Thought youse might be interested in a new interview with me and Ekaterina Sedia (who wrote the truly marvelous Secret History of Moscow) that just went up at Fantasy Magazine. The interview was conducted by the insightful Tempest Bradford and was all about what it’s like to be a foreignor in the US of A something me and Ekaterina know a lot about. It’s one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve done. Any time I’m not asked to describe my books, I’m happy.
Justine Larbalestier
The various writings of Justine Larbalestier
Excellent interview—felt just like eavesdropping! (Which is fun no matter how rude it is.)
And it’s on a subject I’ve wondered about quite a bit. In the schools I’ve been in (American schools, various states), there’s this odd approach to learning about other cultures. Most of the stuff I studied was either out-dated, stereotyped, or presented at a slant that made it as much like our own culture as possible (the idea being that we’d understand it better if it’s familiar). All of which defeated the purpose.
I think that because people make the mistake of assuming that ordinary life in other places is just like ordinary life here, they go around only wanting to know about the “different” parts. So, for example, since they think Australian cities must be just like American ones (how uninteresting!), then surely the good bits must be the stuff about the Crocodile Hunter and that whole Crocodile Dundee thing. And then they wind up missing the whole place, and on top of it they exaggerate what they do see, to make it more romantic, mysterious, interesting, different.
It’s a sad, confined feeling, to know that I know so little when I’ve been shown so much. 🙁
~Mary
P.S. my apologies for the long post…
“At home African-American is largely synonymous with cool and sexy.”
Oh my god I am going to Australia NOW.
Lovely interview by the way. And I’m SO glad you addressed the lack of translated works available in English. But it’s true, good translators are hard to find. There should be more awards and incentives or something… *waves chocolates*
I’m heartbroken after reading “The Carpet Makers” by Andreas Eschbach and finding out there’s a bunch more stuff by him that is unavailable to me, when every Anglophonic pop tart and their pet cat seems to be available translated into Swahili and whatnot. (Not that I have anything against Anglophonic pop tarts in general. I like pop tarts. They are delicious.) The best I can find are French translations on Amazon, which… well, I guess I’d get the chapter titles, at least. Or I could, uh, learn German. Yikes. They have declined pronouns! And the language centers of my brain are old and calcified. *runs in fear*
We seriously need to look at how foreign languages are taught in the US…