Mental Gymnastics

Opening the Global Mind

Last week I finished reading a series of essays entitled "Multicultural Literacy." The book was published back in 1998. The writers were all Americans of colored descent who are ironically classified as ethnic minorities. Most of them are children of privilege and have traveled and spent some time in Europe. Their common angst was in finding their American identity as writers. Most of the essays were written much earlier than when the book was published.

Today however, with technology shrinking the world, writers are affected by a different kind of crisis. It's finding the right voice in a global community. Technology has mapped out almost every corner of the globe, and with this comes a fine line between individualism and globalism.

At this point, I wonder how important race is when you lived from one continent to another at certain parts in your life. When your parents are from different races or cultural backgrounds. And then all throughout, you get exposed to different cultures and meet other people whose background is as colorful as yours. The color of one's skin is now slowly becoming trivial.

The focus is now on globalism wherein the choices one person make affects those of people on the other side of the world. Writers certainly cannot deny this phenomenon so one should be wary on publishing his work. With the world as your audience, it's no longer just "this is what I think," but it should be more like "with all due respect, this is what I think."

I wonder how writers of this era will be classified in the future.

posted by kquill @ 2:14 PM