“Cultural appropriation” in writing…
Last month Lionel Shriver “belittled” the movement against cultural appropriation at the Brisbane Writers Festival in Australia (felt I had to add the last for the geographically challenged who don’t know where Brisbane is—not as bad as not knowing about Aleppo, but telling). I’ve never read anything by Shriver. I’ll have to confess, I’d never heard of Ms. Shriver, and she’s probably never heard of me. BUT I AGREE WITH HER…to a point. You might be already considering the movement she’s complaining about as a storm in a teacup. If not, read on. I hope to convince you that’s exactly what it is. (BTW, pox on the organizers of that conference who decided to give the protestors equal time. Giving wingnuts a podium is a big mistake…always.)
First, telling a writer of fiction s/he can’t use her or his imagination to write ABOUT ANYTHING s/he desires is wrong on so many levels that no debate is really needed, but here are two obvious counters: (1) I’ve written many novels where the MC (main character) is a woman. Let me hasten to add that Steven M. Moore is not a pen name; I’m not a female author writing as a male one (some do, with some justification, but it goes the other way too—female writers who write mystery and thrillers might use a male pen name). I’ve known enough strong women in my life that I believe I understand them (that might be delusional, but it’s what I believe). Some of my female MCs are even in the first person where I had to get “inside their heads.” (2) I’ve written sci-fi novels where an MC or important character is an ET. Is that kind of “cultural appropriation” to be banned too?
You should be able to see how foolish this movement is. But onward: You might counter the above by saying the movement is talking about human cultures, not sexual or ET identity. I’m sure this movement will unload on me about characters who are Hispanic too: WASC Moore dares to write about Hispanic culture! (WASC is “White Anglo-Saxon Catholic”—some Hispanics are blond-haired and blue-eyed, folks, and many of them are Catholic.) FYI for those who’ve never read my bios: For 10+ years I was completely immersed in one Hispanic culture, Colombia’s. My first wife was Colombian. By the time I left Colombia, I was dreaming in Spanish. And Colombia respects, even adores, cultural aspects from around Latin America; music at parties were always a mix of Colombian music (already a mix from various regions of the country), rancheros, tangos, and many other forms of Latin music, without even counting the dance music (OK, the tango is a dance, but it’s the sung version, made famous by Gardel, that turns Colombians on—he died in a plane crash near Medellin, Colombia.)
I’m guessing my immersion into Hispanic culture went far beyond Hemingway’s into bull fighting, for example. Are we going to go back and ban Hemingway? What about the opera Carmen—OMG, it was written by a Frenchman? The anti-cultural appropriation nuts should learn to spend their time on something more important—child hunger, climate control, human trafficking, gun control, our broken political system, whatever. There are so many important issues in this world that deserve their attention. I put them on a par with the people who want to dress animals or try to convince us the world is flat. They’re so far out in left field that they belong in insane asylums, if we had any left. (There’s another important issue to be concerned about.)
One of my arguments against MFAs in writing is that a young person graduates from them without any life experiences but still thinks s/he can write. Knowing enough about the world and its peoples to write an intelligent story is NOT cultural appropriation by any means. That knowledge is better acquired with a journalism degree, if you think you need a degree to be a good writer. The stories of too many young authors remind me of those stick’um books for little kids—stereotypical settings, cardboard-cutout characters, and stories that make me yawn because there’s a lack of anything original and new. (Those aren’t just from recent MFA grads, by the way.) These people need a bit of experience—in short, they need a bit of cultural appropriation to make their fiction shine. Here’s a good exercise for a writer: pretend you’re one of those kids in a Syrian refugee camp and write about his day. You shouldn’t have to know about Aleppo to do that, but you’d probably be in trouble if you don’t. And don’t depend on the media for your “cultural appropriation”—they get it wrong. Go to the internet and see what other countries are saying, what the victims are saying, what the people trying to take care of the refugees are saying, and so forth.
While authors should stand up to the anti-cultural appropriation movement for obvious reasons, and to continue to do it, also for obvious reasons, so should readers! One thing has overriding importance in a country as culturally diverse as the U.S.: understanding other cultures! Authors go to great lengths to get it right (some more than others to be sure, but a large number of us want to make our fiction seem real, to paraphrase Clancy’s famous advice). While that can create absurd situations where a white author overdoes black dialect (or vice versa!) and stereotypical characters (all cops aren’t Irish, and all Irish aren’t sots), the next best thing to total immersion in a culture is meeting people, seeing movies and documentaries featuring different cultures, and reading books where the characters are representative but NOT stereotypes (I think books do better than movies, by the way, and supported the protests surrounding this last year’s Academy Awards). If authors can’t read about different cultures, should readers be able to read about them if they’re not part of that culture?
This is segue into the last and most telling argument against this crazy movement: it smacks of censorship—it’s not “political correctness,” but plain, unadulterated censorship. Yeah, I’ll say it: the tyranny of the minority. You don’t like what I write because you think it’s “cultural appropriation”? Then don’t read it, damn it! You have no right to censor anybody. That can only lead to book burning like that depicted in Fahrenheit 451 (where Bradley “appropriated” a post-apocalyptic culture—shame on him!). You can’t destroy freedom of expression, folks. I might be disgusted by E. L. James Fifty Shades trilogy (more for technical reasons, by the way), but I’ll forever defend her freedom to write it. And I’ll defend your freedom to read it! Haven’t we had enough of censorship? Haven’t we learned not to ban creativity? It’s time for this crazy anti-cultural appropriation movement to die…now!
In libris libertas…
