Whose Stories Are They?
Sep. 13th, 2008 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladlloydA recent post by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
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 Some of my (unfinished/unpublished) stories have attempted Mexican-American POVs and I think one of the reasons those stories have languished has been my concern that I might be accused of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?
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?
