Plumbing the hivemind!

[oyceter]

1) So... does anyone have examples of sf/f books with third-culture kids, or anything resembling a third-culture kid?

A third-culture kid is basically someone who is born into one culture, raised in another, and then returns to the first culture or moves on to different cultures, thereby creating a "third culture" that is a mixture of the first two. Or something. The difference between a third-culture kid and an immigrant seems to be that last step of returning to the "original" culture and finding it foreign as well.

My one example so far is Temeraire, and that's a sort-of example.

2) Also, any examples of movies in which a white man goes into a non-white culture and saves it or somehow one-ups it? Or basically, movies set in non-white civilizations that still end up focusing on the white guy.

My current list:
- Last Samurai
- Dances with Wolves
- Kingdom of Heaven
- Glory
- Cry Freedom
- Blood Diamond
- Constant Gardener
- Geronimo
- The Last King of Scotland (critique + example of trope? Haven't seen it)
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (from current casting reports)
- Wind Talkers

Comments

[rilina.livejournal.com]

1) Harry Potter and Cor in C. S. Lewis's _The Horse and His Boy_ (which is problematic for so very many reasons) should be examples, but they don't really work because they're both raised in ignorance. But possibly relevant to your discussion? They both have to a certain degree an idea of the return as homecoming, or the return as something somewhat idealized, which I am not very comfortable with. Perhaps also in this category: Candy Quackenbush in the Abarat books.

2) These are probably borderline, but possibly still relevant to any discussion: South Pacific; Lost in Translation; Lawrence of Arabia.

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

1) I was thinking of HP the other way 'round: he starts in mundane culture, then moves to the wizard culture, and returns to the mundane culture to find himself even more out-of-place than he previously had been.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Heh, I just realized that Echizen Ryoma in Prince of Tennis is totally a third-culture kid, though that's not an sf/f story. Unless you want to count the cracktastic magic tennis as fantasy.

I guess Carrot Ironfoundersson from Pratchett's Discworld novels doesn't really work for the same reasons as Harry Potter and Cor.

[oyceter]

1) Huh! I think I don't quite think of Harry as a TCK, largely because it's played more as a "return from exile" type story, and you never really get the sense that he'll go back to the first culture. He mostly seems to be fairly content to totally ditch it. He reads to me more like an immigrant?

Hermione on the other hand could be a TCK -- she has to balance both worlds, and she's disadvantaged in both ("Mudblood" and ... um... ok, maybe in one. But in her chosen world).