On writing characters with culture as a foundation.

[singerseville]

Salutations! This is my first post here, and I truly hope the subject isn’t too broad. In any case, I’ll try to keep this brief.

For a long time I’ve been working to ascertain how to best represent characters’ culture(s) as an inextricable facet of who they are. It’s a different case for every character, but I create from the philosophy that culture is an integral part of their lives, and a meaningful foundation of their identity, while not comprising the WHOLE of their identity. I’ve come to find that writing from a place of culture first (especially when it comes to original characters) is easier for me, as it offers a gateway to art and history they can identify with.

So me writing/creating/designing characters (and their respective arcs) with culture in mind may look like this: An Armenian character who is deeply nostalgic for their dad’s Ross Bagdasarian records has an obsession with cycles and patterns, and struggles to come to terms with major life changes (culture informs music taste + love of music + ties into these themes); a Filipino character with a memory disability wears a terno that she alters/embroiders in tandem with changes in her life and grows out her hair as her external support system broadens (culture as a visible foundation that literally blooms with woven flowers as she makes connections to her past + her loved ones); an Egyptian character uses a Goha (Nasreddin) story to analogically explain a concept to someone else (the story’s theme/symbolism mirrors/foreshadows that of the very narrative wherein this character exists); an Apache character grows out his hair as a teen and tries to recall Western Apache words and phrases his grandma taught him as a kid—one of these being kįh, which he alone among the cast is able to recognize means “house,” and not “key,” which is what is what everybody else assumes is said by another character relaying a message to them (this ties back to his arc of learning to assert + trust himself).

In every case, culture is the foundation that informs the character’s life and respective arc, as well as their interests and sense of identity. I should note that these stories don’t transpire within the specific locational/social contexts of these cultures, which is to say that the people these characters meet and move through their stories alongside have different cultural backgrounds themselves. As someone who was technically raised (and continues to exist) “in” a culture, but not WITH a culture, I consider these details essential. I realize my ask may be too broad or vague (and longer than I had hoped), and I apologize for that. You’re welcome to ask for more details/examples of this. I just want to instill the characters I love with a sense of cultural knowledge + pride that was not passed down to me through my own lineage.

My main question is: am I approaching this correctly, and if not, what kinds of details should I implement instead?

💙

EDIT: Update from the future!!! I've received a plethora of awesome responses to this post, and I just want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to answer this, and for all the incredible discussions that ensued thereafter!! Reading through all of these has been nothing short of heartwarming and enlightening; hearing so many personal stories and perspectives is one of my favorite things in the world, and I think I've come away from this with a better idea of these very subjective and personal concepts.

I also want to make an amendment to a prior statement in this post, regarding my perception of my own culture; I think for a while I've been conflating culture with community--the latter of which being something I don't really have in my life, and am hoping to build myself as time goes on. My own hope to learn about my familial past may also stem from the fact that for most of my life I haven't really been connected to one side of my family; learning my personal history is moreso a way to contextualize myself, while in the process finally connecting with these people I haven't really had the chance to know.

Lastly, this is my first post on this site, so I am so, so sorry I didn't know about the IP address-exposure thing. I panicked when I saw that for the first time, and while no one here's brought it up as a problem, I feel really bad for not double-checking the settings on my account. I made some comments on this post that have this information stuck to them, so for my anxiety's sake, I'm gonna relocate them to a public Google Doc. I'm so so sorry for the inconvenience. (FUTURE EDIT 2: this may or may not have been something only I could see, so apologies as well for overthinking things!)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JOm0_LjIVw76WBFXyTTdwx6JOCHrAoPp152Xcn2PI98/edit?usp=sharing


newredshoes yhlee octahedrite my prior answers to you will all be there!! I hope this doesn't mess up the thread. I've set the doc so that people can continue to comment/reply here if need be!

Again, I am infinitely grateful to everyone who's responded. Thank you so so so much for your time, insight, and stories💙

Comments

[newredshoes]

Interesting question! For my part, as an ethnoreligious minority, I would personally urge you to remember that your characters are people first and should emerge in your stories as people with their own context, rather than context manifesting as people. You may also want to consider what your cultural assumptions are and whether you're imposing those on your characters. For instance, I find the practice of waiting to bury your dead past 24 hours absolutely unsettling; I once got in a huge fandom fight because I resented the Christian framework of "I said I was sorry, now you have to forgive me or you're a bad person," which isn't at all how repentance and repair works in my culture; I've had people interrogate me about dietary customs and why I pick and choose what I follow, and not understand that we don't act out of fear of punishment by the divine; and I'm definitely shocked pretty much every day by what I assumed the rest of the world knew about us but doesn't.

As for what to do about it, beyond general "please ensure your characters are people first" advice, I always learn best from examples, so I wonder if you might find it helpful to engage with a narrative that you think pulls off this multicultural approach well (or one that doesn't and figure out why). I'd also seek out voices and literatures from the cultures you hope to represent and listen to what does and doesn't ring true for them. I think also... the examples you're giving are really lovely and interesting. I think your stories will be most effective if you-the-writer don't then turn to your reader and go, in effect, "See what I did there?" Let the reader fill in the blanks too, which requires trusting them.

[beatrice_otter]

You may also want to consider what your cultural assumptions are and whether you're imposing those on your characters.

Yes, this, absolutely. I'm a member of the dominant culture, but I've done a decent amount of reading about history and about other cultures throughout history. And so I have a decent understanding of the fact that different cultures tend to have different priorities and ideas, so it becomes fairly obvious to me when reading something by somebody who doesn't understand that (and thus believes that their priorities and ideas are universal). Either they write the current dominant culture with a couple of external things (food, clothes, religious leaders) pasted on, or they write the villains as having the cultural beliefs of the culture, and the main character as being basically a modern Westerner in fancy dress.

For example: it's a society where arranged marriage is the norm, the main character who grew up in that culture is shocked and appalled by the very idea of an arranged marriage, and the villains are forcing them into it. If you've grown up only seeing arranged marriages, and it will be normal and expected for you. You may have somebody you're in love with and not allowed for some reason, and you may not like the person your parents try to marry you off to, but you will not be shocked and appalled at the very idea of something that is completely normal and expected in your society.

[yhlee]

On a lighter note, I remember having to navigate this writing a middle grade book that included (as part of the premise of the book) Korean characters (in fantasy space, but still). But of course the primary audience for that book was mostly going to be young [American - edited for clarity, I realize most people aren't tracking my publishers!] readers who aren't Korean and would need glosses for bunches of things that Koreans take for granted. Which then led to a Korean sf writer telling me that she had a strange uncanny valley experience reading the Korean translation of that book, because it was clearly Korean culture written by someone with some experience of Korean culture, but it explained things that no Korean-in-Korea would ever think to explain: The fact that gimchi is served with every meal, of course gimchi is served with every meal; you'd only call that out if it were missing or something was weird about the gimchi (or, perhaps, you were considerately being served gimchi with your meal by a non-Korean outside of Korea). My editor had me explain that in Go (baduk) you don't move the pieces (as in chess or checkers), you place them, and also that it's played on a 19x19 grid, which again, was something it would never have occurred to her to explain to a Korean reader because Everyone Knows That. And, I mean, I love S Korea but it's also the size of a postage stamp, and even then you have different customs in different provinces and districts. There's this one small district in Seoul that's known for its acorn jelly! (It tastes terrible and probably falls under the category of "it's edible, so some starving Korean peasant ate it and now we're stuck with the tradition"). Honestly, without traveling, the experience I'm reminded of was when I started learning French. Suddenly all the "of course languages all work either like English or Korean" thoughts I'd had went out the window.

[beatrice_otter]

Heh. I'm Norwegian-American, and one ethnic food I grew up with was Lutefisk. Not in my family, because we're all allergic to fish, but in the culture in general. There were people at church who had it for major family dinners like Christmas and Easter; some of my parents' friends grew up in families that had Lutefisk every Saturday because Grandpa insisted on it; churches and community groups in parts of the US with lots of Scandinavians will host Lutefisk dinners as a fundraiser every year. It is a symbol of Scandinavian heritage.

They don't eat Lutefisk in Scandinavia, and they think it's bizarre that Scandinavian-Americans do.

Why? Because it's awful. It was the cheapest way of preserving fish before freezers and canning existed. You take fish and soak it in lye. (Lutefisk literally means 'lye fish'.) When you want to eat it, you rinse the lye out of it. It's a gelatinous mass with no texture that, if you're lucky, has no smell or taste. (You eat it dripping in melted butter, to give it flavor.) If you're not lucky, well, here's a song we used to sing at the Sons of Norway lodge my Grandmother was President of:

(to the tune of "Oh Tannenbaum/O Christmas Tree")

O Lutefisk, O lutefisk, how fragrant your aroma
O Lutefisk, O lutefisk, you put me in a coma
You smell so strong, you look like glue,
you taste just like an overshoe,
But lutefisk, come Saturday,
I think I'll eat you anyway

The only reason anybody anywhere still eats it is because of nostalgia and because It's Our Heritage.

[lokifan]

Oh wow, fascinating! But of course it makes sense. I remember reading about how Polish food in the US is enormously different from Polish food here in the UK, because here it's mostly sold/eaten by first or second generation immigrants. Polish-American food, of course, much more like Polish food was 150 years ago.

[newredshoes]

I've heard this with regards to stereotypes too — the example I remember is some video of an Italian-American guy going, "This is how Italians are! You never let your sister be alone with any man!" etc. A native Italian, from the north of Italy, of course smash cuts to a "??? no we're not" face. But the thing is, the "Italian" in the American's subculture is from southern Italy and generally much poorer, while the reacting Italian is from the north and generally wealthier. So not only did the cultures diverge 100+ years ago, but Sicilian family structures that morphed into a Jersey Shore guy will seem baffling to a contemporary Italian from Milan.

[beatrice_otter]

Oh, interesting!

[havocthecat]

Not...not all Italian-Americans are from southern Italy, specifically Sicily.

There's a huge divide in Italian-American subculture between Sicilians and non-Sicilians in our behaviors and cultures, and you'd basically have to be an Italian-American to even touch on it.

And uh. Italian-Americans of Sicilian heritage will often - usually, mostly - not be a family of Jersey Shore stereotypes.

[beatrice_otter]

I mean, also, the types of food that are available in the US are different than in other places, which is another reason things change, as yhlee pointed out in their comment. Irish-American food is different because lamb is more expensive than beef here, whereas it's the opposite in Ireland.

[yhlee]

My sister-in-law is Norwegian-American! I know she's mentioned lutefisk but not the context.

I've seen similar phenomena in Korean-American communities, or even in Korea. My dad remarked once that in the US, people think of Korean food as Korean BBQ (galbi, bulgogi) and gimchi. The gimchi is real :) but in Korea...nobody eats that much meat on a regular basis. (In fact, the cheapest beef has often been US imports. The peninsula kind of sucks for raising cows. Native S Korean beef is eye-wateringly expensive.) My dad's take was "this is what foreigners/tourists think of as 'normal' Korean food, which it's not, but we take them to these places because (typically) Americans like meat."

[beatrice_otter]

"America has cheap beef" is also why Irish-Americans eat corned beef. In Ireland, they're much more likely to eat lamb.

[akinoame]

They don't eat Lutefisk in Scandinavia, and they think it's bizarre that Scandinavian-Americans do.

That sounds like what I've heard about the Irish vs. Irish-Americans!

About half of my family is Irish-American, so St. Patrick's Day is a big thing, and the traditional meal there is corned beef and cabbage, with boiled potatoes and carrots.

The story I've been told about the vegetables is that it's to symbolize the colors of the Irish flag: cabbage (green), peeled potatoes (white; also there's the whole Potato Famine thing, but I'll get into that in a bit), and carrots (gold/orange). Now, the reason why I described the carrots as representing both gold and orange is because of, well, Ireland and Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants, and all that stuff that's still really touchy even though the Troubles are (on paper) over. The Irish Times has a good little history here. Also, according to Wikipedia, sometimes there's some confusion with the Ivory Coast flag, which has the same colors but in reverse order.

Corned beef is very much an Irish-American thing, thanks to the Great Famine. With so many Irish immigrants coming to the U.S. and the usual anti-immigrant/anti-not-Protestant-Christian sentiments rearing their head, they found friends among the Eastern European Jewish immigrants going through the same thing. So the Irish were buying meat from their Jewish butcher neighbors, and the meat that they typically ate/could afford back in Ireland, bacon, wasn't available. But corned beef--a tasty meat that the Irish had been making for the English and couldn't afford to eat themselves, and that the Jewish butchers in America had perfected into an art? That was suddenly an option.

And that's why corned beef and cabbage is the national dish of Irish-Americans, whereas Irish would celebrate with bacon or lamb instead.

I guess if there's a point to this story to tie back into the OP's original concern, I think it's also keeping in mind what affects culture. Irish-Americans vary from the Irish (Republic) vary from the Northern Irish so freaking much. Irish-Americans were kind of insulated from the Troubles, but may still carry some Thoughts about the British and Northern Irish my late grandfather sure did; he never forgave the British for a long history of everything. And in other really interesting facts, while the Irish-Americans found solidarity with Eastern European Jews, Ireland found friendship and solidarity with the Choctaw Nation, who had just survived the Trail of Tears about 10 years before, heard about what the Irish were going through with the Great Famine and sent $5000 in today's money for relief ($174 back then). That friendship remains, with a Choctaw Ireland Scholarship, and the Irish sending donations to a GoFundMe account for the Hopi and Navajo Nations devastated by COVID-19 and largely not being bailed out by the dominant government of the land--which of course rings a bell, and the Irish had not forgotten the kindness and generosity of the Choctaw. Likewise, Irish-Americans and the Irish embassy were contributing, but at least $3 million came from Irish citizens alone. So solidarity between cultures will come into play as well.

[yhlee]

I'm going to urge you to start by reexamining this statement:

As someone who was technically raised (and continues to exist) “in” a culture, but not WITH a culture, I consider these details essential.

Unless you exist in a vacuum with no interaction with anyone, you exist with a culture.

For example: a straight white American (USAn) suburbanite might consider themself not to be "cultural." But that hypothetical American probably drives on the right side of the road (if they drive). That hypothetical American probably listens to music that's based on (or rebels against) a musical tradition that involves Western tonality and ideas of harmony and/or instruments (as well as, quite probably, instruments and traditions nicked from other cultures and music traditions). That hypothetical [fixed typo] American probably considers English a "default" language, along with whatever languages may be common in their community (Spanish if there's a large Latinx community, Chinese languages in Chinatown). That hypothetical American probably knows (American) football exists and is a big deal in the general culture even if they do not care about football and don't know any of the rules. That hypothetical American probably has osmosed that Marvel Cinematic Universe is a big deal. That hypothetical American probably isn't surprised to hear Christmas carols playing in the mall food court in the winter (...or earlier, given the way holiday capitalism marches up on us in the US each year) but probably would be a little startled (or a lot startled) to hear the mall playing Indian ragas or Sufi music. That hypothetical American probably has an idea of what the "default" family looks like in the USA and has some idea of the "nuclear" family as an idealized construction even if their own family doesn't match that construction. That hypothetical American, asked to draw a picture of a "typical" fellow hypothetical American, will probably not draw a woman in a chador.

That hypothetical American will have a whole bunch of "defaults" that look invisible to them but are not, in fact, an absence of culture; they're a culture so ingrained/familiar that it's taken for granted. That hypothetical American character will have cultural traditions, whether they're situated as "majority" or "default" where they live. Culture can be overt/covert to varying degrees, in ways that shift from day to day, from individual to individual; in ways that can become complicated for people who come from other traditions, who have assimilated, who refuse to assimilate. Different cultures, and individuals within those cultures, will have different spectra of responses to the entire idea of culture as a foundation. There isn't going to be a one-size-fits-all.

[beatrice_otter]

And it goes beyond that!

That typical American will probably have expectations about what relationships are supposed to look like (friendships, marriages, sibling relationships, acquaintances) that are based on a combination of the norms in their home town and what you see in American media.

That typical American will have ideas of what is fair vs. what is unfair, just vs. unjust, that have been shaped by the dominant American culture.

That typical American will believe that their ways of living and thinking are normal, neutral, and the default. Therefore, the way people from other culture live and think are "cultural." Possibly good or possibly bad, but not normal or neutral.

I remember sitting in a class about helping people cross-culturally, and we started off with the professor telling us a Buddhist story, and then asking us what it meant--what the moral of the story was. One of my classmates popped up with what seemed a fairly obvious answer to most of the class. Except, the teacher pointed out, that was not the intended moral of the story, not even close. My classmate's culture--my culture--led us to find a moral in the story that would have been the type of moral we're used to, and that made us miss the moral that the people who told the story intended it to have.

[beatrice_otter]

It may help you to consider the iceberg model of culture. You can see one version here, but doing an image search for "iceberg culture model" will pull up plenty of others.

If you consider yourself to not have much culture, you're probably only looking at the stuff above the water line (and not even all of that!), and ignoring all the stuff that's below the water line.

[yhlee]

Oh yes, absolutely, and these are all excellent points and examples; but also, it's probably not possible to be comprehensive regarding this topic without writing a hundred kazillion thousand word essay, so I stopped. :) To take your last example, Buddhist Zen koans (say) are a great example of how the "moral" of a story can be wildly different from what an audience from a different framework would understand, or if stories having a "moral" is even part of the intended narrative framework at all.

I'm doing an M.A. in film/game/TV scoring right now and we're up against this for Western cinematic practice - generally we're scoring to (well, whatever the client wants...) the audience's expectation rather than strictly researched historically reenacted period music. One of the tutors remarked wryly that if you handwave in the direction of "period" music from anytime before 1900, your typical audience will not notice even if you're "off" by several centuries. On the other hand, you might have music or sound design that's "correct" to period but a modern audience of non-musicologists/scholars will find it sounds "wrong" or "fake" or it throws them out of the time period. It's complicated!

[beatrice_otter]

Sounds like a really interesting class! Also, you could say the same thing about historical fashion and design. Peoples' expectations are really different than the way things actually were.

[full_metal_ox]

Also, you could say the same thing about historical fashion and design. Peoples' expectations are really different than the way things actually were.

Ooh! Here’s an example of humor (relying on already dated gender stereotypes and the popular understanding of a U.S. historical figure), set in the 1860’s, that’s going to have a clothing historian throwing things at the screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVEtz871hIA

The Lincoln administration roughly coincided with the heyday of the bustle, and Mary Todd Lincoln, as the First Lady and an extravagant fashionista, would’ve wanted reassurance that she had the biggest rear bumper in the room!

[beatrice_otter]

Uh, the bustle wasn't invented until the 1870s, years after Lincoln's death. What was happening in the 1860s was that the fullness of the hoop skirt was starting to migrate towards the back of the skirt. They were moving in the direction that would eventually produce the bustle, so yeah, a bigger rear-end would have been more desirable than a smaller one. But the bustle was not around yet.

[full_metal_ox]

You struck me as the sort of person who could be relied upon for still further clarification, and thank you: I lie corrected!

[beatrice_otter]

Only if I know the subject well, and 19th Century European/American fashion is something I know pretty well.

[yhlee]

Oh yes, absolutely! I'm not especially well-educated on fashion-design except tiny pockets of Joseon Korean costume, but I would imagine that Hollywood (say) takes a lot of artistic license. I've been watching Bridgerton and I personally can't tell anything about period costume from that time/place, but my British friends assure me that the costume alone is deeply ahistorical. (But also, no one expects strict historicity from Bridgerton, I'm guessing...)

[beatrice_otter]

Bridgerton is like Hamilton, in that if you think anything about it does more than vaguely gesture in the direction of historicity, I've got a bridge to sell you with a lovely view of Brooklyn.

However, there are other shows that are just as fantastical, but which are billed as true-to-life and it's believed. For example, there are a whole bunch of shows about or including Vikings made recently that are supposed to be "gritty and realistic" and make Bridgerton look like an encyclopedia entry. Bridgerton at least took the actual period as its inspiration; Viking-inspired productions don't even do that. I once watched a video where an archaeologist evaluated an entire TV show for clothing accuracy--I forget which one, it might not have been available in the US. Anyway, in the entire season of TV episodes, the only thing he found that was even vaguely close to something that might actually have been worn in the period was a broach worn in one scene.

Everybody knows Bridgerton isn't accurate, but Bridgerton goes for bright colors and froth. The grimdark everyone-in-leather-and-dirty-and-no-colors is even less accurate, but people assume it's true because it fits their preconceived notions.

[lokifan]

I think the way you're writing about your characters sounds really cool, esp in terms of how the culture fits with plot & theme.

I would really suggest that white American culture is still a culture! You have foodways, festivals, habits of clothing and ways to do your hair, gender expression, particular plants for decoration, etc etc etc. It's got influence from tons of cultures and is a culture in itself, as is true of all cultures. And I'm not sure how you're defining "not knowing your personal history" but I think lots of people around the world don't know where their great-great-grandparents came from or feel any particular connection to it. I don't want to sound dismissive; I can completely understand why it's so painful to you, and I say all this a tone of sympathy. But I'm hoping it might help to consider that wanting that connection to far-back ancestry which is considered your "personal history" is seems to me a very American thing in itself. Which isn't to suggest it's bad, at all! I think it's completely valid, for an individual and for a culture. But that connection to customs/traditions/personal heritage isn't something you're lacking that everyone else has.

I dunno, I'm speaking from a position of privilege in this area, I think; I'm a white Brit, and my family is from England, Wales, Ireland etc as far back as I know. So I definitely live in the region that my family's from. And the difference in how somebody with Irish great-grandparents might consider themselves "Irish American" in a way a Brit with the same heritage wouldn't makes total sense to me; it's so different to go thousands of miles away, to have your extended family thousands of miles away. But we don't all have this deep authentic connection to our long heritage that you're cut off from. I mean, after all, my family Christmas tradition that I deeply love and feel connected to is chock-full of American influence, down to the turkey! Doesn't make it less real or part of my customs and culture. The change and influence is part of that. <3

[naraht]

But I'm hoping it might help to consider that wanting that connection to far-back ancestry which is considered your "personal history" is seems to me a very American thing in itself.

Extraordinarily so. I've definitely noticed that white British people stop identifying with immigrant identities (whether Italian, Irish, Polish, what have you) much faster than Americans, often within a generation or two.

[lokifan]

Absolutely - as a Londoner a lot of my friends are second or third generation immigrants (and as I age, a lot are first generation with kids, so I'm seeing second gen from a different angle). And yeah, particularly by the grandparent stage it's more like 'this is a thing in my family history' than 'this is part of me' for almost everybody, at least if the immigrant relatives were white Europeans. And it's a thing Europeans sometimes tease Americans about, tbh, and some Africans too.

[naraht]

Hope you'll forgive me stepping into the conversation as this is an interesting subject...

Over time, I've come to view (white) American culture as deeply individualistic, hegemonic, and assimilatory. This being the culture wherein I was raised, it's taken a while for me to come to terms with the fact that not knowing your personal history isn't normal; my ancestry is apparently German, Irish, Italian, Welsh, Jewish, and a number of other cultures and identities, but I feel no connection to them beyond words because those histories and customs were not passed down to me...

So I would urge you to recognize that even white American culture is not a monolith. There are white Greek-Americans who celebrate Easter on a different day, in a different language, and with wholly different customs than you do. There are some white (passing/adjacent) Jews who have had multiple generations in America who don't speak English at home and are steadfastly opposed to assimilation. What you're identifying as the 'deracinated' white American identity (something I tend to associate most with Southern and Western Protestants) is only one way to be a white American. Even taking ethnic origins out of it, I grew up in a small town in New England and (for example) life in a white-majority Houston suburb seems extremely exotic to me. Things that seem normal to me seem exotic to other people: I've come across Reddit threads full of Brits dreaming of one day being able to visit a real American diner with coffee refills! Imagine, being able to pay for one cup of coffee and drink as much as you want!

So I would urge you to think more clearly about the kind of America you identify with - and perhaps what writing someone like you as "within" a culture might mean. How has your culture informed your life and narrative arc? (This is something that in my experience becomes much clearer when you travel a lot, either in the US or abroad...) What are things you take for granted that other people wouldn't?

What I'm saying here, really, is that understanding and depicting your own relationship with your culture is the best way to learn how to depict other people's relationship with their culture believably.

In the meantime, I've been unlearning the cultural values my white American suburban upbringing has instilled within me (perfectionism, either/or thinking, individualism, etc.), and I've made a habit of perceiving everything around me created and espoused in this context (ESPECIALLY fictional media) through that very specific cultural lens.

This struck me because it's clear you do recognize you have a culture - it's just one that you're ambivalent about having been raised in, and are possibly in the process of rejecting. Which is also an experience that can inform your characterization and help you to ensure that your depictions aren't stereotypical. People can have pride and knowledge about some parts of their culture and not others, this can change over their time, they can adopt new cultures (I am now British, Jewish and consider myself part of the LGBT community, which are all new identities to me, but no less real for that), and they can aim towards or away from assimilation. Sometimes both at once.

I find myself thinking of Blinded by the Light which is a film about a Pakistani-British boy who finds a strong sense of identity and meaning in the music of Bruce Springsteen - and sees similarities between his life in Luton and the very specific working-class New Jersey culture that Springsteen represents.

However I do hear and sympathize with a longing for culture of a kind you feel you don't have. Writing and reading are certainly a way of dealing with an exploring these questions. It may be that some of these stories, you really need to write - but they maybe are something that speaks to you personally rather than for sharing with others.

[beatrice_otter]

Everybody phrases things badly sometimes, and the internet makes it hard to figure out "did they mean that like it sounds or not?" if you don't know the person. Don't worry about it, you sparked an interesting discussion.

[yalovetz]

I very much agree with what yhlee says about everyone having a culture, including you. The fact that you don't recognise your own cultural defaults will make it very difficult for you to write meaningfully about other cultures.

Western cultures have a lot of emotional defaults that are very difficult to understand for people from other cultures and vice versa. To create characters who have rich emotional lives you need to know what your own emotional culture is, what assumptions you make about what emotional experiences are universal, how to break those assumptions down, and how to be open to the idea that emotional experiences that are very different from your own exist in the world.

I would recommend taking a look at the book Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions by Batja Mesquita if you're interested in learning more about this.

[octahedrite]

What I am going to say is going to be blunt and might offend you.

The way you write "cultural" characters sounds very heavy-handed and stereotypical. Like you're just sprinkling them in for flavour. "Details" to "implement"... Have you ever met a person from the cultures you're writing about? Real people are different from what you might assume based on what you read, watch, etc. People can't be reduced to trinkets or anecdata.

[octahedrite]

Talk about it with people IRL. Chatting over text on the internet won't help. For all you know I'm a dog.

[white_aster]

Others have very good suggestions, and I'll just expand a bit on one that resonated with me. I think you already get this, but a potential pitfall of creating characters to serve a particular goal, like you are here, is that it shows the author's hand too strongly and the readers notice and feel manipulated/author-splained to. That way can lie: "this character feels flat", "all I know about them is this one thing they like", "they think too much about their background and not enough about the plot happening around them", "they feel like a token [cultural adjective] character that only focuses on their [adjective]ness", "it feels like the author is using this character to Make A Point".

When working on characterization, all the aspects of a character, whether it be a part of their culture or a hobby or anything else, need to feel integrated into a whole, relatable person. This is subtly influenced both by what you show/tell as an author and by what you DON'T show. Yes, someone may be culturally influenced in a certain situation, but would they THINK about that? Would they notice? Would they (as I've seen some authors do) think for paragraphs about the historical, cultural, and familial reasons that they make an everyday decision? Because often the answer is no: your character is a person who is as immersed in their culture as you are in yours. They don't necessarily THINK about that, though, in the same way I don't internally monologue about my cultural and family history every time I call my mother. Things may come up, I may do the mental equivalent of "ugh, this is like that other time we didn't agree", but I won't rehash all of that to myself because I don't NEED to. It's just an incidental thought as I'm dealing with what's happening now. Likewise, if your plot is moving swiftly, then long introspection about a background can bring the momentum to a screeching halt.

It's a tricky path authors walk: how much detail is just enough, and how much comes across as artificial infodumping or virtue signaling by the author? This is a perennial issue with characterization, which I'm sure there's a lot of good general advice on, though unfortunately I can't think of any specific resources atm. But I'd recommend thinking on good characterization first and your goals about culture second.

Because my opinion is that if you do it right, the reader will never see how much you've focused on this: it'll just feel like a natural part of the characterization.

[mindways]

Something you touch on by saying "culture(s)", but which I haven't seen called out here, is that culture is intersectional. Not just in the obvious cases (like someone whose parents come from two very different cultures, or who moved from one country to another in the middle of their childhood) - even in a region with a strong, thriving, distinctive and generally-common culture there's going to be variation between locales, between different economic and social classes, between people who've lived through certain historical events and people who haven't, between families with their own idiosyncracies, etc.

All of us exist in multiple contexts (sometimes "at once", sometimes "in sequence"), and those contexts blend and layer together to make the cultures we absorb, or reject, or seek to change, or try to ignore.

Also, I agree with what others say about everyone having a culture. There's both a broad overarching white-American culture and many subcultures thereof, which interact with American cultures more tied to social or economic class, location, religion, etc. - an untidy, organic intersectionality. When you mention being raised "in a culture but not WITH a culture", do you mean something more like "my cultural heritage has never felt particularly important to me"?

[My context: I'm a white American of European heritage raised in an academic middle-class background; I don't have the perspective of an ethnic minority. I'm part of a couple non-obvious minority groups that affect both my relationship to American culture + how people who signifigantly partake of American culture may perceive me if I mention them rather than quietly passing.]

[yhlee]

This is a terrific point - random examples, but the experience of a queer Korean-American in the US is going to be different from the experience of a cis/het Korean-American only child having moved to Korea is going to be different from the experience of an affluent divorced Korean Christian woman is going to be different from the experience of an orphaned Korean Buddhist from a more "humble" socioeconomic background, and so on and so forth.

[jadelennox]

I agree totally with what everyone is saying, but also I want to put some emphasis on that it is valuable to reflect the complexity of backgrounds. It's just good to approach it from the "all people have culture, and all culture is a hodgepodge of where you live and who you are and your environment" end. I remember reading a book with a Welsh character who constantly said "Oh cariad" (italics in original) and learned to sing from his coal mining grandad, as opposed to being someone who loves, I dunno, Top Chef and Frasier, and roots for Swansea, and likes to eat McDonald's and has never eaten laverbread, but also has a recipe for bara brith that they think of as "my Nan's family recipe" but actually came off the back of a packet of flour in 1961. You know, just like you, I bet, but with the details changed.

I was very much raised in the presence of explicit Culture (my mother's nostalgia and affection for her home country's language patterns, books, television, and food; both my parents' ethno-religious minority culture, the related language my immigrant grandparents and my dad spoke, the very different related language I was taught to speak, the food and holidays and prayers and patterns of dress). I'm also a white American among white Americans; like all people, I contain multitudes. I've invited my family-of-choice into my Culture and I love to share my food and holidays with them. But as I often say to my partner when I gleefully tuck into a tomato sandwich or a bowl of cowpeas and creamed corn in the summer, or that ludicrous thanksgiving sweet potato casserole that's basically dessert, "thank you for introducing me to the delicious ethnic food of your people." It's all culture!

(Also, to tack onto other people's comments about cultures not being monoliths: my parents both come from the north eastern european, savoury corner or our ethnic group; my roommate's family comes from the central eastern european, sweet corner of our ethnic group, and I consider his family variants on some of our shared ethic cuisine to also be an exotic, tasty foreign food.)

Like your hypothetical Armenian kid, I am deeply nostalgic for some of my dad's music (which is already the American version of old country culture performed in my dad's generation for people nostalgic for their own parents' history, already many levels of meta away from anything pure). I'm also deeply nostalgic for remembering him read Christopher Robin poems to me, and watching cooking shows on PBS with him. My family was wholly and completely part of an ethnoreligious community; we went to religious school, we celebrated our holidays. But when my grandparents yelled in a mix of languages it was often just a mundane argument about traffic or prices; we celebrated thanksgiving just as much as our own holidays; we ate the food of the many (mostly, not entirely white) immigrant communities around us who were very different from us; my dad loved italian opera and my mum loved judy collins. People contain multitudes.

So yeah, do some of this (get own voices beta readers, obviously), but make sure that you're not just representing things that feel exotic to you, but also, I don't know, families with greek crust pizza, and eating fish on fridays, or an adoration of Rugby Union, or Nana's rice pudding recipe that actually came off the back of a Bird's Custard tin in 1952, or a large collection of Homestuck videos made to Umm Kulthum songs, or an embarassing great uncle who does Revolutionary War reenactments on summer sundays; or a family tradition of watching the Kentucky Derby together because your mom misses exactly one thing about growing up in Kentucky.