On assimilation by force

[winter]

A few people on my f-list have already linked to Elizabeth Moon's diatribe on why immigrants should shut up and change to be just like everyone else. I didn't comment on it, because I literally couldn't find the words.

Shweta Narayan says it more eloquently than I ever could.

I have the luck of spending most of my childhood in a country where others are like me, and of a multi-cultural education from the cradle. But I was also a Slav travelling in Western Europe just after communism ended. I was nine years old, in a supermarket in Paris, and I talked to my mother in halting, broken French, because I knew that if I spoke Polish, everyone in the shop would stare and follow us to make sure we didn't steal anything.

Comments

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

I haven't managed to read the whole post yet, just some excerpts. I may make myself sit down and real the whole thing in one go at some point. Admittedly, for the majority of my life I've been in the "surrounded by people at least visibly like myself" situation but even so, I started reacting, "Oh no, no way, SO BAD" upon reading Moon's post.

[winter]

I think the difference is between realising you're surrounded by similar people and assuming that it's a right.

One of these days, I'll write that post about Slavs in English-language sff, and just how thrown I was to transition from my multicultural fairytales to movies and tv series where everyone was Anglosaxon by behaviour.

[amelia-petkova.livejournal.com]

re the post: Looking forward to it. Off the top of your head, can you recommend any English-language novels (or ones translated into English) with well-written Slavic characters?

[winter]

Translated, a metric tonne :) Anything by Lem is precious. Russians - Bulychov, Lukanenko, Strugackis are all available in English. Fantasy - Sapkowski is available in decent English translation (very good post-modern not!heroic fantasy), and I've always considered Master and Margarita as urban fantasy as well.

And Miles Vorkosigan. Barrayar is spread between Prussia and Russia, but leaning towards the east. That one was a revelation in the "oh gods, someone gets it" way, because it captures the cultural paradigm rather than going generic.