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| The identities of most of the people in this photo are unknown, but the little girl on the far left was Hanka Lamet. She perished in the gas chambers at Majdanek |
I'm reposting this piece, because there's been some interest in my take on the topic of late. ~Brian
I meet many writers these days who dread that they might be accused of “cultural appropriation.” Are they allowed to write about Indigenous characters if they’re not Indigenous; black characters if they’re not black?
I meet many writers these days who dread that they might be accused of “cultural appropriation.” Are they allowed to write about Indigenous characters if they’re not Indigenous; black characters if they’re not black?
As I’ve
often said, writers are allowed to do whatever they want; it’s a perk of the
job. Indeed, writers are obliged to write what they want, even if it pisses
people off; it’s a responsibility of the job.
I do get the
indignation over cultural appropriation. Currently, I’m seeing endless memes
comparing the Trump administration’s separation of children at the
American-Mexican border to the Holocaust. This is an appalling comparison. The
Nazis killed 1.5 million Jewish children. American immigration control has murdered none. As Amy Rosenthal points out on Facebook:
Children being separated from their parents at the US border
is horrible and disgusting and anyone reasonable would oppose this practice
100%.
So, too, is comparing this solitary act (and everything
wrong or immoral) to the Holocaust. Here is a short but by no means exhaustive
list of terrible things Jewish children endured in concentration and
extermination camps during WWII:
Starvation
Summary execution
Rape
Disease (typhus, dysentery, etc)
Medical experimentation
Severe beatings
Slave labor
Burying dead bodies
Digging *their own grave* before being shot and thrown in
Stop appropriating one
of the worst things that ever happened to the Jews to suit you. You people will
try and take anything from us, including our tragedies.
I agree
with Amy on almost everything here, particularly her disgust at the Holocaust being
used to score political points – I agree with everything, except the term
“appropriation.”
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| Novelist Lionel Shriver |
For Jews,
the Holocaust was a unique and overwhelming catastrophe. But Jews don’t own this catastrophe.
The Holocaust was an historical event, not property. So while people regularly
trivialize the Holocaust and they make ridiculous comparisons to it so often that
it’s become a law of online discussions,
people cannot actually appropriate the Holocaust.
Similarly,
no one owns any bit of history, whether it’s the residential school system in
Canada or the history of slavery, segregation and prejudice in the U.S.
By all
means, Indigenous people and black people and all sorts of people should write
from their own perspectives. However, this doesn’t mean anyone else should stop
writing or should try not to stray outside their own narrow cultures. As Lionel
Shriver points out (here), if we follow that
logic, we’ll all end up writing autobiography.
Just as it’s
nonsense to talk about some people owning a bit of history, it’s just as
nonsensical to talk of people owning any aspect of a culture. If Koreans own
Korean food, who should I apply to for permission to try my hand at making
kimchi? Can I just ask a friend or is there a ministry of the North Korean
government which handles this sort of thing, and if I make kimchi without
permission should they throw me into a labour camp?
The simple fact
is that humans imitate each other. The impulse is older than humanity (animals
do it, too), and it’s the reason we’re not all standing around in caves naked and
grunting at each other. Can you imagine how much appropriation of each other’s utterances
it took to get the whole language thing going?
Indeed,
without appropriation, we’d each be in a solitary cave, all alone, because this
imitation thing is at one with our social nature. It’s not merely that as
social animals we imitate each other, but also it’s mutual imitation that binds
us together.
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| Alan Kurdi, child of Syrian refugees, drowned 4 Sept 2015 |
Imitation is also adoption; we
feel our kinship to one another through our shared cultures. We gather in cafés
to shout at the TV because that’s “our” team playing in the World Cup – and
it’s “my” team even if I’m cheering for Iceland that day. And when we see a
photo of a Syrian toddler washed up dead on the shore of the Mediterranean, we
weep, because that child also is ours.
So
to be clear: making cultural appropriation a crime is a way of criminalizing
our shared humanity.
Yet
sometimes when people complain of cultural appropriation they have a legitimate
complaint; they’ve just misnamed it. So, for example, it’s wrong to make
spurious comparison to the Holocaust because this falsifies history, dishonors
the dead, and may cause needless grief to survivors and their descendants.
Speaking
more to the point for writers, it’s wrong to write characters who perpetuate negative
stereotypes or to write a novel that gets someone’s culture wrong. Not because
of “appropriation” but because it’s disrespectful or may even be racist, and it
makes for a bad book – or at least a book that’s not as good as it should be.
When
writers are dipping into any area they’re not intimately familiar with, they’re
always well advised to have a beta reader who is. You’re writing a YA novel?
Having a teen reader look over your manuscript is a good idea. You have an Indigenous character? Having an
Indigenous beta reader would be a good idea. Even better if your reader comes from
the same First Nation or perhaps the same milieu. (If your Indigenous character
grew up in Toronto, that urban environment might be more relevant than the specific
First Nation your character belongs to.)
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| Novelist Angie Abdou |
That
said, writers do need to keep in mind that it’s their novel. “Sensitivity
readers” as they’re called can’t become censors. I think the story of Angie
Abdou (best known as the author of The
Bone Cage) serves as an excellent example
of how not to do things.
For her most recent novel, In Case I Go, Abdou
hired an Indigenous consultant and rewrote her novel according to his advice,
changing it from a ghost story to a story about her character’s relationship
with a flesh and blood Indigenous character.
Then she consulted with the
cultural liaison for the First Nation people she was writing about, and following
the liaison’s advice, rewrote her novel again, bringing in residential
schools. Then Abdou asked the elder council for their okay for her representation
of their Nation. Finally, after all this, once her book came out, she was still
attacked.
What
lessons might a writer learn from this story? First, perhaps it’s better to use
a fictional name for the specific First Nation you’re writing about – just in
case. Second, there’s a danger in being overly sensitive. A writer’s job is not
to act as some group’s P.R. agent. It’s not your job to write the novel someone
else wants to see written. You’ve got to remember it’s your book.
More
generally, don’t pay attention to people with an axe to grind. The cry of
“cultural appropriation” is a political attack, rooted in a peculiar ideology. Cultural appropriation is a made-up crime and simply
has nothing to do with the art of writing.
Brian Henry is an editor, writer, creative
writing instructor and the publisher of the Quick Brown Fox blog.
See Brian’s schedule here, including writing
workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park,
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Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Saint John, NB,
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