Marquise > Status Update

Oooof… not all who read are… well-read.

Diany wrote: "Oooof… not all who read are… well-read."

Hehehe, I almost clapped back by saying what exactly is offensive and discriminatory about describing how natives of a culture react to books by those who were born abroad to parents from the same country, but I preferred to just delete and block the user.

I was thinking of Vaishnavi Patel, though I didn't name her, and what my GR friends from India and other Indian GRers think of her: some think she misrepresents and bastardises Indian mythology and others love her retellings, that's what I commented.

How's that offensive escapes me... I suspect it's one of those people spoiling for a fight online.

YES! I JUST read “The Lion Women of Tehran” and so many of the Iranian (not Iranian-American) humans who reviewed it said the same thing! It’s kinda always been the case… yeesh, what a weird take to have.

Exactly.

Annoying that they would 'resurrect' a comment (not even a review, a comment in reply to a comment) from years ago just for this. Oh, well, I'll forget in a bit. :D

Non-folklore side, plus flip side of the coin? The author of "Coming Out as Dalit" notes the Indian caste system has come over to the United States in full force. So that may be why your Indian-American interlocutor said what they did, Marquise.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I appreciate authors who love their heritage enough to want to continue representing it generations down the line, but this certainly does lead to misunderstandings, as knowledge of that heritage may be generations removed and incomplete. But on the other hand, when authors write about something outside of their heritage they are oftentimes criticized or accused of exploiting someone else's culture/history, so it is hard either way.

Socraticgadfly wrote: "Non-folklore side, plus flip side of the coin? The author of "Coming Out as Dalit" notes the Indian caste system has come over to the United States in full force."

I didn't even mention their country's politics, and I don't care to poke my nose in places I know nothing about. I was talking to a GR friend about fairy tale retellings specifically, and it's an old comment. It caught me off-guard, folks here never cease to surprise me with their behaviour.

Betsie wrote: "I appreciate authors who love their heritage enough to want to continue representing it generations down the line, but this certainly does lead to misunderstandings,"

From what I see online, the dispute boils down to this: it's not the same to be an (ethnicity-)American born and raised in the US than an (ethnicity) born and raised in the country of origin. The latter will always know their own culture more in depth, because they 'live' in it and it permeates everything in their daily life, whilst the diaspora always tends to evolve into its own thing as the years & centuries pass by.

It makes sense to me, but that wasn't even the point. It was a commentary on how the natives take the retellings by the diaspora authors, and why that may be like it is.

I’ve noticed this with any Indian retellings that are rooted in Hinduism. The same goes for Gourav Mohanty’s Sons of Darkness and its sequel Dance of Shadows which is a grim dark retelling of the Mahabharata

Sara wrote: "I’ve noticed this with any Indian retellings that are rooted in Hinduism. The same goes for Gourav Mohanty’s Sons of Darkness and its sequel Dance of Shadows..."

What's happened with that? I'm outta the loop...

I can imagine what it is, though, religion is always going to attract controversy.