Global Cultures

Travel, Photos, and ‘Poverty Porn’: A Tourist’s Dilemma

Tweet Another poignant post from Stephanie Finigan. Stephanie is a graduate student, frequent traveler, and a remarkably untalented photographer. You can follow her on Twitter at @StephFini. We have just passed the six-month mark since the United Nations declared that Somalia has officially fallen into famine. The news media was flooded – as it was [...]

February 13, 2012 CONTINUE READING →

Compassion is Human Business

Tweet Cultures, religions, people and places hold various norms and truths – a natural human need and behavior to bridge belonging and identity. One of my favorite quotes seems apropos today. It’s a small but important reminder that holds true across all groups and definitions: Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it [...]

September 11, 2011 CONTINUE READING →

Finding Places In Books

Tweet This is a guest post written by independent writer and journalist Priyanka Sacheti. Growing up in Sultanate of Oman and studying in an international school, I would find myself encountering with great interest and curiosity between pages of books about those cultures vastly different to the cultural universe that I happened to inhabit. During [...]

January 21, 2011 CONTINUE READING →

70 Ways To Say Merry Christmas

Tweet This morning, we were watching the footage of millions of people around the world descending on Jerusalem for the Christmas season. The reporters interviewed a woman from Georgia (Russia), the U.S., Nigeria and the Philippines, asking them how to say “Merry Christmas” in their language. My family and I started quizzing each other to [...]

December 25, 2010 CONTINUE READING →

(w)Here In The World: Barcelona’s Brilliance On Thanksgiving

Tweet Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. – Maya Angelou I spent this past Thanksgiving in Barcelona – my fifth year in a row abroad on [...]

December 8, 2010 CONTINUE READING →

Book Review: The Other Boleyn Girl

Tweet While I usually proactively seek out historical fiction like a mad woman, this time was different. Choosing to read The Other Boleyn Girl was a result of simply being book-less and in desperate need of a quality solution. I was at the airport on my way to Grand Cayman about six years ago. Historical [...]

October 30, 2010 CONTINUE READING →

The Heart’s Cultural Divide

Tweet This is a guest post from poet and literary fiction writer, Cheryl Snell. You can read more from Cheryl on her blog. When I first began writing my multi-cultural novels, I wanted to explore the stage of life Indians call samsara, and how it affects characters caught in a culture-clash. I liked the sibilance [...]

October 5, 2010 CONTINUE READING →