To think this is ridiculous? Re: Guardian opinion piece on cultural appropriation

[Feminazi]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/10/as-lionel-shriver-made-light-of-identity-i-had-no-choice-but-to-walk-out-on-her

This writer sounds like a spoilt child, unable to listen to anyone else's opinion!

Her own point is quite frankly ridiculous too! She claims that nobody should write about what they can't experience, it's cultural appropriation if they do!

It is an interesting debate.
Examples of books I have read which fall into this category:

Memoirs of a geisha Arthur Golden
The help Kathryn Stockett

Both the above were accused of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation and of effectively stealing someone else's life story.

Many would-be writers are told to "write what you know" (from the heart/authentic voice etc)
That said, fiction should allow freedom of voice and expression, imagination and creativity.
Sometimes a writer will be criticised even if they have experience (Sarah Lotz did multiple narrators incl for eg. narrative voices in japanese and afrikaans: the latter criticised despite the author having lived in South Africa for years). I loved that novel (The three), loved it because it was global with different voices, characters, nuances.
How far does research carry an author?

Also: regarding identity
Lionel Shriver is not a mother. Does that mean she should never have tackled maternal ambivalence? that would strike me as censorship. And whilst I know many hated it, I, for one, needed that book to be written.

The danger is that the possible interpretation of Cultural Appropriation becomes a well intentioned Apartheid, with certain racial or cultural signifiers only being allowed by approved groups .

White women wearing bindis , belly
dancing clubs , daft students wearing sombreros ... all wrong in some eyes .

Cornrows only for black people? How black are you ? There must be a colour chart left
over in some back office in Pretoria ...I think there is very much a need for sensitivity and awareness of white privelege , but a backlash could happen that diminishes the real hurt if everything 'other' is off limits.

It's also restrictive and prescriptive for the author of the piece's (hypothetical) Nigerian woman and queer Indigenous man. If no-one else can write outside of their own sex, culture or ethnicity then neither can they. Bit of a shame if the Nigerian woman had wanted to write science fiction or historical romance. Instead she's stuck with near autobiographical fiction, over and over again.

Like I said up thread, Zadie Smith, as a mixed race woman in the UK did a good job of writing about a Chinese-Jewish man in 'The Autograph Man'.

I agree that some authors do a crap job of stepping out of their sex, ethnicity, culture etc. There are loads of crap writers around overall, you don't need to ban them, just stop reading them.

I love Lionel Shriver, I love her writing and the fact that she has absolutely no time for the kind of hysterical, overwrought, incoherent identity politics so aptly displayed in that poorly-written little tantrum that the Guardian saw fit to pass off as an article.

Ooh and while we're here... Black Lives Matter being represented by white people at City Airport? That did make me feel uncomfortable...

heron

In the case of the help it was alleged that the "fiction" was stolen and racist.
abcnews.go.com/Health/lawsuit-black-maid-ablene-cooper-sues-author-kathryn/story?id=12968562
Case thrown out solely due to statute of limitations.
I have also heard the term "literary blackface" but think Zukiswa Wanners argument is strong
thoughtleader.co.za/fionasnyckers/2013/06/11/white-writers-writing-black-characters-a-form-of-literary-blackface/

The danger is that the possible interpretation of Cultural Appropriation becomes a well intentioned Apartheid, with certain racial or cultural signifiers only being allowed by approved groups .

I agree, if a middle class Nigerian woman writes about a poor Nigerian man or a modern day native American writes about a native American that lived 300 years ago then that's cultural appropriation too. But it is that classed as OK cultural appropriation?

I like Shriver. I find her books intelligent and thought provoking. She does seem to research them well and there is usually quite a lot of personal experience in there as well as the fiction.
The trouble isthat many authors move in very narrow circles and spend a lot of time on their own writing so if they just wrote about what they knew it would be very limiting.
I like Jane Austin but her only writing about what she knew does mean that her books are all minor variations on a theme.
Shriver has written about having a difficult child, professional tennis players, Belfast in the troubles, a fictional Portuguese terrorist campaign, morbid obesity, economic meltdown in the future, 2 different futures depending on whether or not you leave your marriage.
She can get overly bogged down in the detail trying to show she has done her research.
I like science fiction and crime novels. Christopher Brookmyre has done crime novels with a female perspective. I think that's fine.
If people want to read books by authors of a particular sex or colour they are free to do so.
The woman here could have stayed and questioned Shriver about her views at the end as there is usually a Q&A session at these things. She chose to have a hissy fit instead.

I like Shriver as well, I would have loved to have been at that talk. I wouldn't have been texting during it, as the author of the piece was.

Goodness me, some people like the woman who wrote that article really are up their own arses and full of their own importance.

"It was a poisoned package wrapped up in arrogance and delivered with condescension."

At least the writer is self aware.p

I have listened to the author of the piece talk about feminism, whilst at a literary festival. I was tempted to walk out myself - it was all, I, I, I and me, me, me and a whole lot of crap about what being a woman meant to her. In her defense she's pretty young, early to mid 20s and still fairly self-absorbed. In contrast, the feminist Anne Summers spoke afterwards and she was masterful. I didn't agree with everything she said but that was ok, I didn't feel the need to flounce out and text about it.

I think somewhere in that article there are some valid and interesting points but I think it's a great shame that The Guardian couldn't be bothered to commission a better writer. There are several posters on this thread who could have done a much better job.

"I think somewhere in that article there are some valid and interesting points but I think it's a great shame that The Guardian couldn't be bothered to commission a better writer"

But that's not how commissioning works. The writer, having walked out of the talk, will then have approached the Guardian to ask if she could write a piece about it. So it would be very odd if they then commissioned someone else to write it.

I also think the article makes some valid points - I agree that it can be very aggrieving to see someone appropriate "your" story if they do it badly - if they use crude stereotypes or sensationalise your experience. It feels like they're making money out of your suffering. On the other hand, if they do it well, surely that's a different matter? Good writing requires empathy and the ability to imagine yourself in someone else's shoes, and if someone can do that successfully, that's admirable.

Maybe hackmum - you probably know more about the industry than I do. But surely someone must have read it before it went to print and realised how poorly written it was? I don't understand why they let it through. It wasn't fair on anyone, least of all her.

I don't think all the comparisons with films are fair. In the case of something like Rainman or Scarlet Johanson playing a Japanese woman, there is one part only and there is an argument that someone from the same demographic would be better suited.

The attraction of fiction is in the variety available, the lack of limits. I think a well known author basing a book in a different culture would encourage people to read more from these cultures. I think Memoirs of a Geisha might have been the first book I read based in Japan but after it Japanese books seemed more accessible. It definitely wasn't the case that I said to myself "right, I'll read one book base in Japan, only one, and I'll pick this one, not one written by a Japanese person."

I would be very surprised if the Ladies Detective Agency did anything other than boost publishing and sales of books based and written in Africa. I think Alexander McCall Smith could have more easily written and published a book about an Edinburgh based Male Doctor/Lawyer but he pushed the door slightly with a female lead and an unusual setting. I don't think it is fair to instantly dislike people for having a form of privilege unless they are oblivious and taking credit - glass ceilings can be shattered from above as well. For example, Christopher Brookmyre is very much a feminist and has strong female leads, surely this is a good thing.

I liked Memoirs of a geisha but^ his source received death threats when outed. Mineko also claimed he twisted the facts (one could of course argue that is what fiction does, it was not an official biography). They settled out of court. It was also argued that he misrepresented the culture and stereotyped the geisha as some kind of sex object.
I have only ever read Murakami so any other recommendations welcome. I agree though that lack of limits in writing is vital. As with most media, if the content doesn't ring true it will be judged accordingly

Can I ask something? does cultural appropriation only happen when that culture is widely seen as discriminated against such as afroamericans or native americans? put it another way, if I write a novel about a Swedish white woman that is an IT genius, would that be cultural appropriation? (I am not Swedish or an IT genius)

I'm not sure how the moany woman knew people would see it as an "obviously political" exit.
I saw Lionel Shriver recently at the Ed Book Festival. If someone had left early on I would have assumed they'd had an urgent text about an emergency or had a weak bladder. I certainly wouldn't have been looking at their face as i'd be watching the person I'd paid to see. To me flouncing off is the cowards way out of a situation, but it seems a lot of young people (particularly young women my teenage son loves the Glasgow sceptics meetings) refuse to listen to any arguments they disagree with and don't believe in free speech these days.
Being "offended" is the worse thing many of them can imagine.
I's a shame the Guardian didn't use this as one of their FOR and AGAINST pieces, with a fiction writer arguing for freedom to write from any point of view you wish and if people don't like it or think they aren't really "getting" the other perspective they can not buy the book or criticise it.
I've read books by men writing as women where it has been obviously unrealistic (especially if they try doing sex scenes) but I don't think men shouldn't have a go if they want to. There are also female romantic fiction writers who don't write about women I recognise.

Floisme: "But surely someone must have read it before it went to print and realised how poorly written it was?"

Interesting point! The Guardian, in my view, still does plenty of terrific journalism, such as its Long Reads, which are invariably excellent, and its in-depth investigations into malpractice at firms like Boots and Sports Direct (and the Sports Direct investigation led to discussions in parliament and a pledge by the company to reform its practices, which is a great result).

But this particular article appeared in the online comment section, not in the print edition. And the online comment section seems to work in a very particular way - they commission lots and lots of comment, and it's always very news-led. A news event that people are interested in will lead to a comment response appearing within hours. I have friends who have written for the section, and they might get a commission at 9am and have to file by 1pm. The pay is quite low - about £100. So to some extent, quantity and timeliness are more important than quality. There is a definite tendency towards publishing clickbait stuff too - a piece like this one will have had lots of clicks (partly encouraged by threads like this one), which will just encourage them to publish more articles like this. The more clicks you receive, the more advertising you attract - in theory, at least.

(that everydayfeminism article is pretty much all my feelings about male to trans. how interesting to see it all laid in as cultural appropriation)

My next book was supposed to be set in a (real) extinct culture. I did two years of research, including travelling around the place where it was to be set, but found that I couldn't write the book because I was worried about being accused of cultural appropriation. It gave me serious mental block. The people that I wanted to write about are now near enough lost to history (only ten words of their language is known, for example). So serious question, do you think that it would ethically wrong of me to fulfil this project? I've shelved it for now but am in two minds about whether to return to it or not.

I was writing a novel - or novels - but I've packed it in now
I always said I wanted to write under a false name because people hear my name and won't accept that I am English

but also, the main novel I worked on was historical - is that awful? I mean yes, I've studied the period but I don't know what it was like to live then. Also my main character was a man - I have no experience of being a man!! location - well suffice to say it's a part of England I've been to twice in my life.

so to some extent I see Shriver's concerns. Do I really have to be limited by all the things that society uses to define me? In that case I'd be writing about office life in London? I don't even want to read that book, much less write it!

i was very disappointed when a former friend of mine told me the first thing she looks at in a book is the author info. I was reading a great historical saga based in the US and my friend was looking at it saying "why does this author want to write this" (mostly because she thought the author was the wrong nationality and the wrong colour to be writing such a book). I find that really sad.

I agree 2Rebecca, it wouldn't cross my mind that she was making a political statement. People walk in and out of talks all the time.

That whole 'let them see your face' thing gives me a full body cringe. How very teenage and self-absorbed.