Whose Stories Are They?

[pameladlloyd]

A recent post by matociquala listed three links to blog posts, each of which was about doing something wrong while reviewing, writing, or selling SFF. I'm going to comment on the second of these, I've Been Here Before, Part 2, by Abigail Nussbaum. I'll let you check out matociquala's post for the links to the other two articles.

In Nussbaum's post, she writes about a phenomenon which she dubs "The Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of Doom" and links to this post by rilina that provides links to a large number of posts on this topic. While much of her post is a review of Ian McDonald's novel, Brasyl (which I haven't read), it was her intriguing comments on an earlier novel he wrote, River of Gods, set in India (I haven't read this, either), which got me thinking about the whole cultural appropriation debate and thinking about some of the ways in which it's affected my own writing. You see, I'm white, but I can remember my parents' comments that we were "mutts," by which they meant that we couldn't trace our ancestry to a single country. At the same time, due to some genealogy work by an aunt, and some dabbling of my own, I've tended more recently to focus on Wales as the origin of my surname and, rightly or wrongly, to want to set stories there. I also grew up in the Southwestern United States, which exposed me to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in addition to the Anglo culture of which I was a part.

The whole cultural appropriation debate tends to push the button that makes me want to insist that with adequate research, a good writer can write from any perspective. It makes me think about the debate over whether writers can write well from a gender perspective that is not their own. It makes me think about my belief that a good writer creates three-dimensional characters and that to write exclusively about and from the POV of the same group is to perpetuate the lack of diversity in fiction that many decry.

My own writing has been impacted by this debate. Some of my (unfinished/unpublished) stories have attempted Mexican-American POVs and I think one of the reasons those stories have languished has been my concern that I might be accused of either cultural appropriation, or of misrepresenting the culture. Even my pre-1700's Welsh novel languishes, in part, for similar reasons, although there are many other factors when we're discussing my attempts at novel-length fiction.

So, my question isn't so much what you think about the issue of cultural appropriation, but whether you have found that this issue affects you as a writer and, if so, in what ways?

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm determined not to let it affect me. (I can say that right now because so far it's all theoretical.) I shall write what I jolly well please and try to publish it all, and take the slings and arrows when they come, if they come. I've seen things written about Japan by people who didn't know enough about Japan... but on the other things, as sartorias and others have often pointed out, there are plenty of things written about Recency England that get things wrong. Heck, I can write about my own town and be accused of getting it wrong... I've only lived here ten years, not five generations.

And it's not just white folks trying to write about non-white folks. I've seen Japanese manga set in Europe that were amusing because of their haphazard costuming (though generally Japanese manga try for authenticity).

The debate about cultural appropriation reminds me of when I liked unicorns, and then my sister said she liked unicorns too, and I said, "You can't like unicorns; I liked them first--you won't like them in the right way." Sure, she wouldn't like them exactly the way I did. Tough luck for me!

... You know, no one gets ruffled if a Japanese or Indonesian orchestra decides to play Schubert, but if an American orchestra decides to debut a piece of gagaku (Japanese court music), that's somehow suspect. But **all** the world's culture is available for **all of us**. If we want the ultimate, most authentic, "true" stuff, sure, we might search out something written by someone from the tradition in question. That's fine. But I also know that the average Japanese company man has less knowledge of Classical Japanese morés than my husband--and by the same token, a Japanese scholar of Shakespeare probably knows more about Elizabethan England than I do.

We all have to share, I feel. We're all human; the culture of all humanity is the heritage of all of us...

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

We all have to share, I feel. We're all human; the culture of all humanity is the heritage of all of us...

What an awesome statement. :)

Thanks. You remind me of my desire to respond with "Human" to census questions that ask my race.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

After I left you that comment, I had to come in to dinner, and we were talking about this question, and my husband reminded me of a great quotation from Terence

"Nothing human is alien to me"

here's a great page with the statement in many languages :-)

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I will definitely have to add that to the quote wall. *g*

[eneit.livejournal.com]

I've never been a male, should all my characters therefore only be female? I am a writer, I am used to watching the world and putting the world into my characters.

Come to that, I've never so much as flown an airplane, and my actual attempts at engineering stopped with Lego, but my sci fi hero has built a space shuttle.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

I agree that as writers we must be observers of our world and of the people around us if we are to be able to create well-rounded characters. Research is critical, always.

Yet, there are many groups in this country and, I suspect, around the world, who are deeply suspicious of stories written by those outside the culture about those within the culture. So, the question becomes not just a matter of whether an author can do it, but a political question about whether they should.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

The problem is often not one of cultural appropriation - it's understanding and respect. This means that the nature of the research and the level of understanding we reach when we do the research is far more important than what cultures we're using as bases. Some inaccuracies are laughable, some inaccuracies are amusing, but some hurt at very deep levels. Every time I find out the stuff that forms that deep level for a culture or a sub-culture, I put it on my mental no-go list. I won't always get it right, but I owe a duty of respect to other human beings and so it's terribly important to me to try very hard.

In my case almost everything I write requires cultural appropriation because I come from a minority of a minority, so I've spent my whole life living these issues (and even teaching them - which is why I'm on a panel about it at Conflux, which I have put in just to make you wish you were here ).

[eneit.livejournal.com]

She'd rather be at the panel where we both get to discuss food and characters

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a fun panel, but I hope the two wouldn't be mutually exclusive, so I could attend both. :)

(I've been trying not to torture myself by reading the Conflux program, on the theory that the more I know about what I'm missing, the sadder I'll feel about not being there, so I don't know how many tracks of programming you're running.)

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Excellently well-put. I agree that a desire to write with "understanding and respect" when depicting someone from another culture is extremely important.

I wish I could make it to Conflux, meet all my new friends in Oz, and to attend your panel. I have added Conflux to my long-term goals list. Australia was already on it. :)

[janni.livejournal.com]

I'm writing a book now set in a country that's not my own, so I've been thinking about this a lot. Especially since I'm using not just a country, but also its literature--literature that on the one hand is part of the large canon of western literature and belongs to us all, but on the other hand is the very specific story of a very specific group of people and belongs to them.

I don't know the answer, or am still working out, or there isn't any one answer. In an ideal world I think we'd live the places and cultures we're writing for years before telling stories set there--but there's a point where if you don't just write the book it'll never get written, too. At the very least, I think visiting is a crucial part of one's research.

One thing it's way too easy to do is to exoticize a culture not one's own. We do that with Native Americans here, and I think India is another place that often gets used that way in American fiction--as a source of all things mystical instead of a living complicated contemporary 21st century place inhabited by real people who are a mix of old ways and new ones, just like us, though the ways may differ. So that's one thing to be wary of.

I think it's a complicated issue. I don't think we should automatically avoid writing outside of our own worlds. but I also don't think we can dismiss the issues surrounding moving beyond them with "I'm human, so I can write other humans" either. It's not that simple.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Heh. I wasn't consciously thinking about the Icelandic sagas you've been working with, but I think that's a wonderful example, if only because the sagas haven't yet been politicized as untouchable by non-Icelandic writers. Or, have they? My two classes at UA that looked at Native Americans,* plus my work on the editorial board of Red Ink Magazine (http://www.redinkmagazine.com/) made me very aware of how uncomfortable many Native Americans are about the ways in which they are depicted by non-natives in books, film, and other media, and that they often see such depictions through a political lens.

Your point about cultures being tagged as exotic and used as such is very interesting. I think that when there is a trend to use specific cultures in this way, it can reflect the desires, discomforts, guilts, and fears we have as members of our own culture, which may be in conflict with the culture we're depicting. If, as writers, we aren't careful, our unconscious concerns may be expressed in ways that undermine our attempts to write about these cultures respectfully.

But, I don't think anyone here was trying to dismiss the issues, or oversimplify them, or say that it's not a challenge to write well when writing about people from other cultures. Rather, I think that what they were trying to say was that we all have an underlying commonality and that it gives us the possibility of seeing through each other's eyes, or walking in their shoes; that we can use an awareness of shared humanity as the starting point for our journey to understanding and respect.


* The courses were cross-listed as both English and American Indian Studies, so they counted toward my English Lit degree. One was taught by a Native American woman, the other by a white man. I also took a class on women's literature of the Middle East and one that looked at literature and music by Blacks in America.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I think that "starting point" is the important part. Maybe start with our shared humanity, but be prepared to travel as far a distance as you have to from there.

I thought this post on writing characters, not types of characters was a good take on how once you have a feel for a culture or character, you still have to be careful to write individuals and not types of characters, too.

I think there are two different things going on with the sagas at the same time: the desire for the world to know them as the great literature they are, and the feeling that as they are they're perfect, and shouldn't be changed. But then, that will vary from individual to individual, too, which is another thing--no culture has only one voice that represents it, either.

And I think the issues vary by culture, too. I mean, my country never invaded Iceland, but we did invade Native America. And if I were Native American, after having my people largely destroyed and pressure put on them to abandon old ways as well--I'd be a bit uneasy if those who invaded then wanted to claim my stories as their own. I actually get that.

Yet if I feel like those stories speak to me, is that legitimate? Maybe, especially since I'm walking the same land now. If I had a story I wanted to tell that required using those stories, would I do it? Quite possibly.

Like I said, I'm still thinking this one through.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hmm, since I'm one who stridently expressed the "I'm human, so I can write other humans" point of view, maybe I should just say that absolutely, yes, people should be sensitive about the stories they hope to tell, the peoples whose stories they're interested in, the cultures those stories come from--in general, people should be sensitive and respectful.

Because I feel frustrated by attempts to set things out of bounds, I sometimes express myself too forcefully (or neglect to put in the caveats).

I do think, though, that the issue is infinitely applicable...what I mean is, you can feel it closer and closer to home, not only about exotic locales or people. I might feel it about writing about another part of the United States, for example, or in writing about another era.

Which is just to say, the burden of respect and care applies always, I think, and everywhere.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't think you were being too forceful at all! And if I seemed to knee-jerkish in turn, it's only bec ause I have seen "we're all human" used lightly--but I don't think it was used lightly here.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think we must be at about the same spot, just expressing the same position with different emphasis :-) Everything you say I'd agree with totally!

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. I think psamphire's point about writing characters who are "of a different ethnicity or gender or from a different country or background" than the writer as characters who are defined by many qualities, not just their ethnicity, gender, or background, put it very succinctly. (Hmm. This includes people with disabilities, too. For example, there's no reason that individuals with asthma will be particularly similar in the their likes or dislikes, or even their reactions to the illness.)

And I think the issues vary by culture, too. I mean, my country never invaded Iceland, but we did invade Native America.

Yes. The history that exists between the groups, and the politics of the present moment that has grown out of that history, will be reflected in the ways that fiction (and non-fiction) by members of one group about members of the other will be received by both groups.

Yet if I feel like those stories speak to me, is that legitimate?

I think it should be. If writers don't tell the stories that speak to them, then one of the things they're doing is being untrue to themselves. But, on a broader level, if in our writing we never reach beyond ourselves and our identities of ourselves as members of a group (whether that group is the PTA, our country of origin, a racial group, or one that sings on key), then we are not creating the kinds of bridges between groups that can help people learn to celebrate our differences, rather than to see them as gulfs that divide us. I'm not saying that every story should do this, simply that we shouldn't avoid writing stories about others out of fear, delicacy, or a lack of information that can be corrected with the right research.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's the distinction--it's not right to avoid telling a story out of fear; but whether to avoid telling it out of respect is a trickier distinction.

Tricky, too, is figuring out when a story really speaks to you, and when it's about your own ... for lack of a better word, ego ... instead. I'm reminded of the little bit I know about how Friends (Quaker) meetings work: you're only supposed to stand and speak when you feel moved by the spirit within you to speak--but figuring out when you really are moved to speak, and must; and when you merely want to speak because you want to hear your own voice--when it's about you and when it's about something deeper--is tricky.

So I guess we need to try to be honest about whether those stories are speaking to us on a deeper level, too. Tricky stuff.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's the distinction--it's not right to avoid telling a story out of fear; but whether to avoid telling it out of respect is a trickier distinction.

Yet, if we keep second-guessing ourselves about our motivations, even when we know we intend a respectful treatment, and we avoid telling such stories for either reason, they may not get told at all. It doesn't feel respectful to remain silent about difference, or to write only about people exactly like ourselves, because our very silence can be read as a denial of otherness and difference.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I think a little second-guessing is healthy. Not so much that we're paralyzed and never do anything, but it's reasonable to ask questions about our motivations and reasons, and to do a little soul searching about whether this is really a story that's ours to write, though in the end the answer may well be, "Yes, of course it is." (Or may be, "I need to explore the story a bit or think about it a bit more to figure that out.")

Intending respect is a good start, I think, but only a start--it takes more research and soul-searching both--as well as if possible getting to know folks who know the culture--to figure out if we actually are being respectful.

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

Well, I know that I've been guilty of second-guessing myself about my characters and stories and it does, often enough, leave me dead in the water. Even when, as is the case in some instances, I belong to one of the categories whose depiction worries me.

Dunno, but I do know there's wolves in them there woods and it's not always easy to recognize them.