Love Not Life: A confusing Confudlement!

I was going to talk about Aya life in Yop City but I ended up reading Aya Love in Yop City because the library has it cataloged wrong. I should have read the spine of the book because the front of the book was covered buy a sticker and I didn't read it closely enough.

Because of this I want to talk about Aya Love in Yop City. Hopefully because they are both text from the same culture it will count.

One of the things love in Yop City does to show that it is for an audience outside of Cote d Ivoire, is introduces to a character named Innocent. He arrives in Paris and instantly you start to see the cultural differences and his struggle with learning new social norms. There is a scene in the novel where he is trying to catch pigeons for food and freaks out an old lady who keeps calling for the police. Not knowing the people in France don't eat City pigeons. It can also be seen at the beginning of the novel the difficulty and learning directions in a new environment. The novel can flash Forward back and forth between different characters, some still in Yop City and others in France. It uses he's changing perspectives to show the difference between cultures. It does a very good job of explaining those cultural differences as well most of the time.

I don't really think there is a artists responsibilities two other cultures. I believe what's really important is that they tell a good story and represent their own culture and the way they want it to be seen. I'd say it's more the readers responsibility to look up things they don't understand in order to better immerse themselves in another culture. Sometimes it doesn't involve any research but rather the ability to step back and look at it from a different perspective. Like for instance when he was trying to eat the pigeons in the park. To readers outside of that culture it may seem strange to eat City pigeons, however if we take a step back and look at it from a logical perspective they are walking free food that doesn't put up a fight.

In countries where there is greater economic duress or severe poverty it wouldn't make sense not to eat the pigeons. Also vice versa innocent, when trying to eat the pigeons, is used to an environment that is less polluted and therefore unlikely to have poisonous pigeons. Strangely enough, when I change my perspectives, I find it not hard to connect and understand various cultures. After all, cultural habits and beliefs are a result of people's individual environments. Understanding the location, history, and hardships of a location can give a great number of clues to why people believe or act in certain ways. Now that is not to say that it accounts for all things found in a culture but it does count for a great number of things.

Well thank you all for reading.

That's all I have for now.