Culture Question

[sartorias]

A lot of people have expressed a wish to be reading sf and f (in addition to other genres) in other settings besides western civ

Comments

[swan_tower]

I can't solve that problem, but if people are looking for that kind of book, I've got a list.

(And I welcome recommendations for titles I've overlooked.)

The only solution is, as you say, as much immersion as you can manage. Read lots of books, not just one or two. Watch movies. Listen to music. Read the literature of the place, as well as about it. Go there, if you can. Do your best.

Heck, it isn't just a non-western thing, either; I feel that same challenge in writing about the western past, even if I've got a bit of a comparative head start. There are always more details you don't know or understand or remember to include.

[sartorias]

Some of those on your list didn't work for me, some did. (Some noted down to try.)

I think there's always going to be that perception thing.

[swan_tower]

I've only read a fraction of those books. Some of the ones I've read, weren't very good. But I make the list as complete as I can.

[sartorias]

Ah! That makes sense.

[dsgood]

One way: Encourage non-Westerners fluent in English to write sf and f set in their own countries. And, for fantasy, to use the folklore of their own countries rather than Western folklore.

In some cases, this would require convincing them that Americans DO NOT want to read stories set in exotic places such as New York City rather than in dull, everyday places such as Mumbai, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

[sartorias]

heh!

[pompe]

Why not encourage Western publishers to translate non-English literature instead?

[tarigwaemir]

One option is to try to understand minority cultures within a dominant Western one: most English-speaking authors can at least encounter immigrants from non-Western cultures within their own country. While it doesn't quite solve the problem of completely shifting the setting away from Western civilization and also requires some sensitivity to avoid cultural appropriation, I think it's an alternative worth considering.

[sartorias]

That's a very good thought.

[electricpaladin]

I'm rather down on "cultural appropriation." To be brutally honest, I think it's a totally BS concept. Cultures flow into each other and borrow and steal, they always have and they always will. My writing a story about an "Eastern" culture that makes actual "Easterners" facepalm, embarrassed for me and a little annoyed, doesn't hurt anyone. It isn't theft. It isn't taking anything away from anyone. It's just me showing my ignorance and making as ass of myself, but that's how people learn.

[tarigwaemir]

Well, to be honest, I don't see how this has anything to do with the main point of my comment, but I do have to disagree with you. From my personal experience, I have found it hurtful for my culture or for people who share my culture to be misrepresented in fiction and in the media that (for example) reinforce stereotypes or attempt to divorce the culture from the people with whom it originated. After all, it's those sources that shape the assumptions that people bring when interacting with me on a daily basis. I don't intend this comment to imply that writers can't learn from their ignorance and improve; I would rather that writers make mistakes than ignore other cultures altogether. Just pointing out that perhaps it isn't just "a little annoying" for the reader on the other side.

(ETA: corrected the first sentence.)

[electricpaladin]

I've found that the problem can be solved with practice, practice, and more practice. I don't believe there's a thing you or I or any other writer can't write if we try hard enough, try often enough, and are willing to put out a lot of crap along the way. Maybe the problem is that the writers you've read got as far as they did, saw the same flaws you did, and decided not to keep trying

[sartorias]

I totally agree about Chinese history, though I wonder if even that is enough--that one needs to go there, breathe the air, hear the sound of insects there, feel the fabric, see how the foods are laid out in market and cooked, and how people approach the little things in life to de-westernize.

[starshipcat]

The question of whether any amount of library research can ever suffice has been nagging me in my alternate fall of the Soviet Union novel. My undergrad major was Russian, but I never had the funds to go over there, so as I write, I wonder if I've only succeeded in creating characters who are contemporary Americans with a thin layer of ersatz Sovietness glued on, as opposed to characters who genuinely react as people raised in the various regions of the old USSR really would have. And then there comes the concern of cultural misappropriation, of whether I'm trespassing

[asakiyume]

I think movies, precisely, can give you a little of that, if you don't have the ability to get to the place. You can see people moving through a physical space (of the buildings and streets of wherever it is), you can see how they sit down, how they pick up their food, etc

[mamculuna]

I think of Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds as a success in doing this, as well as Catherynne Valente's Orphan duo.

Another danger is cultural misappropriation with all the problems we've discussed.

[sartorias]

Yes, and yes again.

[rysmiel]

I'm not familiar with the Valentes, but I'd add a lot of recent Ian McDonald as feeling like a success to me in this direction, particularly River of Gods and its related stories, and also King of Morning, Queen of Day if like me you see Ireland as having a cultural identity distinct from "the West". (And from a differant angel, Sacrifice of Fools.)

[mamculuna]

Catherynne Valente's The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice are set in the world perhaps of the Arabian Nights, but from there become very fantastic--but somehow to me the fantasy is still very non-Western.

McDonald sounds very interesting.