Charlie Jane Anders is writing a nonfiction book—and Tor.com is publishing it as she does so. Never Say You Can’t Survive is a how-to book about the storytelling craft, but it’s also full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish in the present emergency.
Below is the twentieth chapter, “When Is It Okay To Write About Someone Else’s Culture or Experience?” You can find all previous chapters here. New chapters will appear every Tuesday. Enjoy!
Section IV
What We Write About When We Write About Spaceships
Chapter 5
When Is It Okay To Write About Someone Else’s Culture or Experience?
I still remember when I was scratching at the door of science fiction and fantasy, desperately trying to get noticed. I racked up piles and piles of rejections, but I just kept scribbling in obscurity (and Starbucks). And then I came up with a book idea that was absolutely guaranteed to put me on the map.
I was going to write an Asian-inspired epic fantasy novel.
I felt pretty qualified to write such a book. I’d been an Asian Studies major in college, and had become fluent in both Mandarin and Japanese. I’d lived all over Asia, working as a journalist in Hong Kong and studying at Beijing University. And I had a pretty fantastic idea, based on the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, two foundational texts in Japanese culture that are just bursting with fantastic story seeds. I was getting that thing I keep talking about in these essays, where I was falling in story-love and having tiny epiphanies every time my hands touched a keyboard. It felt like magic.
At the time, science fiction conventions were full of panels advising us White writers to go ahead and write about other cultural traditions. There had been a few too many fantasy novels based on the same Western European traditions, and everybody was hungry for something new and different. And just look—there was this amazing wealth of stories and traditions just waiting, outside of our own cultural heritage.
So I had very high hopes that my Japanese-influenced fantasy novel would finally get me in the door of mainstream genre publishing. I worked steadily on it, doing tons of research on the latest archeological discoveries about ancient Japan—what people wore, what they ate, how they lived.
And then… I started getting that three A.M. stomachache. You know the one. The little anxiety spike in the wee hours that usually tells me that I’m trying to do something I’m going to regret, possibly for a very long time.
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Never Say You Can’t Survive
Here’s the thing: I had seen firsthand how much my Asian friends were hurt by the flood of books by White people appropriating Asian cultures in the 1990s and early 2000s. We’d all rolled our eyes over Memoirs of a Geisha, but there were literally dozens of other books. Europeans were obsessed with Asian culture, but we kept coming back to the dream/pastiche of Asian culture that we’d made for ourselves, ever since The Mikado and Ezra Pound’s laughable “translations” of Asian poetry. The turn of the millennium was full of Asian culture without Asian people, as everyone copied anime series and Tsui Hark movies, without bringing along actual Asians.
Plus, after college, I had spent a few months working at a doomed Asian-interest bookstore near Harvard Square. I’d always tried to steer my White customers to books about Asia by actual Asian authors, without much success. These customers seemed to crave the comfort of a White author who could hold their hand, and lead them through an unfamiliar culture. Even—especially!—when the book was from the POV of an Asian character. I got sick of ringing up stacks of Asia-focused books by European authors, most of which were cheesy or worse, and I started to dread going to work.
So I wrestled with my conscience for a while. I tried to convince myself that my Asian-fantasy project would be different. I was going to be careful! I knew what I was doing!
And then… I reluctantly decided to put that novel draft in a drawer. And then light the drawer on fire. I loved Asian culture too much to do this.
A short while after I put away my Asian fantasy novel, I started to write fiction and personal essays about my own experiences as a trans woman. There was a whole scene of trans and genderqueer and gender-nonconforming creators, all of us writing about our experiences of becoming our brightest truest selves and dealing with harassment and setbacks. We gathered in coffee shops and bars and bookstores, reading stories and poems and excerpts from novels, and it felt like we were inventing a whole new language to talk about our changing bodies and hearts.
And I found the same thing, from the opposite side: there were plenty of stories being published and filmed about trans experiences, but they were being created by cis people. Books like Trans-Sister Radio and movies like Transamerica were educating cis people about our lives—and I’m sure they did a lot of good and helped make people more comfortable with trans people’s existence—but trans creators were shut out. Especially when it came to fictional portrayals of trans people.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed as though this was another example of what I’d seen in my bookstore job: cis people wanted cis creators to make them feel “safe” visiting the “exotic” realm of transness. They wanted a tour guide.
Representation without appropriation
So whenever I think about the ongoing (and constantly shifting) debates over cultural appropriation, I think about that “tour guide” thing. People from the dominant group will always seek out a non-challenging version of any marginalized group’s experience, and it’s easier to get that from authors who come from that same dominant group.
Privileged people can become conditioned to expect only one type of story about a marginalized group, to the point where they won’t accept any other stories, no matter how real.
So I’ve tried to strike a balance in my own work, when I write about marginalized people whose experiences are different than my own. I aim for representation without appropriation.
For example, even though I threw away that Asian-influenced fantasy novel, I’ve still included plenty of Asian characters in my fiction, including some pretty major characters. And I’ve definitely drawn on my knowledge of Asian history and folklore here and there. If I was writing about an alien invasion, some of the heroes fighting off the slime-flyers would probably be of Asian descent. And I’d do my best to give them the same inner life that I try to imbue all my characters with—including all the weight of culture, history, and lived experience.
But I’ve never tried to write stories that center uniquely Asian cultures or experiences. Like, I wouldn’t try to write a story that’s all about what it means to grow up in a Taiwanese family. Or a story about the experience of living through the Hong Kong protests from the point of view of a Hong Kong native. Or a deep dive into Chinese history. There are other people who could write those stories way better than I could.
That’s where I decided to draw the line for myself, but everybody has to figure this out themselves. (And Hiromi Goto’s WisCon guest-of-honor speech includes a very helpful checklist of questions to ask yourself before writing a story about a culture outside your own.) But I feel like this is always going to be messy, and ever-shifting, and contain exactly no straight lines, because we’re talking about human beings, and the complexities of history. You never get to be done trying to figure this stuff out.
The book world is slowly getting more inclusive—too slowly—but we still have a long, long ways to go. And as long as the writing and publishing scene continues to reflect the huge power imbalances in the wider world, those of us with privilege need to stay mindful, and refuse to take on that “tour guide” role, ever.
It’s also on us to do whatever we can to promote marginalized authors, and help them to tell their stories about their lived experience and their heritage.
But at the same time, all fiction, including fiction by people from the dominant group, needs to represent the diversity of the real world. It’s essential for White authors, in particular, to include BIPOC characters in our work and to make them as recognizable and believable as any other characters. We all need to populate our worlds with people from many backgrounds, genders, sexualities, and disability statuses, without trying to tell the stories that aren’t ours to tell.
Representation without appropriation is not an end-state, but rather an ongoing process. Like many aspects of writing, it’s a ton of work, a process that never becomes easy or clear-cut—but the work pays off, in richer characters and smarter storytelling. When I write someone who comes from a very different place than me, in terms of culture or marginalization, I feel a huge responsibility to get it right, but I also feel like this story is going to sparkle more, in the end.
Research research research
The good news is, there are tons of resources out there to help us to strike that balance. The award-winning badass Nisi Shawl co-wrote a fantastic book called Writing the Other (with Cynthia Ward) and is now running online workshops about writing about other cultures and experiences, with K. Tempest Bradford and a host of other teachers. There are also a ton of great resources on anti-racism and decolonizing science fiction.
When I set out to write somebody whose life is radically different than my own, I do tons of extra research—especially if this is a major character in the story. I’ll get tons of books from the library or the local bookstore, and do a deep dive into both history and sociology. I’ll watch a ton of videos on YouTube, plus movies and TV shows on Netflix. And I’ll interview actual living people about their life experiences—and I will pay them for their time, either in money or in donations to the non-profit of their choice.
Even if my work touches on ancient history or folklore, I know that it connects directly to the people who are alive today. When you write about the future, you’re really writing about the present—and I believe the same is true when you write about the past. So even if you’re touching on ancient Chinese history, you need to understand how Chinese people in the 21st century think about their own heritage, and what it means to them. The past is always alive in the present, and the stories we tell about it matter.
I’ve talked before in these essays about how difficult it is to create characters who feel like real people, rather than stick figures or plot devices. I’ve learned the hard way that this becomes way more difficult when I’m writing about people whose experiences are radically different than my own. I’m not just talking about writing stereotypes—though, yes, I’ve written plenty of stereotypical characters. (And I’ve been lucky that people have mostly called me on them before those stories saw print.) But it’s a more global problem than that.
I have a general tendency to write flat, lifeless characters, and yet trick myself into thinking I’ve written living, breathing individuals. And the more different those characters are from myself, the worse this issue seems to become. Simply put, I have a harder time getting into the head of someone whose life is very different from mine, which means I have to work harder, but also be constantly aware of this problem.
You don’t know what you don’t know, so it’s hard to realize when you’re missing something important.
And it’s not enough for me to give a character an Asian name, and then pat myself on the back for representing Asian people in my fiction. The best fictional characters have a lived-in quality. This means they’re shaped by everything that they’ve been through, and that includes all of the experiences that come out of their own identities. So even though I don’t want to tell a story that would be better told by an Asian person, I’m always aware that I can’t truly represent people from a marginalized group if I leave out the joys and challenges they share.
For example, I’ve learned the hard way that when writing BIPOC characters, I can’t be afraid to show them facing structural barriers, or to portray their connections to their own communities. I won’t shy away from depicting the garbage they’ve had to deal with as part of their marginalization, hopefully without descending into misery porn. In the case of my story “Clover,” I found that when writing about a gay Egyptian man in North Carolina, I had to show how homophobia and Islamophobia had affected him, otherwise he wouldn’t feel like a real person. And that meant talking to plenty of my friends whose experiences could help me illuminate those things for myself.
I screw up constantly, and the only thing I can do is try to do better and to be aware of my own shortcomings as an author—and all the ways that my privilege makes me worse at writing other perspectives.
And that’s why I’m so utterly grateful for sensitivity readers. For years, I was asking my BIPOC and disabled friends to read my fiction and give me a gut-check on how I was handling characters who were closer to their experience than to mine. When I first learned about sensitivity readers, I was overjoyed that there was a phrase to describe the thing I’d been asking people to do (and in some cases, that I had been doing for others), but I was also embarrassed that I hadn’t been paying people for that work.
And you don’t even have to wait until our books are finished and polished to get some helpful input. As I mentioned, you can start talking to people early on, as part of your research. But you can also hire a developmental editor, who will work with you on your story and your characters earlier in the process, to make sure you’re not going in a direction that you’ll end up regretting.
Even when I’ve written White trans characters, I’ve made a huge effort to show those stories to other trans people, just to make sure I’m not inadvertently reproducing hurtful stereotypes or ideas about my own community. My own trans identity does not guarantee that I’ll know what might prove hurtful to other trans folk—and in fact, this has sometimes happened, especially in the stuff I wrote early on in my career.
So where is the line between representation and appropriation? It’s never an easy question, nor should it be. But I’ve found that a lot of soul-searching, and a willingness to listen, are key parts of reaching the former without straying into the latter.
A few years ago, I attended a panel at the Brooklyn Book Festival where Nelson George and Jeff Chang talked about cultural appropriation in music, which helped shape my views on appropriation in fiction. In a nutshell, they said musicians who acknowledge where they’ve gotten their sound from, and who make sure the originators of that sound get paid, are less likely to be appropriating.
In the book world, too, it’s important to think about those two things: respect and money. Who’s getting them, and who deserves more of them? In other words, support marginalized authors, especially BIPOC authors. Promote their work, celebrate them, help them—and most of all, pay them. There is no substitute for actual inclusion of marginalized voices, at every level. And never fall into the trap of thinking there should only be one token author or voice representing a whole community.
Stories only matter because they’re connected to people. There’s nothing more tragic than when someone’s story is present, but the person who actually lived that story is still locked outside.
[Note: This essay has been substantively revised and streamlined for inclusion in the upcoming book, and the revised version is presented here.]
[Update: Nisi Shawl, of Writing the Other and The History of Black Science Fiction column, continues the conversation with a response to this essay, which you can now read here.]
Charlie Jane Anders’ latest novel is The City in the Middle of the Night, which won the Locus Award for best science fiction novel. She’s also the author of All the Birds in the Sky, which won the Nebula, Crawford and Locus awards, and Choir Boy, which won a Lambda Literary Award. Plus a novella called Rock Manning Goes For Broke and a short story collection called Six Months, Three Days, Five Others. Her short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Boston Review, Tin House, Conjunctions, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Wired magazine, Slate, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed, ZYZZYVA, Catamaran Literary Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and tons of anthologies. Her short fiction has won Hugo, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus awards. Charlie Jane also organizes the monthly Writers With Drinks reading series, and co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct with Annalee Newitz. She is writing a Young Adult space fantasy trilogy, to debut in early 2021.
Interesting post! Would Robert Browning be an instructive example of what happens when a writer writes about other cultures? He often wrote about people in Italy, from their points of view in his dramatic monologues, and his book-length poem The Ring and the Book was about a Roman murder case, with most sections from the point-of-view of the characters, some of whom were the people involved in it. The Victorians are famous for glomming onto other places, perhaps particularly Italy; he and his wife Elizabeth Barrett spent most of their married life there.
I read for info i.e. what the characters are like, what happens to the characters and it’s no big deal if I don’t have a point of contact with them–I enjoy the book just as well–but now and then there will be a point of contact no matter what the genre or culture of the characters and I reckon this is where the universality of lit comes in. I’m Anglo, but when watching and then reading Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, I recognized Waverly’s experiences with her mother from my experiences with my mother. And the same goes for Rebecca Wells’ The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. We could read about other cultures from a focus on what the characters are like and what happens to them, and regard any point of contact that happens as incidental and an example of the universality of lit.
Excellent and thoughtful, as has been this entire series. I’ve been struggling many months concerning the presentation of cultures and perspectives that are not my own; and the only ‘correct’ solution I’ve found, is I must restrict my writing only to what I have personally experienced. But that can’t be right; if I am not a straight woman, that means I shouldn’t write characters who are straight women because I can’t understand their lives? I have never been to Germany, so German characters are out as I can’t authentically represent their culture; or any specific portion of their culture I was hoping to write, as ‘German’, or any culture or lifestyle is not comprised of one outlook but many? I can only write from the viewpoint of religions, or communities, or genders, or anything only if I AM those things? I am sincerely confused, and am not trying to be snarky and have no point to make as I don’t understand how I can build diverse worlds, if it is irresponsible to write of anything than the limited experiences of my life in one world. My goal is to be respectful and true to the characters I write and the cultures, backgrounds, and lives they represent; but any work consisting of only one culture from my limited experiences, would only be biography, and no world, at all.
I am cisgender, but I remember reading Trans-Sister Radio not very long after it came out (and Middlesex, which I now look askance at). JT LeRoy wasn’t on my radar until well after the truth about all that emerged, but in the meantime, Jennifer Finney Boylan’s first memoir was the turning point for me in terms of no longer reading trans experiences through a (sometimes very distorted) cis lens. A couple of things I wondered about were still pretty cis-centric, but it was a start.
I’ve been considering the broader issues here for some time now when it comes to my fiction; I have a lot of privilege relative to societal power imbalances, and my characters tend to want to be a mix of things I am and things I am not. A colleague asked me for my thoughts on this about a year ago and I said, “Well, we don’t want to bar anyone from writing about anything that isn’t exactly their own experience, because then we don’t get a mix of characters. But we also don’t want to misrepresent whole groups, or step on the toes of people who have their own stories to tell.” When sensitivity readers emerged, I felt exactly the same way: “thank goodness!”
Reverse-engineering this in others’ writing has helped me. There is one way in which I am absolutely a member of a minoritized group, and when it comes to portrayals of this group in fiction, I can darn well tell who either has life experience or has really done their homework. The second set have typically done two things: they’ve heard a lot of stories of what being a member of this group involves, and they’ve thought extensively about what this would have looked like all the way through the character’s life and how the character would perceive the world and the people around them as a result. The result transcends tokenism because it shapes even fundamental choices the character makes, including things that are subtle, and how they are viewed by the majority, and how that in turn affects their behaviour.
@2 Yeah, despite what I’m sure is the author’s best intentions, this does sound a bit like the old writing advice “only write what you know” which is great as far as it goes but I don’t have many stories to tell of a guy working at a grocery store. Well not that people want to read anyway.
Like Anders even says, it’s a line that will constantly shift. Sure some of the race issues in old episodes of Star Trek and Twilight Zone come across as a bit problematic now, but can we really say things would have been better if those white writers wouldn’t have tried at all? If you can afford it, then the sensitivity readers definitely sounds like the thing to do. If you can’t, then try to do what you can to expose yourself to as many diverse voices as possible. Television programs made by people different from you, books, podcasts, your fellow students or co-workers. Also, like Andres says, don’t try to pass off someone else’s issue as yours. For myself, I can relate in some ways to feeling dealt with along racial lines as I was the only white kid in a class of predominantly Hispanic students. I have a glimpse into what being discriminated against based on race can feel like, but that in no way equals what other groups have to go through every day with structural racism and the like, so I dare not say I personally know their struggle. Be honest with yourself about that and I think you’ll stick closer to the correct side of the line.
Finally, take The Doctor’s advice and “Be Kind”. We’re all human with our flaws and foibles and those things that make us truly special. Whether your character is a time traveling samurai or a far future starship captain or whatever else, make sure you stay away from the stereotypes. No one is ever that simple. Make sure that what you are creating couldn’t be used to demonize or other someone else. Write toward inclusion. If you’re writing a WW2 epic, make sure you show the Asian-American participation in the war. There are plenty of other types of examples, just do your best to break out of your own framework and see how diverse and connected everything truly is.
At least that’s my two cents. Sorry if any of this came off as critical toward the original article.
Same thing for me about the Asian-theme novel, although I didn’t get as far as you or have that degree of background, so probably an even better call in my case.
I’ve been wondering about the balance between cultural appropriation and representing diversity. Can I omit a diverse cast of characters on the grounds that I can’t represent their lives which I know nothing about? Seems like a cop-out. But then, when have I presumed too far that I know what their lives are like?
@5, that’s the problem isn’t it? How can one write a diverse cast when a white, straight, cis-gendered person? The answer would seem to be ‘sensitivity readers’ to check your work.
Hey, I’m sorry I don’t have time to respond individually to these comments right now, but I really appreciate all of you taking the time to post them. These comments are going to be incredibly helpful in revising this essay for the eventual book.
I obviously should have been clearer about what I was actually saying here — like I said in various places in the essay, I *do* include plenty of characters whose experience and culture are different from my own in my fiction. Tons, in fact. And often those characters have pretty major roles. I work incredibly hard to give those characters the same inner life and the same complexity as the characters whose experience is more similar to mine. Which means I do a ton of research, and talk to my friends whose identities are similar to those characters, and I often will read a ton of books and watch lots of documentaries.
I will make sure to include tons of details that anchor those characters in their own cultures and lived experiences. And I won’t shy away from depicting the garbage they’ve had to deal with as part of their marginalization, hopefully without descending into misery porn. In the case of my story “Clover,” I found that when writing about a gay Egyptian man in North Carolina, I had to show how homophobia and Islamophobia had affected him, otherwise he wouldn’t feel like a real person. I was so grateful to Saladin Ahmed and a few other friends for helping me with that story.
As I say above, where I personally draw the line is: I will include an Asian character in a major role, in a story about fighting off alien invaders, and I will do my best to get into that character’s head and depict them as a fully-realized, complex person who is shaped by many things including their culture. But I *won’t* write a story that is all about Asian culture, because someone who grew up in that culture can do a much better job than I could. I won’t try to write the definitive story of growing up Asian or living in an immigrant family, and I won’t try to use Asian culture and folklore as the basis of my story.
I feel like it’s essential and vital for us, as White authors, to include BIPOC people in our work and to show their humanity. That involves a lot of work, and a ton of listening, and plenty of research. And lots willingness to pay attention when people tell us that we’ve screwed up. But we can include that level of representation in our work, *without* writing the stories that aren’t really ours to tell.
Does that make more sense? Again, thank you so much for chiming in — I’m going to make sure the final version of the essay includes more clarity on this.
I have an honest question, I think. What’s the underlying premise about the purpose of reading and writing fiction?
Take the novel Frankenstein, for instance, which celebrates reading as a technology of empathy and sentimentality.
For that reason, the novel includes several moments where the Creature demonstrates the power of fiction to enable us to, so it’s often said, “walk in another person’s shoes.” For instance, the Creature secretly watches the De Lacey family and, despite their significant differences, nevertheless “feels” what they “feel.”
Or consider how the Creature relates his experience of reading Young Werther and Paradise Lost–especially the latter. The experience of reading enables the Creature to imagine precedents for his own feelings and experiences in fundamentally different beings. After all, at least Satan had friends.
Of course, the endpoint of this depiction of reading in Shelley’s novel is us, the readers of Frankenstein. The Creature tells his story to Walton who is, in turn, sufficiently moved by this tale of loneliness and despair that he ignores Viktor’s dying wish: kill it. By implication, we too are sufficiently moved by the Creature’s words and, as it has been argued, moved by Shelley’s ability to estrange the experience of motherhood or womanhood into the figure of a monster.
I think that there are plenty of problems with Shelley’s take on reading (or, at the very least, what I think is her take). But does this new program for reading and writing produce anything as robust as Shelley’s take? Is it consistent with it? Does it amend it to recognize BIPOC? Or does it instead try to alter how we understand the purpose of storytelling and reading?
If you’d like to respond to the essay above and take part in the discussion in the comments, please be aware of our commenting guidelines and keep the tone of your comments civil and constructive. No one is being oppressed or victimized by writing advice, and bad faith straw man arguments are not a helpful way to engage with the ideas expressed above.
@10 — have I told you lately how much I appreciate you? So, so much.
@8 – I think that the purpose of writing and reading fiction is primarily entertainment. I always say that I became a writer because my singing voice isn’t good enough and I can’t dance that great. If I could sing and dance, or play an instrument super well, I’d be a musician instead. :p
But obviously, the central premise of these essays is that writing (and reading) can help save your life, when times are tough, by giving you an escape and letting you build a fictional world to hide inside when the real world is garbage. And by letting you talk about scary stuff without touching on it directly. And I also think one of the major pleasures of reading (and writing) is getting to experience life through someone else’s senses, and through another consciousness. Including the lives of people who are very different than ourselves.
I don’t just advocate writing a diverse cast of characters because we need more representation in our fiction, but because it makes the storytelling better. And richer, and more exciting. When I write someone who comes from a very different place than me, in terms of culture or marginalization, I feel a huge responsibility to get it right, but I also feel like this story is going to sparkle more, in the end, because I got to identify with someone whose perspective is so different.
Again, I’m so grateful for the comments on this piece, because this is all going to be incredibly helpful when I revise it for the book version.
Since you seem interested in other perspectives, I want to bring up Mulan- the animated version. Without a doubt, this was not authentic Chinese and tons of potential problems, but I have read an interesting commentary on what Mulan meant to Chinese-American children. One of the comments was that the hair cutting scene in China just confused people, but Asian children in the US strongly connected with that scene. For those children, that moment represented a mixture of the two cultures. I married a Chinese man and so the experience of trying to fit into two cultures resonates. I am raising daughters who are still part of Chinese culture as well as American and that hybridized version we see in Mulan is the life they are trying to live. I saw a great Bollywood version of pride and prejudice and I didn’t think oh, how dare a non-English person do a retelling. Instead, I enjoyed the story and the new take. There is a value in seeing our familiar stories retold and reshaped by different voices. Mulan allowed that for my daughters and it allowed them a way to share a cultural milestone with their peers. It elevated the poem we used to read to them to a part of their culture that they could share with their classmates, something they could bond over and not just another way they were different. Obviously it should be down respectfully, but I think If we restrict who can include elements of a culture, that culture will never be part of mainstream life, and my daughters won’t have the experience of seeing retelling of their stories from new voices, as I do with the fairy tales I grew up with. I’d like to think there is room for many voices, with many stories. My daughters’ love for the animated Mulan didn’t change the poem we read her as a bedtime story (which was accompanied by classic Chinese art). It just made her appreciate it even more. I do strongly believe we need more writers of color, and maybe I am naive to believe that we could have more writers of color and still have white writers telling stories outside their ethnicity, but I would like to believe their is room for both.
I’m a bit confused at how to walk this line. In order to write for a character of another race/culture, one should give them the same inwardness as any other character in your work. However, to do so, requires that you be in that space. Sensitivity readers can point out when you cross a line in terms of including experiences which you should not- but how do you replace that hole in your narrative, other than to have someone else write it for you- someone else who wouldn’t necessarily have the same take on your work as you, the author?
Hi Charlie,
I must say I love the intertwining of magic and science in your novela I love your stories. Looking forward to the next.
Regarding this subject, I am from Spain, where many immigrant people from all Africa try to arrive after crossing the sea to get refuge. I had this image of a black girl, floating in the sea, waiting to die, and I started to do research. I came upon a lot of legends and terrible things that happen in Congo. I have been working on this novel for four years and now it is time to publish it, but I am worried about cultural appropriation. I agree about what you say of white people leading other people to have only one version of this story, bit nobody is talking about the witch children, who are tortured because they thing they possesed. Nobody is talking about the Luba people, an empire that was erased because of colonialism, and its legends. Is it cultural appropriation is we talk about those who don’t have the means to talk by themselves? Cannot that give some interest to the stories that others can be writing about these matters? I must say I feel conflicted about publishing this novel, bit I couldn’t not have written it. I would love to know your opinion.
@14 — I think it is pretty confusing right now, and there’s no way around that. As I say in the essay, everybody needs to figure out where the line is for themselves, but you can involve a sensitivity reader pretty early in the writing process, as a “developmental editor.” Where I personally see the line is that I would write about an Asian person in the context of a story about starships and robots, and I would try to give that Asian person a full and realistic sense of self — including what’s going through their head, and how their culture has shaped them. But I personally wouldn’t set out to write a story where the point of it is to explore Asian culture or to introduce Asian culture to my fellow White people. Does that make sense?
I think the “developmental editor” thing is an important piece, and I should probably talk about that in the final version of this essay. Again, these comments are proving incredibly helpful!
I enjoyed this essay, and when we are talking about modern characters, and stories based on the now, or the last century or so, I agree wholeheartedly. But find I increasingly don’t agree with the OwnVoices argument, because it is not only artistically stifling, but runs the risk of creating a new kind of parochialism and stereotyping, that is really just more concerned with having more non-White authors published than anything else. And while I certainly agree in that objective, we need to do it for honest reasons — there should be more room at the table for authors of all backgrounds, but they should get to write about whatever they want. Because NONE of us “know” the past. That’s the lesson of academic history.
Although I am White, Italian-American, have degrees in Medieval history and have spent two decades researching, teaching and reconstructing the martial arts of early Renaissance Italy, I am NOT a 15th century Italian. I am not even Italian, I am Italian-AMERICAN. My grandparents were from Italy, I am from Chicago. Yet, I probably *am* more qualified to write about 15th c Italy, especially its martial culture, than many people, in fact, more so than many *Italians*, not because of my ethnicity, but because of my academic background, my avocation and decades of reading about that time and place, visiting locations, and the two-decades I have spent becoming a well-known researcher and writer about the martial art of Renaissance Italy.
The sad truth is that many people be they Americans, Japanese, African, Italian, German, etc, are not well-educated in their own history or how *culture* changes over time. Modern Italians are quite different than pre-unification Italians — an even only a little more than a century old — and radically different than those of the Renaissance. And, much as those of us of Italian descent like to pretend we go right back to Republican Rome, that is not true.
This doesn’t suddenly change by changing race. As someone who was also for a long time immersed in Asian Martial arts, there are many Japanese who know far less about pre-Meji Japan, and have less of an understanding of how much their own lens into the world of the bushi is the product of fascist-era myth-making and post-war pop-culture, than non-Japanese practitioners, researchers and scholars. Indeed, entire lines of centuries old traditions of martial arts, tea ceremony, etc are faced with allow headmastership to pass into non-Japanese hands, and perhaps change at some fundamental level or die — some are taking a chance in the former, others are choosing the latter. But the point remains: for those “intangible cultural assets” they are divorced from modern Japanese.
Likewise, right now, some of the best scholarship into pre-contact Mesoamerican daily life and culture is being done buy a mixture of Mexican and decidedly White Americans; and the culture of indigenous Mesoamericans is both decidedly different from that of more mixed-race, “mainstream” Mexicans, but also only dimly reflective of what the culture of Mayan, Mixtec, Zapotec, etc., city dwellers pre-contact might have been like. Being Mexican, or even a living Yucatec or Tzotzil doesn’t inherently tie you to that past in a way that means you can write about it convincingly our “authentically” (assuming one had the skills to do so, which is a different argument).
Obviously, writing about the Tzotzil experience in modern or near-modern Mexico, would be something altogether different. But that’s my point: No one alive today is an ancient Roman, Hellenistic Greek, Sassanid Persian, Ming Chinese, Sengoku-era Japanese, etc., and as such, those eras exist for all of us. I am just as interested in seeing a Chinese author’s take on Hellenistic Egypt as I am a Greek author writing a Qin-era fantasy, and it becomes its own form of stereotyping to say that isn’t possible: I could only possibly write authentically about long dead cultures because I look like the people who lived in those cultures and my own culture is descended from them (possibly) via the winding, twisted road of history.
That is historical fiction/fantasy — secondary worlds take that even a step further removed from what is real, and a detailed world that has Asian inspirations but is not simply “fictitious China” should be just as open to a White writer as the way Manga and Anime routinely uses Western themes and institutions (including some pretty garbled understandings of Catholicism) to create new worlds of their own. That is part of the creative foment, and sensitivity readers play a part in it to make sure writers aren’t inadvertently mocking or stereotyping the cultures they draw inspiration from, not to gatekeep them entirely.
Otherwise, where does it end? Being White, do I get to write about anything “White”? Does that somehow give me magical equal insight into Anglo-Saxon England, the American west, the Polish Commonwealth and Celtic Iberia? If I am Chinese, is all of Asia now “on-limits”, including Polynesia, India, southeast Asia (and if not, who is going to tell Ken Liu?) — because this is a world of vastly different cultures, ethnicities and histories. Certainly, there is a vast difference between the cultures of North, West, East and South Africa, and an African American is just as disassociated with that as I am from Europe. If we accept that race is a construct — and it is, there is really only one human *species* with various morphological subtypes — and our goal is to quite stereotyping by race, then we are divided by ethnicity. And if we can only write about our ethnicity and its history, we are going to be a much sadder world artistically.
To be clear, I don’t think your essay advocates all of that; I read it more as the idea that people need to ask themselves these questions and answer the “why am I the best to write this story” before they start down that path. If you decided not to write your Asian fantasy, that’s your choice, but I don’t think was the ONLY choice, or the ethically NECESSARY choice and I think this is an argument that IS increasingly being made, mistaking inclusivity and representation with a new form of stereotyping.
Anyway, some food for thought. Thank you for this thought-provoking series.
@17 — there’s a lot to unpack here, and I don’t quite have the time to respond to all of your points right now. But let me just say that I think you may be somewhat off base to think of this purely in terms of cultural knowledge. People might not know every tiny detail of medieval Eurasian history, but they still respond to seeing people who look like themselves, and belong to cultures and experiences like theirs, on screen or on the page. And that representation affects how people see themselves in the here and now, which is why #ownvoices is so important in making sure that people feel like they can control how their own experience is represented.
And just as much as we always say that science fiction set in the future is really about the present, the exact same thing goes for stories set in the past, even the distant past. When you write about 30th century Mars, you’re really writing about Earth in 2020. And the same thing goes for if you’re writing about 12th century Sicily. It’s always about the here and now. My mom is a historian, and we talk frequently about how our understanding of the past changes radically as certain pieces of evidence and information get brought to the surface, or else de-emphasized. Historical “accuracy” is a moving target.
Bottom line: even academics are recognizing the importance of including representatives of a particular culture in scholarship about that culture’s history, and for popular fiction, it’s even more important to make sure these stories are being told by the people who have the most stake in them.
Thanks for responding, and for the kind words!
@charlie – Thanks for your thoughtful response. I’d never heard the term “developmental editor”, only “sensitivity reader”. With that piece in place, it makes a lot more sense, and I think that an article on something like that and how to find resources would be very helpful to those struggling with this.
Thanks again!
@20 – Oh yay, I’m so glad that was helpful! I’m definitely going to include that in the final essay. Good luck with your writing!
I think this is an important discussion, and I value respecting people’s history and heritage, but I don’t think that choosing to not write about a topic that you are trying to do with respect (and things like sensitivity readers, which I think is a great tool for trying to treat people with respect and sympathy) helps to share the authentic stories and voices. I’m not a writer, but as a reader, what I see is success leads to more success as opposed to books fighting for the same attention. Someone writes a book about vampires, even without much research, and you get a wave of vampire books.
I saw an above person talking about Mulan, and the value they saw in that for representation for Chinese Americans, and I think that has a lot of value. I know I rarely see my own personal background depicted by people outside of it, and conversely, I see a lot of people with that background writing about a diverse range of characters outside of it.
The example I saw and liked, while outside fiction, was Paul Simon when he grew interested in African Music: He did his research, he gave credit, he as much as possible collaborated with people who were from the culture that created his inspirations (easier in musical group performance), and he used his fame and success to help promote those collaborators.
Hello, all–we will be closing comments on this thread over the long holiday weekend and will reopen the discussion next week, when the moderation team can continue to give this conversation the close attention it requires. Thanks for reading, and have a safe and happy weekend.
Very interesting read, and topical. We are as writers and filmmakers in a period of vast awareness and self assessment. I concur with your general energy in this post, but as someone who read the JT Leroy books years ago (enby femme here btw). It was my understanding that Laura Albert was gender queer before the ‘non-binary’ term was popularised, being gender fluid, queer, or non binary all falls under the trans umbrella anyway, but it’s disingenuous for us to believe as writers who can only write who we are. But in this case, it’s very clear that the terminology for what Albert identified as wasn’t quite in the cultural vocabulary let alone Albert’s. I always feel she’s done an injustice in these articles, so just felt I must point this out. Her books spoke to an entire generation of young trans and gender variant people, people with trauma, people who saw themselves in her writing. The truth always has power on it. I still see the series as more authentic than what is on most people’s shelves.
I look forward to reading more of your articles, this has been illuminating perspective wise.