should cultural immersion be practiced?

^^ I thought it was another way of spelling seventeen. My textbooks always use Mexican Spanish, with some side notes for Spain (teaching us vosotros form) so I wasn't sure. The poster in the back of the classroom showing 16-19 as "diez y ____" didn't help >.<

^ That's good.

Yeah, but the songs I know tend to be slower.

If you want to understand a culture, go and live in it.

No amount of couscous-eating or fez-wearing in your own home will help you understand Morocco, for example. You'd just be some guy in a funny hat and still none the wiser.

To be honest, though, I think writing about a culture you don't belong to is quite risky unless you make it clear that either you or your POV character do not belong to that culture.

I knew this was going to come up. Sorry if I sound defensive, but here's my opinion. It's very complex.

I'm not denying that there are heaps of pitfalls in writing about a foreign country you've never visited. But not everyone who writes about other cultures is going to have the time or money to go and live in another country. Does that mean they can't write convincingly about another culture? I didn't choose to write about Cuba because I think it's ''exotic" or something. Cuba isn't any more exotic than any English- or Chinese-speaking country. It just fitted because I'm writing a story about cloning Che, and Cuba is where that would hypothetically most likely happen, because that's the country he's most associated with. And also I wanted to see what the effects might be of a mob-ruled country in the Caribbean, because I'm fascinated by what life was like over there in the pre-revolutionary period.

This particular story is an Alternate History. Modern-day Cuba is not an oppressive banana republic controlled by a crime syndicate. I've done research and know quite a bit i.e. [[a lot more than the average person I know]] about the period before the revolution (I'm not an expert though). I simply had to extend that with a few changes into the near-future. And yes, the entire cast is Cuban. It's in first-person from the POV of a human clone. Here.

Basically my opinion is that yes, ideally you should go and spend some time in another country if possible, but if you can't you should research.

edited 20th Aug '12 1:18:11 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

An interesting point that just came to me: Am I just weird for assuming/expecting that stories involving a historical figure associated with a certain country be set there/have a connection to that place?

That's why I set CL in Cuba. Again, I have no justification for this beyond "it just feels right to me" which is also my answer to "Why are you writing about a foreign country?" even though I know it's risky.

Anyone else writing about other cultures have this reaction? Or is it just me?