What is the main point Shriver makes about cultural appropriation?
Shriver’s main point about cultural appropriation is essentially that it is a concept that limits writers and contradicts the whole purpose of fiction writing. She believes that although people need to be mindful about the fact that what they do can be seen as insensitive, cultural appropriation is taking sensitivity too far. Without the appropriation of culture, fiction can never be successful in creating characters and telling a story. Shriver believes that a character or person’s identity is more than just their race, culture or sexual orientation. Additionally, she says that cultural appropriation has made it significantly harder to create unique stories as it restricts them from exploring other cultures.
What evidence does she use to substantiate her claims?
Shriver mentions that in the past, novels like Little Bee, wherein Chris Cleave, a white male, writes from the perspective of a 14-year old Nigerian girl, raise questions like, what are the boundaries that writers need to remain within while creating a story? In the novel, it is evident that Chris Cleave does “exploit” the life of the girl, but the girl is his creation and as a writer, shouldn’t Cleave have the freedom to do what he wants with his character? Additionally, she mentions that there are numerous novels in this world that are based off of characters that are murderers, for example a book that she wrote, and clarifies that the writers of these books are likely not murderers. Their job is to provide entertainment, not represent the murderer population “accurately”.
How does she view the role of the writer (in relation to this debate)?
Shriver believes that writers of fiction novels should have the freedom to explore whatever character and experiences they want and build a story, regardless of race, income, gender or age. Whether that makes a successful story or not cannot be determined and that’s what writing is about. When a writer writes fiction, they are not necessarily accurately representing a culture or community; their role is to tell a story, not lay out facts. Shriver says that according to her understanding of a law professor’s definition of cultural appropriation, (“taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorised use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”), writers should not be subjected to same level of contempt when they appropriate for fiction. According to her, writers are paid to “step into someone else’s shoes” and create a story.
Are there aspects of her argument with which you agree or disagree?
I think that Lionel Shriver makes a logical argument in the sense that fiction is not and should not be an accurate representation of reality. Writing is an art and a writer should have the freedom to write whatever they want without any filters or restrictions. A writer, however, should be mindful of their readers and how they might take the content that is being published. The problem arises when a large amount of people start expecting a piece of literature to accurately represent their culture and criticise the writer for failing at that. I agree that writing is not perfect and no one should hold it up to that regard. However, if a writer’s intention or message states that their piece of writing will be representative of a specific culture and they are not in a position to fully understand that culture, they can and should be held responsible. If a piece of literature is about the struggles of being a woman in society today and the writer is a man, the writer should understand that even though they can and should write through the perspective of whoever they want to, they cannot and will never be able to accurately represent their character and should expect to be held accountable for stereotypes etc. that might offend a marginalised group of society.
