Came here for the cute rodent cover picture and intriguing title, stayed for the outspoken and explicit permission to depict cultures that aren't my own. This is actually stupidly relevant to me because I live in the south of France, and it's absolutely impossible to write/create something set here without also depicting other southern European and northern African cultures... else you fall into a whitewashed, blander, uninteresting mess. Anyway, thank you for writing this. I appreciate it.