confused white teenager who can't feel anything but attacked
I wasn't the one feeling attacked... until now. Re-read the whole sentence, damnit. I have no problem with diversity in a story but here we only saw one culture in evidence - and no background for why. Just because it's NOT YOUR culture doesn't make it any more diverse than if it were.
And believe it or not, my misremembering of the bio was actually meant to excuse this.
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Right, before this leads to any more conflict and misunderstanding, let me try to clarify what I mean.
I'm not a fan of "positive discrimination". It's not a solution, and it's horribly patronising. It's a case of the privileged saying to the downtrodden, "we know that you're inferior so we'll make it easy for you."
When a European author writes about European characters, whether set now or in the far future, it's because that's what is familiar to her. When a Chinese author writes a Chinese story, it's what comes naturally. When an African writes about Africa... actually they usually include quite a few non-African types, because that's the environment a large part of Africa exhibits.
If a European/American author writes about Africans, and only Africans, in an evironment that is not Africa, it seems to me that this invites a range of reactions. Some people here reacted with "oh good, this American author is being inclusive and positively discriminating towards Africans". I don't. I start to wonder why. If it is a case of "redressing the balance" then, to me, it has all the paternalistic, dismissive overtones I mentioned above. Now, if the story is localised in scope, fair enough. If not, but it also has hints of something that justifies the total lack of the author's own culture (or the Chinese culture or any other) then I'll probably be happy - intrigued, even. But if it just feels like a European writing about Africans because it's "the right thing to do", then to my mind it's the wrong thing to do. Don't write their story - they can do that much better themselves.
I thought I had remembered that the narrator has African heritage but the author had also lived in Africa, in which case I'd happily accept he was "writing what he knew", and I'd merely have to apologise for the phrase about porches (which I concede holds more negative connotations than were appropriate). Apparently I'd completely misremembered all of that, though.
And I do, unreservedly, apologise to Frank for any hint that other people's misunderstanding of my position could in any way reflect on him. However, now that I have read the author's website, I find that I still dislike his style of appropriating other people's cultures and words (including Mr. Gaiman's) because, as I said, I'm not sure it's "treating people with respect" to behave as if they need you to tell their story for them. (Obvious exceptions for those who clearly do because, for example, they're already dead!)