One of the things I thought about when writing "Rainmaker" was how rarely Americans appreciate they are living in a global culture, not an American one, and that American culture, however influential it might be, is parochial, limited by our inability and unwillingness to learn other languages or about other cultures.

Americans still imagine "foreigners" as poor, uneducated "dirt farmers" who have to be "saved" and shown the light of Christianity or Western consumerism or in most cases both.