Here's a new question. How do you represent yourself, your culture, in your writing when you're different than the majority culture? How do you create the bridge from your culture to others? I guess that's really two questions.

As an author of color I often find myself in a difficult place. Do I write to my community or do I write more globally? My desire is to do both in each and every piece. But the real difficulty for me is when I write something that is culture specific making sure I put it in a context that is readily understandable by all. What is most problematic is when things don't easily translate or their is no readily identifiable similarity.

When I write science fiction it is so much easier because there I am creating worlds, and not just worlds, but cultures within those worlds. When people read science fiction they expect to have to learn as they go along. I have to admit that's half the fun, whether reading sci-fi or writing it. However, I find that when I'm writing contemporary fiction people aren't so fluid in the willingness or ability to learn as they read.

The challenge then is to make my characters so compelling that the reader experiences emotion in that context. To do this what needs to happen is the same thing that I do for science fiction. Build an emotional bridge for the reader by creating an intermediate world with anchors in both cultures. Not an easy thing to do for contemporary fiction. But if doing that was easy everyone would be published.

The answer then, lies in finding metacultural anchors. The greatest metacultural anchor is emotion. And the trick is building up the scene around it so that no matter what language you use the emotion explains it all.

I'd love to hear what you think.