hesitant to speak strongly about any of this since, again, I’m a white guy of a certain age, which doesn’t exactly leave me qualified. But I certainly think it’s worth having a civilized discussion about it.
Don, that sums it all up nicely, particularly the admonition to get it human.
The only thing I might add is that it’s easy to assume you’ve got it human when you haven’t. Speaking from the perspective of a white man, when you grow up with privilege, you tend to take it for granted in ways you aren’t even conscious of. That doesn’t mean the imaginative leap can’t be done, just that it might be harder than you realize.
And thanks for your observations about the state of the publishing industry. You’re far more qualified to comment than I am.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
I think ‘cultural appropriation’ is a thinly veiled attempt at censorship by Woke bullies, cancel culture bullies, and holier than thou, virtue signalling bullies. There is no such thing as cultural appropriation, there is only bad writing and poor research. As writers we should all be fighting back against this dangerous attempt to control our imaginations. I’m particularly alarmed by this trend because it originates from the Left, which should be defending free speech.
I respectfully disagree, Roberta. Though the term is sometimes used by the self-righteous in virtue-signaling overreach, it does happen. It’s usually most egregious when artists make money by presenting themselves as part of a culture they aren’t. Millionaire C&W artists living in gated communities lamenting the plight of working stiffs, or artists who grew up in suburbia rapping about life in the hood.
Also, I think the claims that these complaints about cultural appropriation are an attack on free speech are somewhat exaggerated. I think of the case of Joe Rogan. Spotify didn’t pull episodes of Rogan’s podcast because of government pressure (which would have been genuine censorship) but because other artists pulled their own music from Spotify in protest, and there were calls for a boycott. That protest is, like the boycott, itself an exercise of free speech, and Spotify (a private company, after all) had the right to make a decision they felt was best for their business interests. Rogan was still free to promote his ideas elsewhere. Yet the incident is portrayed as the censorship of Rogan by a woke mob.
I agree with you, Dave. I think the unfortunate use of “woke” as a pejorative is itself an example of egregious appropriation. We know for sure that the term was in use in African American Vernacular English in the 1930s, when bluesman Lead Belly used it in its current form (when you’re “woke,” or you “stay woke,” you have all your senses alert to prejudice and bigotry; it’s an encouraging and protective word to remind loved ones to remain alert), so its origin is likely further back yet. To then use it as a term to mock the political left (who used it respectfully by honouring its true meaning) is almost literally insult to injury, given its history and meaning within the Black community.
Thank you, Dave and David, for your responses here (and elsewhere in the comments). As a mixed race person, I am not having the easiest time with this discussion, but you are saying (calmly, respectfully, eloquently) many of the things that I think are important to be said.
Thank you, Kristan. I did think this was an important conversation to have — it’s often too easy to avoid the topic — and I am please with the way it has remained respectful.
For those concerned about cultural appropriation, would they also object to readers venturing into stories featuring cultures other than those they experienced in their own upbringings?
I can’t be sure, of course, but I think not. Cultural appropriation, as I understand it, really becomes a problem when it harms people from the culture being appropriated. White actors playing minority roles that crowd out equally qualified minority actors. Artists or writers making a profit from conflicts or hardships that aren’t part of their own experience. That sort of thing.
Readers reading about cultures not their own is one of the joys of reading.
Dave, thanks — but the logical extension of the ‘cultural appropriation’ viewpoint is that, just as writers should not write about cultures that are not their own because they will get things wrong, readers should also not read about cultures not their own because they will not understand what they are reading. And what a loss for all writers and readers that will be….
Except that . . . I know of no one who is making that argument.
That argument is not made because ‘appropriation’ advocates only want to limit sellers (writers), and not buyers (readers)…
No, the argument is not made because it is not real. It’s a bogeyman designed (not by you, but you seem to have bought into it) to illegitimize the conversation by proposing something so ridiculous that no one would possibly agree.
Reading about cultures that one does not belong to offers a window, a bridge to other people. This is of course something we should and do all desire for the world. The conversation of “cultural appropriation” asks the question, who built this window/bridge, how well-made is it, and who is profiting from it?
Again, thank you Kristan. I was going to let this thread go, but you’ve said what I would have said quite eloquently.
This is such an important topic and one that is a nuanced conversation.
I’ve been so fortunate to have friendships, kinships, and relationships with a large diversity of beautiful people from multiple cultures. This is my life and so naturally, it is in my writing. It is not easy, though. I believe that some stories are not mine to tell, some words are not mine to say, even if they’ve been shared with me. Love and respect are my priorities and compass, not any concern of my so-called career. This means not only capturing our common humanity but also celebrating the differences that bring richness, different perspectives and humor to our lives.
Excellent thoughts, Ada, and thank you.
Your essay sent a chill through me. I’m writing a memoir that reads like a novel, for Y/A readers. It’s based on my experiences at age 17 at a HBU in the South. The summer humanities program was only six weeks and designed for high school junior and seniors to encourage them to go to college. I soon discovered that I was the only White student among the 115 Black students, plus I was from the West, Arizona, so southern Black culture was as unknown by me as my western White culture was unknown to my friends. Of course, I have to describe and characterize the Black students I met, including close friends. Will I have no chance of publishing this work because of cultural appropriation?
Dear Elizabeth,
While I never speculate on chances of publication, I can’t see anything that would prevent it. You are, after all, writing about your own experiences, and they do sound like a good source of drama.
Good luck with it.
An excellent article. I am reminded of Stephen Crane author of Red Badge of Courage a novel praised for its realistic battle scenes even though Stephen Crane never fought in the Civil War, he was not even born. This is what he said:
“Of course, I have never been in a battle, but I believe that I got my sense of the rage of conflict on the football field, or else fighting is a hereditary instinct, and I wrote intuitively; for the Cranes were a family of fighters in the old days”.
Crane also did a lot of research and interviews on the Civil War and its soldiers.
An excellent example of the kind of research I’m talking about. Thanks.
When I was living in Europe, an Irish writer in my writers critique group, who was a soccer (football) fan, tried to write a novel about American football set in Northwestern University in Illinois — because football is football, right? He got so many details so wildly wrong that I (I suppose as an unofficial sensitivity reader, being an American expat) had to advise him not to do it unless he moved to the Chicago area and lived here for a few years. He had no clue about American football culture. The human struggle was fine in the story, but the realities of American Big 10 football weren’t. I think that’s the danger with writing in other cultures. It’s easy to think you know when you don’t.
Yeah, that sort of thing illustrates the dangers of not doing your research.
; The whole issue of cultural appropriation illustrates the highly fraught political and social atmosphere we live in these days. It started as a sincere concern for respecting peoples of all ethnicities, backgrounds, and gender identities (all of which are growing increasingly diverse, and thus more challenging: why is one person identify herself as queer, while another is offended by the term?). It’s led to the fear of even hurting someone’s feelings. The result is writing that is rendered bland and meaningless by avoiding any reference of cultural identity; or patronizing via the halo effect: characters are paragons of wit, wisdom, virtue, and intelligence simply due to their ethnicity, background, etc. (All Asians are smart of dutiful toward their elders.) it’s not a uniquely American problem either: Australians are grappling with treatment of Aboriginal peoples, and Indians with the caste system.
I have a friend in Australia working for Aboriginal rights, so I’ve got at least a passing familiarity with that struggle. I’d also add the problems in Europe dealing with refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.
The kind of overreach you’re talking about is real, but I suspect it’s the sort of thing that often happens — I’m thinking of the violent Black Power movements in the sixties or sixties college students carrying around Mao’s Little Red Book. There was, after all, an unspoken acceptance of a certain level of subtler, systemic prejudice against both Blacks and women since the sixties or seventies. No one was demanding segregated lunch counters or burning crosses, and blacks and women were finding success in various fields. So it was assumed that racism and sexism were on the wane.
That sense finally came to the surface with a series of events in the last decade or so — Trayvon Martin, Harvey Weinstein, and especially George Floyd. I think “woke” refers to becoming aware that this subtler, systemic racism and sexism was as damaging as the overt type and needed to be fought. In the process, some people (college students especially) went overboard, and the backlash against the fight took those occasional excesses and used them to condemn the entire movement.
Anyway, that’s my take. And I’m sure the listmoms really love me right now for stirring up this hornets’ nest.
Hi Dave, I’m the commenter who wrote that story, and I am so happy that you’ve made it the basis for a post on the topic. It’s certainly sparked the kind of discussion I was hoping to see and suggested some good books to add to my reading list. Thank you so much.
Hey, Erica,
I know. One of the things I love most about writing for WU is the way the comments continue and expand the discussion. And they do it without rancor or insult, even with hot topics like this one.
A very interesting debate.
For me, it’s important not to be frightened of writing, of following my imagination, of meeting the characters in my story, and following where their journey takes them. My characters emerge from my imagination, they often surprise me, who they are and where they are from, and even more, where they are going, and in a sense I think all stories are lies and that truth is illusionary.
I find that when I meet a character in my imagination, it makes me look and search and find.
Is my take on something perfect- of course not, and would any story work without empathy and a sense of humanity, not for me.
But to be frightened of tackling telling a story because I am not from a particular place, or perceived to be a particular type of person, would for me be wrong. For you it might be other, and so I guess you would write differently to me, and that is cool,- makes for diversity.
But for me to write well, I need to be free to explore.
And is the old adage of writing what you know really just about what I see when I look out of my window, or is it deeper, my hunch, my intuition, my questioning. Writing freely lets me unleash and see, and learn.
After all you don’t need to read what I write, and ultimately I write for myself, it is my way of exploring what is real, and setting myself free.
Good wishes to you all.
Hey, Andrew,
Seems your comments made it in after all.
I agree that you should never be frightened to follow your imagination into a story. But if it is a story that’s far from your own lived experience, a little humility may be in order.
We all absorb our own culture subconsciously to the point that we think the way we see the world must be the way the world is. It’s hard to break out of this natural myopia — I tend to do it by reading books from earlier eras. You can successfully write from the point of view of someone outside your culture, but you have to put in some work — both of research and imagination — to do it well.
Hi Dave,
thanks for your reply.
I take your point about humility, perhaps in my comment I was too focused on myself, I think I’m going through a bit of a cathartic thing with my own writing.
So let me amend by answering the question you asked, and sharing what was for me a ‘striking cross-cultural experience’, from real life.
I am today, a white sixty-five-year-old working-class man, born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. I’ve spent most of my life in nursing.
In my twenties I fell in love with a beautiful Jamaican woman, and we have two beautiful children. They are in their thirties nowadays.
I remember telling my son when he was eight, that he was black. “No dad I’m brown, look,” he pushed his arm out and I remember smiling and agreeing with him.
Not too long after that at school, he suffered bullying and racism. It had an appalling effect on him, turning him from a smiling, cheeky, exuberant boy into a frightened, lost, bewildered wreck.
Of course, I tackled the school and demanded action. But I didn’t understand what my son was going through, because I hadn’t experienced the brutality of racism myself. He was viewed and treated as subhuman by his peers. I knew what it was like to be a father of a boy distressed, but that wasn’t the same.
The school took swift and strong action, but of course the attitudes persisted and have had a lifelong effect on my son.
The worst moment I remember was the day months after the initial incidents when my son looked at me and said, “yes dad, you are right, I am black”.
Of course, he is proud to be black, and he is today a fine and balanced young man.
But this memory is still deeply troubling to me.
I realise this sharing too is not a disinterested or subtle expression of cultural appropriation, perhaps you will find that from other contributors. But we all have different experiences, and our experiences are valid, and perhaps can help us step out of ourselves, and make the effort to step into someone else’s life. By doing so we can listen, learn, and understand. Maybe then we can create better characters, and become a little bit closer to alternate truths, in our own writing.
Andrew, thank you for sharing that. It’s a heart-wrenching story, and you should be proud of your son for overcoming the prejudices he ran into.
And it is a valuable perspective on what we’re talking about.
Again, thanks.
As a white Australian who has lived a good portion of my life in another culture (Japan), I’m definitely very wary about assuming I know anything about another culture, or person’s perspective. Culture is much deeper than most people who’ve lived in one part of one nation generally realise. That being said, though, people generally have more in common than they differ. We tend to make a bigger deal about the differences than we probably should. As a reader, the biggest problem I have is when writers attempt to write about a place, people, or experience that is very well known to me, and get it wrong, which you’ve clearly noted. So I would generally suggest that either a great deal of research is needed, or you don’t try to market your work to the audience you wrote about, if you don’t know them very well.
Exactly, Wendy.
What I was hoping for with this article — and what I’m seeing in the comments — is the ability to hold two thoughts in your head at once. That our cultures influence us in deep ways we aren’t conscious of, and that beneath that cultural shaping we also share a common humanity. To successfully write across cultures, you need to keep both thoughts in mind.
Good article and discussion, Dave. This is something I think about a lot, having grown up in two cultures, living in several different countries, and being insanely curious about people and their lives. So I write about things that I’m interested in. I’ve written one Jewish Holocaust story because it’s a topic I’ve been interested in starting at the age of 10, when I first read the Diary of Anne Frank. But I’ve not tried to get it published, despite all the research over the years. I think it’s sad that the culture now is so divisive. Whatever happened to our shared humanity? I remember being very happy to read stories about Indians written by British authors. It took nothing away from the Indian authors that I also read. I do love that there’s more diversity in literature, but I still cannot stand it when the ethnic characters are just part of the scenery, not fully developed. In any case, I think writers should write what they’re interested in, not pay attention to what others say they should or shouldn’t write. Thank YOU for writing.
Hey, Vijaya,
I was kind of hoping you’d jump in, since I know you have some cross-cultural experience.
You make a good point about the risk that ethnic characters will simply become part of the background. It’s another way that authorial fear (or laziness) can be insulting.
I agree Vijaya, I think we should follow our imaginations, meet our characters, follow where they lead us and write freely their stories. I think that is how we find our own reality, even though it may be a lie that takes us there..
I come from a social science background where there is belief in the value of “triangulation”: the combining of several research methods (e.g., qualitative with quantitative data) in the study of the same phenomenon. When it comes to fiction, one might consider the outsider’s perspective to be, not merely limiting, or somehow an imposition, but of genuine potential value. For example, Raymond Chandler was renowned, among other reasons, for his depictions of mid twentieth century Southern California, and yet, he’d been raised in Great Britain. It really saddened me to read of Richard North Patterson’s recent experience with big publishing, perhaps especially because I have loved writing characters who are very different from myself. I think it’s made me a better human.
Thank you for revisiting this topic, Dave. May I add another layer of complexity to the issue?
In an earlier response, you assured a writer that her work should not be rejected outright because she was “writing about [her] own experiences.” I am one who was rejected for that very thing.
I am an American who has worked in another country for 30 years. I travel there regularly and I have three degrees related to the place and its history. I wrote a middle grade novel about an American who does the work I do in that country. Should seem pretty straightforward, right?
Despite editors loving it, I was told by more than one publishing industry professional that they could never publish my book. They only wanted it if it was written by a native of that country, despite the fact that English is not the native language there. As an American, I am automatically an imperialist and doing harm by devoting my life to that place. (The book itself, for what it’s worth, openly addresses some of the historical wrongs that have been done by western scholars and visitors to that place, and attempts to give middle grade readers a more nuanced understanding of it).
So, to be clear, the publishing world feels great about telling me that I can’t publish a book about my own lived experience, but also that they want others to move beyond their lived experience (write in a non-native language for an audience that is foreign to them) in order to make them (the publishers) feel good about their cultural sensitivity. I have to ask, who’s the imperialist in this scenario?
I agree with your final statement: “acts of imagination like this could help heal some of the rifts that keep us apart.” I would never have devoted my life to another part of the world if I had not read several works of fiction about that place when I was a middle schooler. I long for the time when the pendulum swings back toward valuing a full and genuine diversity of experience, both in publishing and throughout the world.
Dear Kristin,
Oh, my. I certainly agree with your hope that the pendulum would swing back, or at least settle in the middle somewhere. It sounds like you were a victim of exactly the kind of overreach earlier commenters have mentioned.
Keep trying to get your book out there. It seems worthwhile, and there must be someone sensible in the publishing industry who will see that.