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Capable-Catch4433 OP t1_j6d0e1h wrote

Reply to comment by leela_martell in Does Alexander McCall Smith depict Botswana and it’s culture accurately? by Capable-Catch4433

Me too. I’m a bit horrified thinking about how most of my perspective of the country is from a white man, belonging to a culture that colonized the culture he’s writing about. 😬 I guess it’s part of our responsibility as readers to explore more and read literature by Batswana.

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TNPossum t1_j6ddxzf wrote

I would give him a little more credit than that. I'm not going as far as to say he's an expert on the culture, but he grew up around it and interacted with it. I would assume it's mostly accurate unless told otherwise. He probably knows more about the local culture than a lot of anthropologists do on the subject.

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Capable-Catch4433 OP t1_j6gl4np wrote

I just read a comment on Goodreads from a Batswana woman who has studied his work as part of her MA thesis in the University of Botswana. She said that there are significant gaps in how he represented the culture and his books shouldn’t be taken or sold as a representation of Batswana culture. The characters are also seem to be based on colonial stereotypes. I’d love to hear more from Batswana people as these books are about them and they’d be in a better position to say if they are accurate representations of the culture. The stories are cute, and I get that he grew up in that culture and know more about it than a regular English bloke. But I think it can be problematic that the stories are told from the perspective of Batswana women, which can send the message that that’s how real Batswana women think or perceive things.

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TNPossum t1_j6gzx3h wrote

>Batswana woman who has studied his work as part of her MA thesis in the University of Botswana. She said that there are significant gaps in how he represented the culture

So see. There you go. It was reasonable to think that he had a good understanding of the culture. Now it's reasonable to think that he doesn't. I'd be a little cautious to take a goodsread comment as law, but it's unlikely she'd make up studying it as an MA.

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