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The Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) exists to bring people together in the intercultural field in New York City and the surrounding metro area.

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June Event - Culture Clash: Leadership for a Cross-Cultural World - 06/16/2008. Click on View Calendar for more details!

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Spotlight on: Maike Bierbaum

Fiction, its characters and cultural boundaries

�It would be hard to write about people from another culture, unless you have spent a lot of time there.�

This statement by Alison Lurie[1] really got me hooked, and it is one thing I did not forget as easily as many other things I�ve read. I keep wondering, whether it is true and, if so, to what extent.

Can authors create fictional characters from other cultural backgrounds than their own? Are they allowed to? And where to draw the line? What are the cultural boundaries in fiction? Does it mean you may not write about a person from another cultural background (national culture)? And what about race, gender, sexual orientation or even characters from another time or, in the case of fantasy, from another world?

I decided to investigate these questions, which kept coming back to me every time I took up a book.

As an avid reader but without formal education in literary studies I unknowingly had dug up a question, which is a controversial topic in the literary world, a topic, which is likewise of interest to interculturalists, especially as it seems to reflect one ever present question in intercultural exchanges and encounters: which parts of human behaviour can be explained by culture and which parts by personality?

If the statement by Allison Lurie were uncontested, it would mean that there could be hardly any fiction with characters from different cultural backgrounds from the authors� own, unless, of course, the author knows both cultures intimately.

The question of what and whom an author can or should write about is not new at all, as an interview with Nadine Gordimer reveals[2]:

Q: �In your fiction you have written from inside the consciousness of characters who are male, female, white, black. Increasingly, members of specific genders or races are objecting to being portrayed by those who come from outside their groups. How do you feel about this?�

Nadine Gordimer: �I think such complaints arise out of a kind of astonishment, a puzzled feeling, about what writers do. Whatever writers write, they are always inventing personalities, unless they are writing autobiography. [�] We have to grant that it�s just an extraordinary, inexplicable faculty that writers have if they are any good.�

Recently, I was lucky enough to discuss this topic with some real people, writers and critics.

Having asked Elmar Krekeler, a renowned German literature critic[3], for his opinion, he pointed at the reader�s perspective. Do we, as readers, �buy� the story, the characters? Are they authentic to us? From his point of view there is nothing against writing about people from different backgrounds, be that a cultural or ethnic background, a man writing about women, a straight person about a gay person, a white about a black person. But the writing must demonstrate the author�s deep feeling for the subject.

It is tightrope walk for some writers, when subjects and characters seem too far away, somehow detached. One questions oneself while reading, �And why this book, this story, and these characters?� If one asks these questions, it may very well indicate a story or idea gone wrong.

Jonathan Strong[4], a writer who , like Alison Lurie, teaches as well revealed some of his thoughts on the subject. He pointed out the strengths and limits of literary fiction in a more classical sense: �Fiction is an illusion. It�s mere words on a page that, in the best hands, create what a reader believes is real and rounded and truthful. It may be difficult to evoke something beyond what is already familiar or to convince a reader about its accuracy, but every fictional character, every setting is somewhat beyond an author�s precise experience anyway, and just a small amount of familiarity may be enough to release an imaginative impulse that wholly inhabits these characters and settings.�

So fiction happens in the mind and imagination of the reader; the reader can choose to believe the story and characters or can be disappointed or angered by them. In the end it is a question of what kind of expectations we have when we read a work of fiction.

�I believe you can write about everything,� may seem the final answer to my quest. It is the opinion of author Norbert Z�hringer[5]. But he stressed the fact, that this is an individual belief and that he knows of writers who do not agree with him at all. However, according to him, it is most important to create credible characters.

The question about what you can and should write is a basic and never ending discussion among writers and critics. There will be always people who don�t approve crossing cultural boundaries in fiction and those who do.

But no matter how a writer sees this topic, there is one fact oblivious of cultural boundaries: great books cross cultures. Books from every cultural background and period can be found in bookstores around the world (provided that the political and economic system allows it).

While writers might have difficulty creating a person from another background � however we define background here � readers do not seem to have a problem understanding and believing in all kinds of characters, their emotions and adventures.

In the end great literature is like great food: it is appreciated just about everywhere when it �tastes� good. And in an ideal world, we should always have the possibility of choosing what to eat and what to read.

Of course there remains another question important to interculturalists: What, if there is anything, can we learn from intercultural fiction? Can it help us understand other cultures, world views, beliefs, and values? But that is another story.

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[1] The whole interview with Alison Lurie, author and professor at Cornell University, can be found in the reading group guide to her novel �Foreign Affairs�, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Price in 1985 (2006 Random House Paperback edition)

[2] Nadine Gordimer is likely to bet the most prominent author from South-Africa, her novels focus mainly on the apartheid in South-Africa and it�s disastrous effects on the white and the black population. She has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1991. The quote is from The TIME Magazine, 14 October 1991.

[3] Elmar Krekeler edits the �Literarische Welt� a weekly supplement by the German daily newspaper �Die Welt�.

[4] Jonathan Strong is a writer and teaches creative writing at Tufts University. He has published nine works of fiction, including �A circle around her� and �Secret Words�.

[5] Norbert Z�hringer is a writer and lives with his family in Berlin. His last book �Als ich schlief� (only available in German, published by Rowohlt) is a fantastic journey, sometimes merely sketching portraits of the most uncommon characters, playing with ideas and time, so that the reader needs to concentrate to follow all the different aspects of the story.

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