There's a book called Blood and Chocolate that I really hate. It's about a werewolf who falls in love with a human, and is torn between human and werewolf cultures. Both groups come across as callous, selfish, and pointlessly cruel, but the werewolf and the human seem apart from all that, and it feels like they might be able to build a connection that's neither human nor werewolf. Then the human tries to murder the werewolf, and the werewolf concludes that humans will never accept her, so she embraces werewolf culture and ends up together with another werewolf.

There's a manga called Karin that I really hate. It's about a vampire who falls in love with a human, and is torn between human and vampire cultures. The vampires come across as selfish, exploiting humans with no regard for the harm they do, but the vampire protagonist seems apart from all that. In fact, she's so apart from all that, she's exiled and will never be allowed to see her family again. She's too human to be allowed to exist in their culture--or rather, their culture is too unbreakingly vampire to allow for someone who doesn't exploit humans.

There's a book called Native Speaker that I really hate. It's about a Korean who falls in love with an American, and is torn between Korean and American cultures. You can already guess where this is going.

I agree with L.B. Lee's recent post, but I take it in a very different direction. Yes, "white" isn't actually a culture of its own. Yes, it separates people from their actual ancestry. That's what's so great about it, because whiteness is so much easier to defy! The more generations of ancestors you have yelling in your ear, telling you that your mere existence is unacceptable, the more likely you are to cut off little bits of yourself in order to conform. If there's one thing I want for this world, it's for all culture to become as defanged and impotent as whiteness.

(Maybe this is why I keep coming back to the idea of the 1950s. The conception of America the family, hand in hand with the idea of black people, foreigners, Catholics, and anyone gender non-conforming as outsiders and enemies. Is there a way to have one without the other? To have a truly universal human family where no one is left out? I don't know, but it seems like the best I can hope for.)