I think that in addition to looking at why people are drawn to what might be called "colonialist genre fiction" instead of fiction deriving from experiences in the Third World or from immigrants. For example, why Harry Potter and NOT Zadie Smith? Why Dr. Who and NOT Rushdie? If you wanted to, you could spend your life fully immersed in more PC fare, and what is generally seen by critics and academics as more "literary" than genre oriented, but you don't.

I find this question curious myself because both you and rm seem like amazingly intelligent and well-educated women to me - and women who betray little to no interest in the kind of literature that I might expect really cultured and well-educated women to be invested in. Why not Ahmed Alaidy, Isabel Allende, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala? Why so little interest in the stuff that actually address the other side of the equation?

I also want to say that no one has to do "literature" or genre all the time. You can have a little of both. I've noticed that the people who read more literary stuff tend to take breaks with genre novels, but the people who read genre seldom read other kinds of lit.