There’s a long tradition in Western literature of exoticizing other cultures, particularly the East and the Global South. And recently, there’s been a major effort to undo all that–to de-exoticize the way we depict other cultures. And that’s a a step in the right direction, for sure. Stereotyping and dehumanizing people from other cultures is bad. However, many writers, especially in genre fiction, seem to think that the way to fix exoticism is to homogenize every culture from every part of the world and every time period. We are joined by Karlo Yeager Rodríguez.
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(Header image via Bruce C Cooper with modifications)
The way to write the Other is not to make the Other into you