Why You Should Reconsider Writing About a Culture that Isn’t Yours
Today’s blog post comes to us from Author Accelerator certified book coach Sam Cameron.
Sam Cameron
Certified book coach
Wait, what’s wrong with writing about a culture that isn’t yours? Isn’t it the writer’s job to be imaginative?
Some of you may already know the answer to this question. But some of you, like I once did, may be wondering. I owe a huge debt to the BIPOC creators who have been answering these questions for white authors, even though they shouldn’t have to. In particular, Mary Fan, Leah Henderson, and Linda Sue Park’s SCBWI presentations were transformative for me.
Here’s the thing:
For a variety of factors (most of which you have no control over), if you are a white creator, your work is more likely to catch the attention of agents and editors and has a greater chance of being published than a similar creation made by a BIPOC artist. That’s one of the manifestations of your white privilege. Even if it feels like there’s “no space” for white authors with all of the agent and publisher calls for “diversity,” publishing remains an overwhelmingly white, cis, straight, middle class, able-bodied business.
Although “diversity” has made it onto many an agent wish list, publishers are still reluctant to put out too many of the “same kind” of book out on their list, especially if they perceive the book as “niche.” For example, a publisher or agent might turn away a great Afro-fantasy set on the Swahili Coast because they already have one (maybe even – gasp! – two!) Afro-fantasies on their list (never mind that they’re West African inspired) and don’t think the market will bear more than that. Flawed thinking, but it is the way that publishing works, and is only very slowly changing. (If you’re writing that Swahili Coast Afro-fantasy and are looking for a book coach, hit me up!)
What does this have to do with you?
Let’s say you write a fantasy novel about the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlán. Your book gets picked up and published. It doesn’t do so well in the market. That stinks for you, obviously, but it also hurts the Nahua author who wrote a magical realism novel set in the last days of the Aztec Empire, only theirs is based on their own experiences and cultural knowledge as an indigenous person who grew up in Mexico, and it rocks!
But, because your idea didn’t do so well, publishers might think there’s no market for it and are less willing to take a chance on this other author – so now, your sorta crappy representation is the only representation of Indigenous people from Mexico that will get published for a while. Possibly, the only representation of Pre-Columbian civilizations in fantasy at all!
I didn’t fully get this logic until I saw the 2017 Wonder Woman movie. I remember thinking to myself as I left the theatre: I’m so glad that movie was good – otherwise, we would never get another female led superhero movie!
I’ve always had a fascination with stories about imperialism, in particular, the story of the Opium Wars. This fascination turned into a very misguided attempt at a pan-Asian fantasy – that will luckily never see the light of day. But still, this history won’t let me go. I feel called to write about it, even though I’m a white woman. So, what do you do if you – like me – feel compelled by history or culture that isn’t “yours?”
You have two options:
Proceed with care
Find another way to explore the themes that compel you
Option 1: Proceed with Care
Proceed only with the utmost care and compassion for what you are doing and how it might affect other people. Know there is the potential that your story could be harmful. Remember that stories have power. If you really must tell this story, here is how you can approach it in a way that will minimize harm:
You could write the story just for yourself with no intention of publishing it.
Whether you write the story just for yourself, or decide you want to pursue publication – especially if you want to pursue publication – DO YOUR RESEARCH. And I mean really do your research. Don’t just research the clothes and the food, really dig deeply into understanding the culture and history you are trying to represent. Spend time in the country you are writing about. Learn the language. Live among and make friends with the people you are trying to represent. Read and listen to the way they represent themselves. Become knowledgeable of common stereotypes and tropes so that you can avoid and subvert them in your own story. In doing this research, you may realize you aren’t the right person to tell this story and move on to Option B. If you continue with Option A:
Look for ways to put your own point of view front and center, so that it is clear this is a story told from an outsider’s perspective. Consider James Clavell’s historical saga, Shogun. Although the story is about Edo Japan, it is told primarily from the perspective of a shipwrecked English sailor – therefore, the reader is shown Japanese culture from Clavell’s own lens: as an outsider.
Hire sensitivity readers. Multiple sensitivity readers. And listen to what they have to say. You aren’t looking for one person from the community to greenlight your project. You are looking for gaps and blind spots in your work so you can fix them before your story does harm. That’s why you need multiple sensitivity readers: everyone has their own experiences and will have different opinions about what is fine versus what is problematic.
If your story is published, know that YOUR name is on the book. You must be comfortable standing behind the story and owning up to any mistakes as being YOUR mistakes – not something your sensitivity readers missed. That means you have to be prepared for the fact that some people won’t like what you’ve done and will disagree with what you said. You have to be willing to apologize for your mistakes. If you aren’t willing to do that, you probably should choose Option 2.
Whether you write outside your lane, or not, whether your story is published, or not, read widely about the history and culture that has captured you.
Use your platform (however big or small it may be) to promote the works created by people from within that community. Don’t speak over them or for them. You may think that you are telling a story that hasn’t been told before, but if you’ve done your research, you will realize that plenty of people within the community have been telling their own stories. So, if getting more people to understand this culture or this period of history is what you want, don’t just promote your version of the story.
Sound like a lot of work? It is. Writing a book is a lot of work, even if you are writing 100% about your own culture.
If you want to do something easy, don’t write a book, least of all a book that tries to represent someone else’s culture. I knew that I did not have the time – or frankly, the energy – to do the kind of research required for Option A. So, I chose Option 2.
Option 2: Find Another Way to Tell the Story
First, I had to ask myself, “Why?” Why did I feel so drawn to the history of imperialism? Why 19th century China and the Opium Wars in particular?
As a kid, like many white Americans, I was taught a triumphant and celebratory history of the U.S. I ate up the narrative of how we overthrew the tyrannical British to create a more free and equal society. It was only later that I began to understand the extent of American imperialism and white supremacy – that the white victimhood at the center of the independence narrative overlapped with the simultaneous much worse exploitation of Black and indigenous peoples by white colonists.
And, I saw a parallel with 18th and 19th century Chinese history.
What?
Yes, really.
One of the historical figures that I based my protagonist on was Lin Zexu, a Chinese bureaucrat well-respected for his honesty and efficiency. In the 1830s, the Chinese emperor appointed Lin to enforce the opium ban that the British had subverted for decades. As a part of his strict enforcement, Lin confiscated and destroyed several million dollars’ worth of opium, which became the British casus belli for the first Opium War. I was fascinated by this heroic gesture and had been trying to make it a fixture of my fantasy novel – although, my version of Lin was a hot-headed, impulsive teenage girl.
During my navel-gazing when I was trying to make this story work without writing another racist fantasy novel, I went back to Lin Zexu’s story, realizing that I’d never paid any attention to what happened to him after his famous act of defiance. It turns out, that he was blamed for starting the war and punished.
These last few lines from Lin’s biography on Encyclopedia Britannica caught my attention: “Although exiled to the northwest frontier, Lin served quietly and loyally, was soon called back to important service, and was rewarded with the title of grand guardian of the heir apparent for pacifying rebel Muslims in the province of Yunnan. He died in 1850, on his way to help suppress the Taiping Rebellion.”
Of course! I knew that the Chinese government in recent decades has had an expansion, colonization, and assimilation program in Western provinces similar to American Westward expansion. I knew that much of this Westward expansion into Tibet and Xinjiang province (among others) had occurred during the Qing Dynasty in the 18th and 19th centuries. I knew that the Qing Dynasty suppressed the massive Taiping Rebellion in Southern China just before and during the Second Opium War. But somehow, it had never quite clicked into place that someone like Lin Zexu was simultaneously standing up to British imperialism, while also carrying out the Chinese program of expansion and imperialism.
Suddenly, I understood how my Lin-inspired protagonist and I were grappling with some of the same big questions:
She is so focused on fighting what she sees as an injustice against herself that she can’t see how she is responsible for the oppression of other people.
Her society is changing around her. Her once great empire is crumbling. Her society is debating if and how they should change to protect themselves.
She is learning that the country she loves is responsible for doing some bad things. The version of history she’s been taught isn’t the whole story.
She lives in a position of privilege and power. She doesn’t know how to use that power to help her society become more equal
I finally understood why this story mattered to me, which meant I finally understood what story I was trying to tell. Yes, it is inspired by the history of 19th Century China, but similar scenarios have existed all over the world. Some of them are from cultures that I do have heritage in.
Much of the plot is still inspired by East Asian history, but I have stripped out the Asian cultural elements that I had sprinkled into an earlier draft of the story – I had done it badly and superficially, so, it turns out, it wasn’t that hard. Is there a problem of removing the Chinese culture from a story that is based on the Opium Wars? Yes. But I think that I will cause less harm if I situate this story in my own cultural context.
Ultimately, no book is perfect because authors are only humans who are limited by the social contexts that they live in. But we write books because we believe that stories have power. As we all learned from Spiderman: “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
Use your powers for good.
Sam Cameron has spent the last decade as a writing tutor and high school history teacher helping teenagers find their voice and discover the world around them. In 2021, she learned about Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification program and decided to become a book coach for YA. “Coaching YA authors is the perfect marriage between my love of story, my passion for teaching, and my firm belief that all teens deserve to see themselves represented in great books!” Learn more about her book coaching services on her website.
