Sorry, tip, step carefully: many would argue that there is no "correct" stereotype.  

Yeah, your example of James Michener is a really good one.  Wow: appropriation all over many of his works, including Hawaii. 

Big Hoohaa in Calgary recently about the decision to let a Caucasian play "Bloody Mary" (a polynesian character) instead of an Asian in the musical South Pacific.  People quit, big uproar. By appropriation rules, Calgary Opera had NO  business planning to perform the play in the first place!  It's based on Tales of the South Pacific, by Michener--a White American, who had the audacity to write about Polynesians during WW II. The play itself?  Written (mostly) by two Jewish guys in New York (Rodgers and Hammerstein)!

Other plays they had no business writing: 
Showboat (African Americans in the South; Imagine the insult: "I Got Plenty 'o' Nuthin'"!)
The King and I (Asians, in what is now called Thailand)
Flower Drum Song (Chinese in San Francisco Chinatown)