Aviya Kushner calls America out for its half-assed attempts at worldliness in this Wilson’s Quarterly article. It’s great and all that we’re newly interested in understanding what goes on outside of our country’s borders, but we’d still rather have someone else tell us about it than read it first-hand:

Peruvian-born writer Daniel Alarcón observes, “There’s a certain curiosity about the world that’s not matched by a willingness to do the work…So what happens is that writers of foreign extraction end up writing about the world for Americans.”

Not enough of a BURN for you? Kushner says it again, but with food metaphors:

We don’t have much time, so we want a taste, some fast food to go. And so we read ethnic literature the way we down an ethnic meal. We can get a burrito almost anywhere, but it’s often mildly spiced, adjusted just for us, and wrapped for those in a rush. So we’re eating a translated burrito, and we’re reading a world prepared especially for us. But we don’t believe anything is missing.

I hate to say it, especially because I often rest on my laurels as a decent multicultural reader, but more than half of the “ethnic lit” I read was originally published in English. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I love you. But I guess I should also read some Ngugo wa Thiong’o.*

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

*Note: Not a perfect comparison, since Adichie is Nigerian and Thiong’o is Kenyan, but I couldn’t think of a Nigerian author who originally wrote in English and then renounced the language for one’s native tongue. Not off the top of my head, anyway.