Setting a Story in Another Culture by Judy Meadows

Don't you just love exotic when it comes to romance? Our guest today has that for you. Read on..

I’m often asked if it’s hard to write a story set in a foreign culture.

The answer is yes, there are challenges—I’ve detailed some of them below—but it’s very interesting too. You know—like traveling in a foreign country is interesting and reading about a foreign culture is interesting. Writing about life in the Middle East takes me there—or, I should say, it takes me back there. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Middle East and have studied Farsi.

My stories take place in the fictional country of Behruz, which I located between Iran and Afghanistan. Even though the country is fictional, I wanted to be true to the realities of the region. Since I can’t claim to be an expert on the culture, I wrote from a point of view I am an expert on – the experience of an American woman living there.

The heroine of Book 1 is an American who lived much of her life in Behruz. The heroines of Books 2 and 3 are “mostly American.” (They’re daughters of a Behruzi father and an American mom, raised primarily in San Francisco.) I know what it’s like to be an American woman living in that area. I travelled (with my husband, brother, and sister-in-law, Dana) by Land Rover across the region in 1969 and 1970, choosing backroads and small towns, camping and hiking and interacting with locals, including nomads. Then, eight years later, my husband and I lived in Iran for a year, working as computer engineers on a project that was supposed to extend phone service to the entire country. (The project was interrupted by the Iranian revolution.) I gave birth to my first child in an Iranian hospital.

So, I know what it’s like to be a foreign woman in that world. During the Land Rover trip, I covered myself with a chador, not all the time, but occasionally, when I wanted respite from being “different.” My heroines do the same. People were curious and hospitable and generous; I was curious and open and grateful for their hospitality. I kept a diary during the first year-long trip, one that spans seven volumes. Those volumes were a great source of details that bring life to my stories. For example, both the heroine and I traveled with Lhasa Apso puppies. (I got mine in Nepal; she got hers from some hippies who’d been to Nepal.) Both my puppy and hers became ill with round worms. My diaries reminded me of quirks and characteristics of the people who were part of my life when I was there. I used those memories to create realistic characters.

Readers may expect more sexism than they’ll find in my books. It’s a big and important subject, but one that is, I think, beyond the scope of my writing. It was realistic to have my American heroines navigate that world without serious restrictions, because Western women are granted a unique status with more freedom than women of the region. I always felt safe traveling in the Middle East. The female Moslem secondary characters in my stories do have less freedom and less overt power than their husbands, but they have rich lives and covert power that they wield with finesse.

The only sexism Dana and I experienced during the first trip was something that occurred a few times in rural areas of Turkey and Afghanistan. We’d be walking along on a crowded sidewalk without a chador, and a man would casually, accidentally, bump his hand against our bottom and kind of cup it. We called this the “accidental bottom bonk.” (Don’t forget, bottom pinching was common in Italy at the time. For all I know, it still is.) The stereotypes Hollywood had exported to other countries about the sexual mores of American women were probably responsible for these incidents. (The Hollywood of that era was pretty sexist itself.) I didn’t experience bottom-bonking (accidental or otherwise) in Tehran when I was working there eight years later, and I never wore a chador in Tehran.

Readers may wonder about the issue of religion when they read about an American or mostly-American woman falling in love with a Middle Eastern man, so I felt I had to deal with that. In order to dispense with it as summarily as possible, I gave my heroes mixed heritages. (Moslem dads, Christian moms.) There are actually a lot of Christians (also Jews, and Zoroastrians) living peacefully in Iran, which means, of course, intermarriages do sometimes occur. Couples in such marriages don’t normally face the persecution or problems we Westerners might expect. The people of the region respect piety, regardless of the religion. Since my characters are the offspring of couples who’ve already met the challenges of interfaith marriage, I had heroes and heroines well prepared to meld their histories. That was my way of avoiding the topic of religion.

One factor of writing about another culture has complicated marketing of my books. Most romance novels set in the Middle East are of the “Desert Sheik” sub-genre, but that’s not the kind of book I write. My books tell rich stories of sweet and spicy romance between people who happen to find themselves in an exotic setting. Unfortunately, this distinction is hard to convey in the cover material.  Readers who’ve already decided they don’t like stories about arrogant sheiks and vulnerable fair maidens probably won’t open my books.

I love my exotic setting and the drama of the events that unfold there. When I’m done writing about Behruz, I think I’ll write about another foreign country I know well, Mexico.

My three stories set in Behruz (all published by The Wild Rose Press) are: Escape from Behruz (April, 2017), Midwife in Behruz (coming soon), and Searching in Behruz (WIP, hopefully available in early 2018).

Escape from Behruz is available at Amazon

And also from itunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookstrand, and Google. See www.judymeadows.com 

Bio:

I grew up and went to college in Minnesota but now live in a small town in Oregon with my husband Jim. I love to travel, read, hang out at the beach, cook, and play with grandchildren. I’ve always loved cats, but sadly find myself catless at the moment. Our 19-year-old Simba and 17-year-old Tinker Bell both died last year.

My first career was as a systems engineer for IBM. My second career was growing apples and Asian pears in northern California. My third career was as a doula and childbirth educator.

And now I’m a writer!