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Have you ever tried explaining to a foreigner how good durian is? Or about the mouth-watering smell of salted fish frying in a pan? Even as I say this, I know that it is easy for you to imagine someone wrinkling their nose as you brought out these delicacies for them to try.
Every culture has a dish that could only be described as an acquired taste. The Europeans have their blue cheese, we in Malaysia have our cencaluk and a wide variety of delicious fermented food.
Even between generations we have our differences. The modern idea of beautiful teeth is pearly white. Once upon a time betel-stained teeth was considered good, even cultured. Iban lovers used to help each other stain their teeth black with soot and resin.
Find Common Ground Via Emotions
You have an idea for a historical fiction, or historical fantasy that is just absolutely romantic. Except that the lifestyle, food and ritual practices are just a tad shocking. It does not feel right though, to change the physical looks and lifestyle of your protagonist just because you don't want to gross out your modern reader. Or worse still, make them judge against your heroic character. So how do you persuade a reader that the smell of fermenting food will make their mouth water? Or that a headband made of musky civet-cat skin is alluring? You can't and you should not try.
You should instead help them understand the character's point of view of all these objectionable things by detailing the character's reaction. Don't focus on how strong the food smell, write about how much your character enjoy biting into the sour and salty meat in the company of his friends. Instead of detailing the fresh strong musk coming off a headband, mention how heady the scent makes your hero feel each time he sits close to the woman of his dreams. Contentment and desire are feelings that any reader can understand, no matter how strange they think your culture is.
You can also use the same technique for something good that you need to express as bad. Everybody knows that terror is a sign of danger. So if you focus on a character's terror, you will not need to explain why the fragrant frangipani flower or a swaying banana tree in the dead of night is frightening. For readers who are familiar with the pontianak, they will know which monster you are implying. And for those who are not familiar, they will still expect a monster because that is what their culture has conditioned them to expect.
Use A Comparable Symbol
But what about objects like the human skull or other gruesome trophies. Headhunting is no longer an acceptable practice in Sarawak both in the legal and cultural sense, but heroes in our oral history were headhunters. So it would be deceitful of me to create a pacifist hero. It was, after all, how life was like in the past. So how did I explain to my reader that my hero is right to be headhunting?
I related the idea of owning the human skull with a common and well known symbol, the lucky charm. In Iban Dream, the trophy heads brought luck to farming. In Iban Journey, the heads were protectors for the longhouse. In this way, I am not making my reader accept the practice of headhunting, I am helping them understand why it happened and why it was important.
Of course, not all practices are bad. For example, an Iban girl cannot marry until she has woven a skirt on her own for the first time. Even the most skillful girl would be at least fifteen before she could achieve this. In this case, I did not have to compare the practice with anything modern because the idea is already acceptable.
Own It
How about practices that were once used against our people to degrade us? The way we dress was the most common method of putting us down. In the past, both Iban men and women were bare-chested in their daily life. This was just a practical way of living in the equatorial heat. The female breast was not a sexual symbol until outside influence started to come in.
If you have something similar in your culture, just own it. The shame was pressed on our people by others who have a nudity fetish. If you think about it, the other extreme is also being called backward because they are over-dressed. We are all different. Accept it in your writing; accept it in your art.
You do want to own it, but you worry that it will end up being sexualised or sensasionalised. In the case of Iban Dream, I mentioned women being bare chested once or twice, just to establish how people used to dress in the past. Then I don't write about it anymore. Books are not sight based. Readers can only imagine what your words are focused on. So if you don't focus on it obsessively, neither will your readers.
Don't Justify. Explain.
Don't try to justify anything, just explained it as it was. You do not have to embellish your ancestors' lifestyle or way of dressing. There is no need to try to make them more mainstream or "civilised". A good storyteller knows that great stories are ones that are about the human spirit.
They are not based on how someone dresses, or how someone talks or how mainstream someone's physique is. Great stories are about what someone does when he faces the greatest adversity of his life. What do you do when a demon tries to kill you? What do you do when a god claims your life? What would a hero in your culture do? Focus on that.
Start writing. Keep writing. Good Luck.
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