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span class="inline inline-left">About two years ago, an American woman — let’s call her Alma — who had been living in Bali for a couple of years came up to me at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival and asked whether we could have a quick chat. I was a bit suspicious of her tone, and the seriousness embedded in what appeared to be a perfectly light, friendly request.

Alma introduced herself as a writer. Then she introduced her next book, and in that second introduction was the point of the whole chat: “I’m currently writing a novel set in Indonesia, and the protagonist is Acehnese — and I’m afraid I might get some of the details and emotions wrong. What do you think I should do? Do you know anyone I can reach out to?”

Oh God, I thought. Immediately, I conjured up the following images: she will take that story back to the US or the UK or Europe and everyone will brand it as an exotic, tender and explosive work and they will have no choice but to publish it. Then she will sell millions and millions of copies. Then she will be crowned an expert on Indonesia and the Indonesian way of life. And on and on and on.

Meanwhile, Indonesian writers who write on the same subject will never get their story published anywhere outside the country — or region — because ... oh, take your pick: our English is not good enough, or our use of the local language cannot be translated into proper English, or there aren’t enough translators who are willing to take on such a Sisyphean task for mere pennies, or worse: because the heart of our stories does not have the sort of universal appeal that can cross borders and cultures.

These things weigh heavily in the minds of most writers of color anywhere in the world. While it is incorrect to consider ourselves as minorities (Asia itself is home to more than 60 percent of the world’s population) there is something to be said about the fact that our stories, or at least the stories that do get around, are told by someone else, presumably, and mostly, white.

In her 2009 TEDx speech, a celebrated Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, warned the audience of “the danger of a single story”.

She opened the speech with a childhood episode of learning how to write, and how she had populated her early stories with characters who looked nothing like herself.

“I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading,” she said. “All my characters were white and blue-eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples. And they talked a lot about the weather: how lovely it was that the sun had come out.”

She cited Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart — who was, and still is, perceived as “the Father of African literature” — as someone who brought instrumental change in the way Africans tell their own story, including herself.

“Discovering African literature saved me from having a single story of what books are,” said Chimamanda.

Telling stories is the only form of communication that has enough lasting and driving power to change our perception and build our empathy. Though there is a downside: stories — once they’re out there — are resistant to change.

Especially, stories of the mighty and the weak. The haves and have-nots. The rulers and those who (used to) serve under them.

Whether you want to admit it or not, colonialism has left an indelible print on the way people of color think and tell our own stories. The trail of its repercussions is something we continue to discover, again and again, both to our fascination and dismay.

Recently, at Brisbane Writers Festival, Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, who branded herself as a “renowned iconoclast”, delivered a keynote speech in which she motioned for the idea and broad implementation of cultural appropriation (the adoption or use of one culture without permission by members of another culture) to be abolished entirely from the arts and creative industry because it limits the imagination and undermines the creative prowess of its creators and curators.

“What strikes me about [the definition of cultural appropriation] is that ‘without permission bit’. How are we fiction writers to seek ‘permission’ to use a character from another race or culture, or to employ the vernacular of a group to which we don’t belong? Do we set up a stand on the corner and approach passers-by with a clipboard, getting signatures that grant limited rights to employ an Indonesian character in Chapter Twelve, the way political volunteers get a candidate on the ballot?”

And then she railed against identity politics.

“Being Asian is not an identity,” she said. “Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived.”

This, and many other parts of her speech, caused so much controversy people were walking out of the keynote address before she had managed to get to the end of it.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese-born mechanical engineer, writer and activist, was the first to write about the experience of walking out of the speech (that same night) and have it published in The Guardian, which, of course, broke the internet right away.

The discussions that were ignited by the initial debate about cultural appropriation and identity politics and the access that came with or without it were interesting. And important. Because it can only happen now, in a world where transnationalism is a thing and cultural roots have been replanted so many times you can barely recognize the elements in its cross sections.

(If you’re curious to know more about the debate, don’t be lazy: Google it.)

Now I see that what I had felt when Alma told me the story of her book was petty jealousy, born out of the sort of perception that was unfair and greatly biased, but also one we — people of color — are constantly basked in the shadow of, and one which Lionel Shriver never bothered to address as she derided her audience with a self-righteous speech about how the arts and creative industry are, and should be, color-blind by default.

In an ideal world, maybe. In this world, though, the color of your skin often becomes the only hue you can color your story with; the box you are cornered into against your will — the glass ceiling that no one, while walking on it, wants to acknowledge.

“Write your own story,” a literary journal editor once wrote to me, after rejecting my story. “Something that speaks to your culture and concerns. We’d like to see more of that.”

Still, I am all for writers breaking boundaries. Crossing borders. Trying on different skins, if that means it helps them convey their stories truthfully and with respect to the people whose identities they borrow. It was courageous of Alma to have shared with me her concerns; and her fears — in many ways — of getting the details and emotional truth wrong represented the glint that came from the bouncing of light across the glass ceiling. Right there was the acknowledgement of privilege.

I hope she’s finished her book. And that it does well in the market.