There’s debate in the writing field about how best — if at all — to deal with writing characters different from onesself: men writing about women, straights about gays, whites about blacks, old about young, Americans about French, etc.
I think some of the debate is overblown — in a very real way, anyone who writes can and must write about people who differ from them in some important but believable way. Indeed, part of the human condition and maturity itself is being able to relate to the Other.
That said, though, writing credibly about folks with very different backgrounds and belief and thought systems can be a challenge, especially if you’re concerned that you might end up offending people by howyou do it (bearing in mind that some people will be inevitably offended that you did it at all).
So this book sounds interesting:

Volume 8. Writing the Other:
A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward

During the 1992 Clarion West Writers Workshop attended by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, one of the students expressed the opinion that it is a mistake to write about people of ethnic backgrounds different from your own because you might get it wrong, horribly, offensively wrong, and so it is better not even to try. This opinion, commonplace among published as well as aspiring writers, struck Nisi as taking the easy way out and spurred her to write an essay addressing the problem of how to write about characters marked by racial and ethnic differences. In the course of writing the essay, however, she realized that similar problems arise when writers try to create characters whose gender, sexual preference, and age differ significantly from their own. Nisi and Cynthia collaborated to develop a workshop that addresses these problems with the aim of both increasing writers’ skill and sensitivity in portraying difference in their fiction as well as allaying their anxieties about “getting it wrong.” Writing the Other: A Practical Approach is the manual that grew out of their workshop. It discusses basic aspects of characterization and offers elementary techniques, practical exercises, and examples for helping writers create richer and more accurate characters with “differences.”
I might have to add it to my wish list in some fashion.
(via BoingBoing)