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• Denise Roman

  I have recently invited Mr. Michael Manske to my newly created blog (www.mariadracula.blogspot.com), where Eastern European and other Diasporic authors may post their experiences about their lives in both the old and the new worlds.

  Although he rejected my invitation, I take it that his revealing of the formulaic species existent within a certain kind of journalism about other countries is a valid one.

  I draw on my experience with Romania and the various stereotyped (positive or negative) portrayals it gets in the academic world. The stereotypes vary from Western Europe to North America in both tone and charge. Sometimes they’re fun (“Dracula’s country,” which in fact inspired me to write my book and call my blog), other times they’re discouraging (“backward” country).

  Hopefully, readers will find interesting books on Amazon.com about Romania’s cuisine, or even dare–like Michael Manske is doing with Slovenia–to step into its not-so-cold waters.

  6 February 2006, 12:26 pm

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