Leslie Karst: Appropriation or Appreciation?

LUCY BURDETTE: I love Leslie Karst's culinary mysteries and so I'm thrilled that there's a new one coming very soon and I have it ordered. If you love food and mysteries, these are for you too. However, today she has a confession to share with her readers...and us...

LESLIE KARST: 

Buon giorno, tutti! I write the Sally Solari culinary mysteries, set in the beautiful beach town of Santa Cruz, California. My protagonist is descended from one of the original Italian fishermen who arrived in Santa Cruz from Liguria in the 1890s, and her father is fiercely proud of Solari’s, the family’s traditional Italian seafood restaurant out on the hundred-year-old wharf.

house-made pasta with clams

But although Sally practically grew up in the kitchen of her dad’s old-school restaurant, she is also sympathetic to the “food revolution” that has recently descended upon the town’s surprised old-timers. And when she inherits her aunt’s trendy restaurant, Gauguin, the dynamic between Sally and her father—hurt that his daughter no longer wants to work at Solari’s and convinced she now looks down on her family heritage—grows tense.

From all this, you may well surmise that, like Sally, I am also of Italian heritage—and many of my readers, and friends, do in fact assume this to be true. After all, I write about an Italian American family, I speak some Italian, and I have the olive complexion and (once-)brown hair of una vera Italiana. Indeed, I myself had always assumed I had, if not Italian, at least some sort of Mediterranean blood running through my veins.

But the sad truth is that I recently had my DNA test done, only to discover that, alas, I possess no Italian—or Mediterranean—ancestors whatsoever. Così triste!

Santa Cruz artichokes

So what does that mean to me, as an author of these stories about an Italian American family?

There’s been much discussion of late about “cultural appropriation” in literature, the idea that writers shouldn’t create characters with cultural or ethnic attributes different from their own. In other words, the argument goes, a young man of European descent who’s lived his entire life in Vermont has no business making his protagonist an elderly, Kenyan woman. The problem, of course, is that taken to its logical extreme, this would mean that women couldn’t write about men, gays couldn’t write about straights, and the wealthy could not write about the poor. And where would that leave us authors of fiction?

But I do get the concern. When you try to create stories about cultures far different from your own, it’s easy to fall into the trap of false stereo-types and tropes. But the key word here is “easy.” Yes, it can be easy to slide into cliché, but that’s not because of the attempt to write about another culture; that’s because of bad writing.

espresso—the writer’s friend

It seems to me that the key to being respectful in one’s writing is to do your best to truly understand your subject and your characters. Which doesn’t mean you can’t create a Japanese side-kick if you’re from New York City. But if you’re not familiar with the culture you better damn well do your homework first: hang out with some Japanese or spend time in the country; study the language; read books written by Japanese authors.

In my case, I’m not actually all that different from my protagonist, who is a fourth-generation Italian and thus relatively far-removed from her ancestral roots. Nevertheless, Sally’s culture is unlike mine in significant ways: she’s twenty years younger than me, was raised Catholic, and has older relatives who are still very much “Italian” in their sense of identity.

from the New World yet so very Italian

Yet I feel comfortable about writing the character. I’ve lived in Santa Cruz for over forty years and have known numerous members of the Italian American community, some quite well. And I do my research: reading oral histories of the old-time fishermen, interviewing the guys who operate the davits (boat cranes) out on the wharf, researching the cuisine the Ligurians brought with them to California, and, of course—the very best part—sampling myriad dishes at my local Italian restaurants!

Solari’s Linguine with Clam Sauce

But most importantly, I have profound respect and affection for the community, whose vital contributions have helped make our town the special place it is. And if I can bring a sense of that vibrant community to life on the page so that others may learn something of the history and culture of my beloved Santa Cruz, then I am content.

What about you? Readers: How do you feel about characters who are culturally different than their creators? And authors: What do you think of the issue of “cultural appropriation”?

About Death al Fresco

It’s early autumn in Santa Cruz and restaurateur Sally Solari, inspired by the eye-popping canvases of Paul Gauguin, the artist for whom her restaurant is named, enrolls in a plein air painting class. But the beauty of the Monterey Bay coastline is shattered during one of their outings when Sally’s dog sniffs out a corpse entangled in a pile of kelp.

The body is identified as Gino, a local fisherman and a regular at Sally’s father’s restaurant, Solari's, until he disappeared after dining there a few nights before. But after witnesses claim he left reeling drunk, fingers begin to point at Sally’s dad for negligently allowing the old man to walk home alone at night. From a long menu of suspects, including a cast of colorful characters who frequent the historic Santa Cruz fisherman’s wharf, Sally must serve up a tall order in order to clear her father’s name.

The daughter of a law professor and a potter, Leslie Karst learned early, during family dinner conversations, the value of both careful analysis and the arts—ideal ingredients for a mystery story. She now writes the Sally Solari Mysteries (Dying for a Taste, A Measure of Murder), a culinary series set in Santa Cruz, California. An ex-lawyer like her sleuth, Leslie also has degrees in English literature and the culinary arts. The next in the series, Death al Fresco, releases March 13^th.

You can visit Leslie on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lesliekarstauthor/ , and you can go to her author website  to sign for her newsletter—full of recipes and fun Italian facts!—and to purchase all her books.