Mastodawn

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.

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Nowhere Girl 20h ago

For example, Senegal, where the novel is set, is a majority Muslim nation but they have nightclubs, bars, cell phones, pop music, markets, etc.

Why wouldn't they?

But Americans are frequently baffled by other countries being "modern," e.g., Iran paying attention to the same Internet meme culture we do, European states having superior healthcare systems, or China being more technologically advanced in many respects.

We imagine ourselves as special and superior when we're not.

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compost_funeral

@gwynnion The British version of this, from which the American attitude is descended, is even funnier because people will come to places that industrialised later, and you can watch it slowly dawn on them that oh... of course industrialising first means we made a bunch of mistakes, which later adopters have avoided, which has led to a generally higher quality of result. Like the thing with the taps. People who grew up in more "second gen" industrial environments think it's hilarious that British people are left mixing their water temperatures in the sink rather than in the pipe. Later adoption means you're not having to build on top of, and back-compatible with, some alpha version of the technology