Two types of work that I personally enjoy reading are traditional cultural stories and cultural perspective works. I enjoy these books because it helps me get a feeling for how other people think and live. The ones I have read most recently have been memoirs, but I quite enjoy well done fiction as well. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on reading these kinds of works, and others, and what we should take into account when doing so.
When reading works that have a different cultural perspective, even if they are written by American authors, I think it is similar in some ways to reading foreign works. This can be a tricky area, since it is difficult to contextualize a culture with which we are unfamiliar.
"Lacking specialized knowledge, the foreign reader is likely to impose domestic literacy values on the foreign work, and even careful scholarly attempts to read a foreign work in light of a Western critical theory are deeply problematic." - David Damrosch, What Is World Literature?
The Damrosch quote is a little wordy, but it does present us with the immense challenges we face when doing this type of reading. Reading these types of books however, is something that I find to be very worthwhile, and important to a more global world. Often they can give us a window into a different cultural perspective at a point in history, or they can help to humanize groups of people that some tend to stereotype. Honestly, I only read Damorosch's introduction to his book, but I wouldn't recommend it to most people. While he has some great insight into international literature, what is included in that body, and how to go about properly translating and reading it, he has a tendency to be extremely verbose. For an academic interested in the field however, it could be quite an interesting read.
The important take away is that we have to be careful about how we go about analyzing and interpreting literature Something that we need to remember, is to take into account the outside circumstances. When was the work written, by whom, and who was the intended audience, what the was political climate at the time, or the religious one? Reading and analyzing a piece of literature is almost like qualifying a historical document. We need to take into account all of those elements and more. There author may be trustworthy source of information, their book may be authentic to it's time and local, but the narrator may not be as honest. Honesty can also be somewhat subjective. An honest view of colonial India from the perspective of a British gentleman would me markedly different than that of an Indian. Even if the Britt is trying to capture the other man's perspective. And the way we view things within the framework of the text is always going to be colored by our understanding of the setting, and our own life and world experiences. Ultimately, most works become somewhat foreign, but the way in which relate to them and their characters can make them familiar.
Literature doesn't happen by accident. We need to keep that in mind when we consume it, and ask ourselves why. Why did the author write this? Why did they choose the setting and mood that they did? Why did they choose the names that they did? Why am I reading it, and what can I take away from this experience.
The Damrosch quote is a little wordy, but it does present us with the immense challenges we face when doing this type of reading. Reading these types of books however, is something that I find to be very worthwhile, and important to a more global world. Often they can give us a window into a different cultural perspective at a point in history, or they can help to humanize groups of people that some tend to stereotype. Honestly, I only read Damorosch's introduction to his book, but I wouldn't recommend it to most people. While he has some great insight into international literature, what is included in that body, and how to go about properly translating and reading it, he has a tendency to be extremely verbose. For an academic interested in the field however, it could be quite an interesting read.
The important take away is that we have to be careful about how we go about analyzing and interpreting literature Something that we need to remember, is to take into account the outside circumstances. When was the work written, by whom, and who was the intended audience, what the was political climate at the time, or the religious one? Reading and analyzing a piece of literature is almost like qualifying a historical document. We need to take into account all of those elements and more. There author may be trustworthy source of information, their book may be authentic to it's time and local, but the narrator may not be as honest. Honesty can also be somewhat subjective. An honest view of colonial India from the perspective of a British gentleman would me markedly different than that of an Indian. Even if the Britt is trying to capture the other man's perspective. And the way we view things within the framework of the text is always going to be colored by our understanding of the setting, and our own life and world experiences. Ultimately, most works become somewhat foreign, but the way in which relate to them and their characters can make them familiar.
Literature doesn't happen by accident. We need to keep that in mind when we consume it, and ask ourselves why. Why did the author write this? Why did they choose the setting and mood that they did? Why did they choose the names that they did? Why am I reading it, and what can I take away from this experience.
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