Cultural Appropriation and fandom vs authors & critics

[deborah]

I've just been catching up on a month of old ChildLit messages, and current context is making me notice something unpleasant. When there's an accusation of cultural appropriation in LJ fandom, fans immediately fall on the side of saying "How dare those of you with white privilege tell PoC their claims of having been harmed are false?" Whereas on ChildLit, accusations of cultural appropriation lead to a massive pileup on -- well, pretty much always on Debbie Reese. I don't always agree with Debbie, but the constant claims over there that her understanding of Native appropriation is wrong leave a vile taste in my mouth. Especially when contributors hit multiple bingo squares:

• You're telling us what we can't write!
• You're telling us what we can't read!
• It's just fiction.
• No, it's different when it's a non-Native [in this case Jewish] story that's mistold; that's BAD.
• Isn't it racist to say you need Native clearance to tell this story?
• But the author had anti-racist intentions!
• You say that the characters are portrayed unrealistically as members of their culture, which means you want a sterotypical portrayal, which is racist.

steepholm, diceytillerman, fjm, other ChildLitters, am I wrong? I know I'm a month out of date with my reading, but it really seems sketchy, how that conversation usually goes. And it happens again and again. Is fandom really that much more capable of seeing its own white privilege than ChildLit (which I know is not monolithically white any more than fandom is)?

Comments

[deborah]

I think you can't make general comments about standards for genre outside of specifics. If I write a wildly inaccurate story about the Holocaust or the American Revolution, as long as the inaccuracies are incorrect representations out of truths widely known (rather than inaccuracies which correspond with commonly believed urban legends), I'm not going to change what people know about the Holocaust. If I write a wildly inaccurate story about the Vermont eugenics project, I am telling the only story people are ever likely to hear about the Vermont eugenics project. Presented as historical fiction, it will stand in as history because it will be the only information the readers will ever get about the actual history. As you say with Catherine Called Birdie, nobody minded a little bit of inaccuracy about gender presentation given how much you can expect readers to understand medieval Europe already. I think that higher expectation for lesser known topics is entirely justified.

The Prydain Chronicles do not even extratextually draw any connections to the Mabinogion except in as much as they use similar names. I think it's very different to draw elements from a mythology than it is to set a fiction in a historical time.

Moreover, in the context of this particular book we are dealing with a historical time which is recent, little-known, and refers to atrocities committed on people who are still today suffering the results of those atrocities. There's a big difference between that and making Arawn a bad guy, or letting Catherine had a 20th-century perspective on individuality and gender.

I think if the book had been powerful, beautiful, and moving, the inaccuracy might have been even more important. Because then the book would have had readers, lots of them.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you. I admit to looking for reassurance that it was reasonable to have different standards for mainstreamed subjects than for marginalized ones. I'll have to think about the differences between drawing elements from mythology and setting a story in an historical time. I would feel very, very, uncomfortable if Alexander had rummaged through the a First People's cultural background to pick up a few names and images for his stories, and for me what is important is something you mentioned in your OP--doing harm and defending it as art. Dickinson might have been offended by Alexander's tactics, but I couldn't believe that he was "hurt." This isn't true for other victims of cultural appropriation.

[writinghood.livejournal.com]

> The Prydain Chronicles do not even extratextually draw any connections to the Mabinogion except in as much as they use similar names. I think it's very different to draw elements from a mythology than it is to set a fiction in a historical time.
Agreed. Also, FWIW, extratextually, Lloyd Alexander did more to cut the connections than to draw them: always said very clearly in the forewords of his books that Prydain was not Wales, although inspired by his love for that country, and that he was not retelling Welsh mythology, and that, among other things, Arawn was considerably less villainous and Gwydion rather less heroic in Welsh mythology than they were in his books. It's hard to imagine how he could be any more explicit about the fact that, while he loves the mythology and was inspired by it, he is not attempting to co-opt another culture's stories, or much clearer about what kind of liberties he was taking. And that information was in the forewords, not an afterword, so I, at least, went into the stories when I was a kid already knowing they weren't retellings.

Disclosure: Alexander's my favorite author (tied with DWJ); the Prydain Chronicles are about as close to my favorite books in the world as you can get, and I adore the man and have trouble hearing a word against him. I try to be objective, but everybody's got an author or book they feel that way about, I'm sure. (I'm sad to hear that Peter Dickinson didn't think they should be published. Well, the man's not right about everything. When I met him, I told him how much I'd been impressed by a story he'd written, and described it, and he denied having written it. I had to go home and look it up to make sure I wasn't going crazy, but there it was, in a little-read anthology of short stories by his wife. He'd just forgotten about it. :)

[(Anonymous)]

I think an earlier response of mine was eaten by the blogosphere. I also come down on the side of higher expectations for less well known subjects. I am still considering the question of myths versus historical settings. I don't think there's a difference in expectations there for me. I love the Prydain books, but I know that I would feel very, very uncomfortable if Alexander had rummaged through the cultural framework of a First Nation to find the inspiration for his story. I'm leery of giving something a pass just because I like it; that's exactly why I doublecheck my love of the Prydain books.

I go back to your original post and the idea that you shouldn't do harm and justify it as "art." I can imagine the Dickinson was offended by Alexander's work, but I cannot see that he was "hurt." I have to believe that an Abenaki looking at his myths used in a similar way would have a different experience. I think the difference between mainstream and marginalized is more important than the difference between myth vs. history.

(And I *still* think that we shouldn't use fiction as a substitute for history in the classroom. As a supplement, yes. In place of non-fiction, no.)