my baby's in the white fluffy clouds

Orientalism belongs to the rather large category of valuable books that I should read again, since my first reading only gave me a superficial understanding of its subject. But one valuable (and, in retrospect, not very obvious) insight gleaned is that, no, having an intimate (and even life-long) involvement with a foreign culture does not mean that you will shed unfair conceptions of it.

There's a long paragraph or two I could write about my own approach to generalizations about cultures, but I'll leave it be unless you want to hear. :)