In the Apex flash fiction contest, for the month of November, we read stories rising from the theme of ‘Folklore.’ While we received an abundance written from international perspectives, with daring, bold prose, the pile contained many that belonged to the theme of ‘myth’—evidently, a slight confusion existed between what is myth and what is folklore. This confusion carried out to the slush reading team as well—on the Discord server, we began a long conversation, welcoming perspectives from readers and writers outside the Anglo sphere, about the differences between myth and folklore, what type of stories we wanted to see in November, and how we could be fully equipped to critique and appreciate non-Western and non-traditional storytelling. Leaving aside the argument that we want the stories we choose to be a perfect fit for Apex (strange, surreal, shocking and beautiful,) the confusion between myth and folklore stirred another conversation, a much more important one, that brings to the surface the hurdles many ESL/EFL writers face in order to get published by writing stories inspired by their own heritage. Unfortunately, for many of us, a blueprint exists that we must follow to be understood: narrative patterns and expectations based not on our own experiences and storytelling traditions, but rather, on the distorted understanding of our culture by the Anglo-American world.
For the sake of brevity, and because I do not wish to address topics I am not well-versed in, the following essay will focus on the struggles of South and Eastern European international authors, highlighting the truth about classical antiquity myth-borrowing through an examination of intellectual colonialism and the hybridity of folklore among Balkan and Slavic peoples. I will focus extensively on Greek heritage, as I am Greek myself, but my goal is to amplify the South and East European experience as a multicultural melting pot of identities that cannot possibly fit within the expectations of Anglo-American publishing standards.
While reading about our experiences as authors from those nations, I invite you to remember one of the most well-known British staple foods: tikka masala, the popular fusion dish, co-opted to fit the colonizer’s palette. What has happened with our own stories and culture does not vastly differ from the assimilation and appropriation techniques British sociopolitics have employed for centuries on the people whose lands they colonized.
If, after reading this, I convince you of the intricate and timeless ways:
- South and Eastern European writers are still excluded from the Anglophone publishing industry
- a diluted understanding of international myth and folklore, as rewritten by Anglophone imperialism, is still served into one perfectly curated single-course meal for the vast readership,
I will have effectively communicated what has been on my mind and on the minds of my fellow ESL and EFL writer friends from or living in South and Eastern European nations.
I will have to step on some toes with this essay, especially since I will be using a lot of ‘Anglo’ this and that in my writing, but my aim is to celebrate cultural diversity and resist the false idea of European homogeneity. Intellectual colonialism is a serious topic that hasn’t been addressed enough and still distorts the truth about specific heritages.
Let’s start digging into the rabbit hole together.
The contemporary publishing scene, which includes written fiction and poetry published after the second half of the 2000s, steadily amplifies underrepresented voices, offering a variety of reading choices and raising awareness of life experiences outside the status quo. Own voices, LGBTQIA+, and immigration stories are finally on the rise; from the queer body horror of Andrew Joseph White (All Hell Followed With Us, You Were Never Meant to be Human) to Tracy Deonn's well-thought-out deconstruction of white hegemony and systemic racism (Legendborn) and to Ai Jiang's imaginative tales about being an immigrant in a host country (A Palace Near the Wind, "Give Me English," Linghun), the short and the long-form industry embraced rebellious storytelling, art that fights the patriarchy, colonialism, and heteronormativity; fiction that rejects traditional gender binaries and even showcases the reality of being neurodivergent. Books, and in general, pop culture, are on their way to exposing what lies behind the closed doors of corrupted sociopolitics, and readers, with the help of social media, shape publishing trends by pushing for similar storytelling. More action must be taken, and we must still push for better and more inclusive representation , but one could indeed argue that we live in the golden era of ‘intersectional publishing’ and that the long-standing elitist gates have finally liquefied—every writer, regardless of background, has a place in the industry.
Yet, in this alleged publishing pluralism, only so much myth and folklore written by international authors can be recognized as ‘own voices’ and indeed be noticed and picked up by notable houses. Please bear with me now as I take a short dive into global dynamics; pinky promise, it won’t take too long.
It is a known fact that the British Empire, at its height, expanded and colonized peoples and lands on every continent—it is a lesser-known fact that it also intellectually colonized other countries, stealing bits and parts of their heritage and history in its attempt to establish and cultivate the fantasy of the omnipotent and omniscient colonizer. As a born-and-raised Greek, the most famous proof I grew up with is the illegal removal of the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum, along with a plethora of invaluable historic items belonging to Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Wales, Sudan, China, and Easter Island.
Raise this issue among international writers whose culture has been stolen and intellectually bastardized in pop culture, and you will immediately address their shared feeling of being ostracized. Why? Put simply, the Anglophone publishing scene, and by extension the Anglophone world, treats myths coming from Greece, Italy, Egypt, Germany, or even Scandinavia, as its own. This heritage is theirs to write, and as such, the market is filled with retellings that do not truly pay attention to the authentic material and its intricacies—rather, they follow the standards of Westernized storytelling, completely erasing the nuances and differences found in the original texts. In some popular adaptations that shape the characters’ overall perception, Achilles is portrayed only as a love-struck man, and Hera only as an obsessively jealous hag. And don’t get me started on every single Homericfilm that doesn’t put Greek actors as its main cast. Or, the most poignant disappointment a Greek writer will face: anthologies of Greek retellings with no Greek authors in their table of contents. And I am extremely confident that if I raise these issues with German writers, they will nod in agreement because German folklore is, first and foremost, Western folklore. Everybody can write it, so what else do German authors have to offer?
But that is not all. Where Greece and the aforementioned countries are viewed as having glorious and heroic pasts to be usurped, several other parts of Europe that have long stirred the imagination of the Anglo-American audience have become uncanny valleys–their folklore excites and scares, and provides fertile ground for the Anglo-shaped thought to steal and usurp. Admittedly, the label ‘Slavic’ has dominated the scene, Baba Yaga its queen, and Russian folklore at the center of all, a condition that completely negates that folklore in Europe, especially in the central and eastern regions, oscillates between different versions, defying country boundaries. It has always been alive and will never cease to evolve, bearing in mind all that has been said and written from generations past and surrounding regions. Not all ‘Slavic’ folklore is Russian and when reading a book that is inspired by ‘Slavic’ lore readers shouldn’t expect that it takes place only in Russia.
Allow me to illustrate by using an example from the Balkan folklore I grew up with. In Greek oral tradition, the vampire, or ‘vrykolakas’, is an undead creature that continues to live among humans so long as it steals bread from its neighbors and sleeps in its tomb every Saturday. Keep in mind that all analyses of monsters should come with the specific context in which the monster lore was born. For Greeks, folklore was undeniably shaped during the Ottoman Occupation (15th-19th AC), and many of our monsters, including the vampire, personify the fear towards the occupier. But let me reiterate. The Greek word ‘vrykolakas’ comes from the Bulgarian varkolak, which describes a werewolf-type vampire, or the Russian wurdulak, which adds the trait of consuming your loved ones’ blood. The Greek concept of the vampire, nonetheless, stays away from blood consumption and is more connected to the upiór: a being not only in Slavic but also inTurkic folklore, a creature that epitomizes the prototype of the vampire: extremely strong, harassing people at night, and visiting its family out of longing. Christian fears add to the fantasy: not being buried properly or children dying unchristened would forge upiórs into life.
The Balkan peninsula is a big and weird place with all its traditions and intricate dynamics and national trauma, but above all, it is a culturally diverse region that highlights the intimate exchange of knowledge, tradition, and practices among people, a literal cornucopia of Albanian, Bosnian, Herzegovinian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek, Kosovan, Montenegrin, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian heritage which seamlessly blends with Illyrian, Ottoman, Byzantine, and even Slavic and Roman myth and culture. To directly quote Jelena Dunato (Dark Woods, Deep Water, Love Lethal, Death Divine): “depicting us all as a village of unwashed peasants in sheepskin munching on garlic and crying about the upyr/vampir is… a choice. The film industry makes it more often than its publishing counterpart, but still…”
At this point, I believe it is important that I clarify, based on my own understanding and research as a Greek EFL writer, the differences between myth and folklore, as this has been the driving force of the essay all along, a seedling of a thought for days while in the deep trenches of slushing for Apex in November.
Myths revolve around the world and natural phenomena, showcasing how people use them to explain fundamental and universal truths. Folklore encompasses traditions, customs, and people’s beliefs about the mundane world. Myths have gods; folklore has fairies, ghosts, and werewolves. Even if folklore is a broader term that could seemingly encompass myths, the two differ in scope. Myths refer to the world as a whole; folklore might come from a specific village or region, or a group of people. Yes, they are connected because both are made by humans, but folklore is much more closely tied to people's everyday experiences as they navigate power structures and the sociopolitical system.
So, my question for you, dear reader, is the following:
How can we be educated about the nuances of other cultures and histories if the audience has been served, transhistorically, a watered-down version of stolen mythologies and folklore, work produced almost always by people who have never lived, experienced firsthand, or are somehow part of the cultural material they are inspired by?
This ‘heritage laundering,’ dating back to the origins and connecting points of colonialism, nationalism, and capitalism, and the selective elevation of international voices, naturally gives birth to vagueness as to how myth differs from folklore and the ways readers worldwide can truly appreciate offbeat stories that challenge the well-worn and Westernized notion of ‘story.’ Put simply, because international storytelling has never been appropriate enough for the palate of the powers-that-be, the publishing scene, (ever since its beginning, roughly a hundred and fifty years before the first successful British colony in Jamestown, Virginia) this white and Anglo-owned scene, has been co-opting our stories, cooking and serving different ‘Tikka-Masalas’ to the audience, falsely representing heritages, solidifying the idea that non-Western countries are tantamount to WOW factors, worthy of exploitation. It has held back, and still does, many writers’ locally made, handpicked-ingredient cooking. Add to the aforementioned, the heavy linguistic cross ESL and EFL writers must bear—since our own mindset and life experiences are shaped by our mother tongue, it is wrongly assumed that we do not have a good grasp of the language we write in or that our stories are too ‘foreign’ for the Western tastes—and you create the perfect recipe for a culinary catastrophe.
At this point, I’m obliged to make this short side note for the purposes of avoiding any misunderstandings. I am not arguing against people writing inspired by my own culture. Fellow Greek writer, editor and friend, Danai Christopoulou, in her BSFA-nominated essay ‘These Marbles Were Never White’ published by khōréō, successfully points out, “you don’t have to be of a certain cultural heritage to explore said heritage through art. If anything, we only get richer when BIPOC authors write their versions of Greek retellings. [...] Although granted, when working on Greek myth retellings, or any retellings, it helps to have at least some consultants with genuine interest in that culture.” And I completely agree. Ancient Greek myth is a fantastic source material, and if treated with care, if not stripped bare of what makes it truly ‘Greek,’ which is definitely not a flashy trident or a sexy Odysseus, if reimagined with respect for the original source, if communicated with sensitivity readers, I would gladly read and support such work. Danai continues, “western civilization has always had an entitlement when it comes to Greek myths, culture, and architecture; it has consistently used and whitewashed our culture [...] Nolan casting Zendaya and Lupita Nyong’o in The Odyssey is not what’s offensive; not involving a single Greek actor in the whole $250 million production is. Not only because BIPOC Greek people very much exist, but also because ‘Greekness’ (however nebulous the term) was never equated with “whiteness” until the West took an interest in it.” And these are the reasons why the media world consistently does not create more space for authors whose culture has been whitewashed and distorted into Hollywood and best-seller fantasies–it’s how Western hegemonic and imperialist thought and budget is accommodated. Our own stories are ultimately there to be taken because they generate more profit, inspired by a past the Anglo world has usurped and mutated. Doesn’t intellectual colonialism work oh-so-well?
Returning to my earlier points and further fleshing them out: how can I write stories inspired by my country’s myth if publishers’ guidelines or agents’ wishlists exclude such fiction on the grounds of oversaturation? What do I have to do to convince you that more than Kronos, Aphrodite, and Hercules are part of my culture, and that several interpretations of vampire and fairy stories, different versions of the Boogey-Men, can be Greek too? I am not allowed to write stories inspired by Greek myth because everybody else has been doing it in the Anglo-American world for years. What can I offer? If I write a piece of work that tackles folklore, then it is not ‘clear enough’ as to what I wish to say. And if I ditch all folklore and write a story set in London that features aliens, then my chances of publication diminish because I am expected to write something Greek.
In her fantastic essay “What Does Slavic Fantasy Even Mean?” published on the SFWA blog, Jelena Dunato aptly observes, “we—the diverse, the exotic, the alien—are expected to write stories rooted in our cultures. I can’t publish a book about life in New York because it won’t be authentic. But bookshelves are already stacked with badly researched stories about other cultures written by Anglo-American writers, and endorsed by the industry. When writers from those cultures knock on publishers’ doors with their stories, they learn that the market is oversaturated.”
P.H Low in their personal and insightful essay, “Missing Mythologies: On Westernization in Diasporic Storytelling,” published by Ruadán Books, raises awareness about the displacement of AAPI experiences in writing and the need to follow specific imperatives to accord with the industry’s expectations of diasporic voices. Even if this is not the point of my essay, the arguments raised terribly remind me of the systemic erasure of South and East European voices from the scene. Low writes,“I love that BIPOC and diaspora authors can reclaim the stories of their homeland; that I can walk into a library or a Barnes & Noble and see their work on shelves. These are only the kinds of stories that get published, or acclaimed, from people who look like me. That these are the selling points we have been given, the reasons found for why our stories were worth acquiring in the first place.”
The fact that one country is well-known for its myths does not equal the erasure of its folklore, and vice versa. And this fact should not signify that an author cannot write about topics that do not traditionally connect to their country’s heritage. All ESL and EFL authors ask is to let us cook. Down that raki or Spezi, pick up your simit, ciabatta, or bukë shtëpie, and enjoy what we will brew and bake for you.