Over at Omnivoracious, editorial director Stacy Whitman writes about how a writer can go about writing a culture other than their own with honesty and respect.
I like this article because it takes time to explain why writing cultures outside of the typical WASP-American perspective is a good thing, and then how to go about doing that and doing it authentically. She links several other articles I really like, like Nisi Shawl’s Transracial Writing for the Sincere and , as well as a TED talk I’m a huge fan of, Chimamanda Adichie’s The Dangers of a Single Story (seriously, go watch it).
I also liked this part:
I’d also like to note, as a result of conversations in last night’s #yalitchat on Twitter (the transcript of which should be available soon on the Lee & Low Blog), we often talk about writing cross-culturally in terms of white writers writing about people of color, but there are also many writers of color who feel pigeonholed to write only about their own culture. One writer said that she, having grown up in New York City, was comfortable with many different cultures but was unsure about writing a white woman from the Midwest. The same principles apply no matter where you’re coming from–research is key.