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Perception and Deception: A Mind Opening Journey Across Cultures
Perception and Deception is an engaging and insightful introduction to cross-cultural communication in a globalized world. Joe’s infectious curiosity in uncovering and understanding cultural differences will help readers, no matter their profession, age or cultural background, gain a fuller appreciation for the richness of human diversity, and the multiple things that can go wrong when trying to communicate across cultures.
Perception and Deception: A Mind Opening Journey Across Cultures, is an entertaining, eye-opening and easy-to-read book that contains dozens of intriguing intercultural experiences, gathered from Joe’s research and his decades living abroad and managing Berkeley's International House, one of the largest, most diverse living centers on the planet. In an informative and enticing manner, the author explains how he discovered that his perception of a situation could be “deceptive” when he looked at it simply through his own Lens. Joe’s growing self-awareness of the impact of culture is clearly illustrated through his humorous stories and striking culture clash examples from news reports across the globe. Better yet, these stories are indexed by culture! Joe also shares pearls of wisdom about perception, perspective and the nature of "truth" from his rich personal collection of proverbs and sayings from around the world.
Perception and Deception: A Mind Opening Journey Across Cultures, is an entertaining, eye-opening and easy-to-read book that contains dozens of intriguing intercultural experiences, gathered from Joe’s research and his decades living abroad and managing Berkeley's International House, one of the largest, most diverse living centers on the planet. In an informative and enticing manner, the author explains how he discovered that his perception of a situation could be “deceptive” when he looked at it simply through his own Lens. Joe’s growing self-awareness of the impact of culture is clearly illustrated through his humorous stories and striking culture clash examples from news reports across the globe. Better yet, these stories are indexed by culture! Joe also shares pearls of wisdom about perception, perspective and the nature of "truth" from his rich personal collection of proverbs and sayings from around the world.
- GenresNonfiction
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 22, 2019
The miasma of hatred, oppression and prejudice melted away before my media-weary eyes and aching heart. Indeed, voices and visions “coming with the weight of their (our) histories” can speak truth to power and cut the haze of lies. Very good handbook for beginning to loosen up our own invisible or unrecognized intercultural prejudices!
Joe Lurie, in his Perception and Deception: A Mind-Opening Journey Across Cultures, tells tales from his experience as world traveler, Peace Corps worker and 20 years as Director of the Cal International House. Pulling up anecdotes and proverbs he “helps people better understand their own cultural filters and those of others,” as his editor says.
We need to “understand the actual meanings and intentions behind words and actions” through his examples “to better cope with the disrupting forces of globalization.”
Much of this comes from his “I-House” (International House in Berkeley, CA) experiences, which I learned more about online. The building was the only one in 1930 to house students of color and be a co-ed residence, and “there was resistance to men and women living under one roof; there was hostility to foreigners; and the notion that people of color would live with "whites" in an integrated setting was, to many, simply incredible. …(planner) Harry Edmonds … chose Piedmont Avenue, in part, because it was the home of fraternities and sororities which then excluded foreigners and people of color. By proposing this site, Edmonds sought to strike bigotry and exclusiveness "right hard in the nose."” Odd as it sounds to us now, it was “the first coeducational residence west of the Mississippi.”
If Lurie has flaws, they’re of the “Joe Biden” type – he’s almost too optimistic and friendly to be believed by our cynical and individualistic culture. He also refrains from saying much about gender and some religious customs in order, it seems, not to offend, leaving some gaps. But he explains many of the common interpersonal and communal behaviors that were the fabric of African village life he experienced as a young man that persist in many parts of that continent, Asia, Latin American and Pacific cultures today.
That, modern American media and some more recent exclusionary customs remind me of many international immigrants in the 1960’s who called us “the country where they let the children cry.”
But not only the children. Susan and I were waiting at the bus stop at Addison and Shattuck the other very rainy morning when an African-American elderly woman with a crammed stroller-full of her earthly possessions smoking a gifted cigarette took shelter there. Susan asked her not to smoke, she ignored her, I just moved upwind, knowing we wouldn’t be there long and the woman clearly had nowhere else to go.
Then I looked up to see a youngish, squeaky-clean-nerdy Anglo-American man with short hair and an “OBEY” cap on was videoing the woman smoking with his cellphone, and I thought “for what porpoise?” as my friend Juanita used to say.
To report her to the police? To the "Downtown Ambassadors?" To post on his Facebook page as one of the “others” or “enemies” militant, misogynist, racist vigilantes had to harass, ridicule, attack, keep track of, incarcerate or eliminate? “Lock her up,” as they say? She is your Grandmother, too…
My comments are taken from Cultures, Values and "Others," a book review featured in Knox Book Beat, The Berkeley Times, 23 May, 2019. Wyndy Knox Carr. Notes follow.
Joe Lurie, in his Perception and Deception: A Mind-Opening Journey Across Cultures, tells tales from his experience as world traveler, Peace Corps worker and 20 years as Director of the Cal International House. Pulling up anecdotes and proverbs he “helps people better understand their own cultural filters and those of others,” as his editor says.
We need to “understand the actual meanings and intentions behind words and actions” through his examples “to better cope with the disrupting forces of globalization.”
Much of this comes from his “I-House” (International House in Berkeley, CA) experiences, which I learned more about online. The building was the only one in 1930 to house students of color and be a co-ed residence, and “there was resistance to men and women living under one roof; there was hostility to foreigners; and the notion that people of color would live with "whites" in an integrated setting was, to many, simply incredible. …(planner) Harry Edmonds … chose Piedmont Avenue, in part, because it was the home of fraternities and sororities which then excluded foreigners and people of color. By proposing this site, Edmonds sought to strike bigotry and exclusiveness "right hard in the nose."” Odd as it sounds to us now, it was “the first coeducational residence west of the Mississippi.”
If Lurie has flaws, they’re of the “Joe Biden” type – he’s almost too optimistic and friendly to be believed by our cynical and individualistic culture. He also refrains from saying much about gender and some religious customs in order, it seems, not to offend, leaving some gaps. But he explains many of the common interpersonal and communal behaviors that were the fabric of African village life he experienced as a young man that persist in many parts of that continent, Asia, Latin American and Pacific cultures today.
That, modern American media and some more recent exclusionary customs remind me of many international immigrants in the 1960’s who called us “the country where they let the children cry.”
But not only the children. Susan and I were waiting at the bus stop at Addison and Shattuck the other very rainy morning when an African-American elderly woman with a crammed stroller-full of her earthly possessions smoking a gifted cigarette took shelter there. Susan asked her not to smoke, she ignored her, I just moved upwind, knowing we wouldn’t be there long and the woman clearly had nowhere else to go.
Then I looked up to see a youngish, squeaky-clean-nerdy Anglo-American man with short hair and an “OBEY” cap on was videoing the woman smoking with his cellphone, and I thought “for what porpoise?” as my friend Juanita used to say.
To report her to the police? To the "Downtown Ambassadors?" To post on his Facebook page as one of the “others” or “enemies” militant, misogynist, racist vigilantes had to harass, ridicule, attack, keep track of, incarcerate or eliminate? “Lock her up,” as they say? She is your Grandmother, too…
My comments are taken from Cultures, Values and "Others," a book review featured in Knox Book Beat, The Berkeley Times, 23 May, 2019. Wyndy Knox Carr. Notes follow.
December 7, 2020
This book made me smile, again and again, amused by Joe Lurie’s well-chosen proverbs, vivid examples, and light-hearted approach to this deeply important topic. In today’s world, ugly tweets and boatloads of refugees have sharpened the need for all of us to bridge cultural differences and find ways to de-escalate misunderstandings.
Personally, I am disturbed by the current uptick in hostility toward foreigners among some Americans and wish they would curl up with this book. Differences in language, religion, and values enrich our world, and once you work through them, a delightful new worldview may open up to you. When a foreigner says or does something that seems offensive, Joe Lurie offers the best advice I’ve heard: “What else could this mean?” Often what sounds or looks rude or crude to us has an entirely different meaning in a different culture. Lurie takes our hand and shows us how to make the effort to understand.
Personally, I am disturbed by the current uptick in hostility toward foreigners among some Americans and wish they would curl up with this book. Differences in language, religion, and values enrich our world, and once you work through them, a delightful new worldview may open up to you. When a foreigner says or does something that seems offensive, Joe Lurie offers the best advice I’ve heard: “What else could this mean?” Often what sounds or looks rude or crude to us has an entirely different meaning in a different culture. Lurie takes our hand and shows us how to make the effort to understand.
November 5, 2018
Enjoyable book, comprised mostly of anecdotes, which opens your eyes and ears to the many ways we can misunderstand people from other cultures.
December 14, 2015
Lurie is a talented story teller, but the excessive anecdotes and quotes/proverbs lose their emphasis quickly.
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May 6, 2018A fun book from Mr. Lurie's cross-cultural experiences with lots of sayings and proverbs from around the world. Definitely a "mind opening journey across cultures."
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews