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Author
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Comment
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Anansia
Registered User
(7/5/03 1:39 pm)
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White people using stories from other cultures
Hi to you all at this great board. Lots of interesting info & smart discussion here. I'm seeking opinions / discussion on use of stories from cultures different to your own. I'm Australian and I've noticed that fantasy writers here (mostly / all anglo-celtic like me) all seem to draw inspiration from celtic & european folklore, which is fine, but not exactly getting to grips with our current environment. It seems that using Indigenous or non european sources has become a taboo for us, seen as exploitative & racist.
I'm wondering what other people's opinions are? Are there time when it's been done respectfully? Should we just totally keep hands off? If so, where does that leave us in our diverse and complicated world?
For e.g. Terri in The Woodwife you appear to draw on native American mythology, but I don't know if that's your heritage. Do you get flak for it?
My interest is in using those stories as a means of writing about multiculturalism and racism and building relationships across difference.
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Nalo
Registered User
(7/7/03 12:16 pm)
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Re: White people using stories from other cultures
I've got my own personal rules of thumb for this, and they are situation-specific and capricious, and they are evolving. In other words, I think it's an important issue and I go by my own conscience as best as I'm able.
I do strongly believe that anyone should be able to make art about anything. I also think that artists have a responsibility to be, well, responsible. And I know only too well the phenomenon of white (and other) folks taking something from a marginalized or oppressed culture, exoticizing and/or cutesifying it, and capitalizing off it in ways that cut out the creators of that culture.
For myself, rather than blanket self-censorship, I try to think through it before I use folk stories based in another culture. I ask myself questions such as whether there many are writers from that culture who have been able to get their own folk-based stories published. If I can only think of one or two, or none at all, I'll usually keep hands off. I might keep my ears open for ways that I can foster the work of writers from those cultures. I'd say that Mike Resnick does something similar to this. I don't know of any East African science fiction writers, and that hasn't stopped Mike from basing his work there, but Mike has been extremely supportive and encouraging to emerging black science fiction writers when he's come across them. It's a nice boost to get that support from someone with his clout in the field.
If I'm going to write about/from a marginalized/oppressed culture, I try to educate myself as much as possible from within that culture, so that my depiction can be as understanding and respectful as I can make it. And if the work I write gets published, I try to acknowledge my sources. I had to deal with this recently. My new novel contains a section in 18th C. Haiti, a culture about which I know little, and which gets hugely misrepresented, particularly with respect to vodun. I had to do massive amounts of research, and then I found some Haitian scholars who were willing to vett (is that the term?) my work. I can't thank them enough, but I sure as heck made sure I did thank them in my acknowledgements.
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CrCeres
Unregistered User
(7/7/03 12:36 pm)
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Other cultures as influence
ceres42@nospam.yahoo.com
Although there may be a "white supremacy/inferiority/respect" thing going on with all those authors out there, I doubt that such a thing is the reason for the great usage of European stories.
This is an example: In our culture music is based on an eight note scale that repeats. By the time a person is two they can recognize octaves and melody. In other cultures though the musical scale is based on a different separation of notes, resulting in what may sound like random noise to us but melodious song to them.
Stories I think are much the same. We've learned to recognize the boy-meets-girl-have-adventures-get-married type of story as the typical story that resonates most strongly. Lacking exposure to stories from other places, we recognize European stories as what we are familiar with.
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RymRytr1
Registered User
(7/7/03 1:21 pm)
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Re: Other cultures as influence
CrCeres puts it so plainly! It is a matter of what/how we grew up, and what we have learned since then. One can only write about what one knows (about). I have just a bit of First American in me and my Trilogy (first 2 chapters and a few bits and pieces) just sits. Four years now. I started the fire with the spark and burned up all my kindling, but now realize that I don't have the necessary wood pile (knowledge) to continue. Reason: I wasn't raised "Indian". I was raised as an off-shoot of German (Bavarian) and Irish roots.
As for being white and writing about the Samoan Culture, it would be ludicrous, unless I submerged myself in the writings of others, first.
There is a Hiker in Oregon that has just published his first book: "Hiking Oregon". He has hiked 1,500 miles a year. Filled note book after note book. Finally after 10-15 years, he publishes. Why? He knows his stuff.
To come back to the original point, we shouldn't avoid writing about
another culture, if we know of what we speak.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(7/7/03 2:08 pm)
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Interesting thread
It is interesting to note how much effort is going on here to avoid absconding with others' folktales. While I agree that this is a good idea, I am reminded that there is constant discussion on this board about the obscurity of the original sources of many European folktales. Some are surely Asian and African in origin. One might say that the history of folktelling includes borrowing and adapting others' tales for one's own use.
That being said, I think if you can recognize the source of a tale, it is important to acknowledge/cite it. To the extent that you veer from the original, it is nice to recognize that as well - in a forward or footnote perhaps. It is, of course, impossible to understand completely another culture - even if you live among it for years. So no matter what you do with the tale, it will, in a sense be your own. What I think people object to the most is when an original, inaccurate or compeltely changed version becomes the "known" or "recognized" version. To understand this, all you need to do is read the animosity of various board participants, myself included, towards some Disney versions of fairytales.
If you are trying to accurately represent a tale/culture, it is of course advisable to have a "techinical" advisor to help you understand where you have just missed the boat because, no matter how careful you are, you will undoubtedly make a few errors.
Jess
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(7/8/03 9:58 pm)
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Yes, I think so
It's a terrible shame if we lose those stories from Indian culture (or other cultures) because non-Indians, which is just about everybody, aren't allowed to discuss them. They are a gift to the world.
...and I would be very leery of screwing them up. And I will be. I intend a novel with Indians, whites, blacks, Jews, Catholics, Protestants in it. I need these groups because I want to talk about culture clash. No author can be all of them. I'm afraid of making stupid mistakes. I'll be needing a lot of help.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(7/11/03 2:02 pm)
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Mojo
Nalo invited me and Andy Duncan to contribute stories to her anthology, Mojo:Conjure Stories. I believe she anticipated taking flak from some arenas for doing so, and I don't know if she has, but if so I think it's unwarranted.
I've been asked already if I felt as though I were expropriating, and whether the question arose of "Do I have the right?" First, I never consider it expropriating to write about a culture I'm not part of, because I'm not trying to dispossess anyone of anything.
But that means the burden is on me to do all I can to get the material, the essence, the voice as good as can be, no matter what material I'm pouring into the mix. So I guess I think about the "right" to use the material only in the sense that I want to be fair to it. That's true for retelling fairy tales, borrowing whole story structures as templates or simply referencing the material within a larger whole. It has to be done with a certain element of respect for the original.
Greg
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Nav
Unregistered User
(7/12/03 12:29 pm)
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I'd hate to think...
...about a world where Joseph Campbell had never been allowed to write about world myth.
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Nalo
Registered User
(7/13/03 11:31 am)
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Re: I'd hate to think...
We're not talking about being "allowed to" (or "prevented from," for that matter) take material from oppressed cultures. We're talking about being honest with ourselves as we can about how and why we're doing it. Which ultimately is the kind of skill that a writer needs to develop anyway.
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Nalo
Registered User
(7/13/03 10:31 pm)
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Re: Mojo (long)
...and great stories you both gave me, too, Greg.
I invited a number of non-black people to submit stories to _Mojo: Conjure Stories._ Some of them did, and some of them declined on the grounds that they wanted to make room for black writers, since mojo, ouanga, root-working, obeah, etc. are African diasporic phenomena and black writers are underrepresented in SF/F/H. I thought that was an honourable and decent decision on the part of those writers who declined, and I respect it. As the editor of that anthology i took on a similar responsibility, because I think it's important. I have seen SF and fantasy anthologies about particular cultures that contain not a single piece of writing by someone from that culture. I understand how that can happen, especially in the older anthologies (there are a handful more people of colour publishing in SF/F/H now, so there are a few more choices than there were in the past), but I didn't want to replicate that scenario if I could possibly help it. I had to find a way to reconcile my view that anyone can make art about anything with my belief that writers from underrepresented cultures need to be given a voice, *especially* when it's their cultures we're using to tell our stories. In SF/F/H community, we are very fond of saying that we don't see race. I've learned that being blind to race sadly often means also being blind to racial inequities. You can't change an inequity if you refuse to see it happening.
I thought long and hard about the process of inviting submissions to Mojo: I wanted excellent stories, and I did not want an all white or white-with-token-person-of-colour anthology, which is what usually happens. It would have been all the more sad for it to happen in anthology *about* a black diasporic phenomenon.
So I figured out my M.O. When I was making the list of writers I wanted to invite to submit stories, I first started with all the talented black writers I knew who I believed could write me a brilliant mojo story. The list included some people who are not genre writers, but who I knew could write fantastical stories and thereby introduce readers in the genre to some writers they might not know. With that list of black writers alone, and because I was willing to think beyond the usual suspects, I had almost enough numbers to guarantee a solid anthology. Then I added to the list people like Greg Frost, Andy Duncan (Jane, I did invite you too, didn't I, and Terri?), Neil Gaiman, Jennifer Stevenson, Barbara Hambly, Ellen Klages; great writers who I know take their writing and its social implications seriously. I knew the racial identities of some of those folks, and some I did not. That was the point at which I could be colour blind, because I had already taken pains to make sure that I had included in my list some good black writers. When I got the submissions, I then needed only to look for strong stories among them which would serve the anthology well. I had no idea how the percentages would turn out with respect to the races of the writers.
And yes, I did expect that i would get some flak about Mojo because there are non-black writers in it, and I still may. If I had blindly set out to preserve the status quo, I think i would deserve some of that flak. But I deliberately tried to create conditions for the anthology that would make equality and inclusivity more possible *and* have a damned good anthology. I think i achieved what I set out to do.
One more thing I want to say: when I talk about people writing with sensitivity and respect when they're using material from under- or misrepresented communities, I'm not talking about using kid gloves, or writing all the characters from that community as angels. Uncle Mention in Andy Duncan's Mojo story is sure no angel. And Elliot Fintushel's Mojo story "White Man's Trick" is an uncomfortable, disturbing story, perhaps because it refuses to sugar-coat its black people.
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(7/14/03 11:20 am)
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YES
Yes, Nalo, you did ask. And I had hoped to write one based on the Salem Witch Trials. Got a nice first page done. and then...the story stalled. So I never got anything to you.
But that you asked--full points. This is still a difficult subject.
Jane
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NAV
Unregistered User
(7/14/03 7:48 pm)
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Nalo
My use of the term "allowed" is relevant because ultimately in a society that thinks that one culture writing about another is "unauthentic" or "racist," allowance = acceptance. If it isn't accepted, it isn't read, hence it isn't published, or, if you will, allowed, not by law, but by the masses. And that was a part of the original question. I used Campbell because of his great contributions to how we understand myth and the evolution of myth. I could name a hundred fiction authors of the past who, if writing today, would be branded "racist." And I'm not talking about the ones who acually were, like H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and even Tolkien. Thank God Lord of the Rings was published before the 21st century!
As far as fiction goes, I have read a lot of attacks on authors by agenda groups for "daring" to write about someone else's culture. Hence, when someone does, they have to pander to that culture to the point where it reads more like an essay on the wonderfulness of being a certain ethnic group rather than just telling a story. If this is the point of the story, fine, but it is generally jarring as hell, and pretty common.
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Nalo
Registered User
(7/15/03 8:03 am)
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Re: Nalo
The privileging of mainstream voices over other voices is systemic and happens all the time. And if/when there are a handful of noisy people working against that kind of cultural imperialism to try to bring us more of the diversity of voices and experiences that enriches literature, well, bravo to them. They're vastly outnumbered and they've got an uphill battle. From my perspective as a greedy reader, bringing more authentic voices to the table means even more stories from even more places. Yum.
And yes, people who set themselves up as cultural police are sometimes wrong-headed in their approach. Personally, I'd rather see more voices being included than any being excluded. But that doesn't make the whole principle of having a conscience when taking stories from marginalized cultures a bad one.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(7/15/03 9:17 am)
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Every voice is different
Nalo is so right that the more voices we hear the better because every voice brings its own view whether it is from the inside or the outside of a culture. It speaks with the voice of its generation, and its own individual experience.
Regarding the "black" voice or the "African-American" voice, there is no one voice. My neighbors before were all black, but one was a family of immigrants from Haiti, one was a young, single business woman, and one was an older family, grown children, entreprenuers and a teacher who were from South. These men and women had such different experiences and different voices. If you asked each of them to describe his culture or to tell his folktales, you would have had 5 completely different stories. And if you had talked to non-college educated black people of the otherwise similar backgrounds, chances are you would have gotten yet another five perspective. In other words, we are all people and our "culture" in some cases is only a family or a person deep, but may reflect other, broader values too.
By taking the tales of another culture, you bring your own perspective to the tale. In some ways, it may be more true as sometimes it is easier to see things from the outside than when you are living it. It can be done very well (think "Porgy and Bess") or not so well. On the other hand, it may be hard to express the intensity of that culture. It is always a good idea to research and have someone that you trust from within the culture to help you.
I have a character in my slowly progressing novel who is from Taiwan. I have created her, in large part, from comments that a close friend of mine who is Taiwanese has made about the strengths and weaknesses of her generation of women in Taiwan - from her perspective. My friend loves the character, but an American friend who read it thought the character was racist. I have yet to make changes to the character, these go into a specific file for comments and edits, but I have noted the two different views. This is a very difficult thing to do.
Jess
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Gregor9
Registered User
(7/15/03 10:51 am)
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Re: every voice is different
Jess,
You're absolutely right, this is a very difficult thing to do.
The story I wrote for Nalo is a first person narrative, so as you say the voice becomes terribly critical. Because the character is, for most of the story, part of the Gullah culture, I tried iniitially to have him tell the story in Gullah dialect. But on the printed page, this quickly became impossible to do, as the dialect looked and sounded like an extreme racial stereotype. It forced me to reconsider how to tell the story, which in the end made the story better; but it could as easily have derailed it.
With dialects in general I've always subscribed to the "less is more" theory, that often the arrangement of the speech, the cadence of it, conveys far more of the oddness and flavor than trying to write the words in a dialect. ("Aye, cap'n, ah don' think the ship kin take it!") But that's just me.
Greg
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Nav
Unregistered User
(7/15/03 8:51 pm)
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Nalo
I couldn't agree more. As one who has read more outside the mainstream than inside, I am quite glad that those marginalized voices are heard. The more the merrier. I'm not sure they are actually non-mainstream anymore, but things come up from under the surface continuously. I remember reading "Sounder" and "Farewell To Manzanar" in school, but was never assigned Lovecraft or Dunsany. I always looked at that stuff as the underground, which is ever changing.
My original post was trying to keep within the idea of "white" people writing other cultures literature, as proposed at the start of this thread. Maybe I should just state my own belief
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Anansia
Registered User
(7/16/03 4:51 am)
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Re: Yes, I think so
Hi - sorry to have not posted for so long after starting this discussion - I haven't had much opportunity lately. It is very interesting to see what people have to say & gives me plenty to mull over.
I'm in a similar position to you briggsw because I'm writing a story for young people which includes anglo-celtic, Chinese, Japanese & African characters, including a Japanese fox woman. I'm writing also for a similar reason - to illuminate racism and hidden assumptions about culture. It is something I feel passionate about so I just have to take the risk.
It feels incredibly dangerous, but actually a breeze compared to another work in progress which has an Indigenous Australian character, as well as Chinese and Anglo celtic. I am trying to figure out whether or not to include Indigenous mythical creatures. I'm planning to consult Aboriginal people I know but as others on the board have pointed out, there will probably be a diversity of opinion on this.
Part of the problem is that a lot of Indigenous stories were collected by white anthropologists a long time ago and there have since been complaints that they should never have been recorded because they form part of a body of religious lore. It is hard to know now which ones belong in that category. I guess it just means plenty of research!
By contrast, I feel relatively comfortable about writing about the fox woman because foxes seem so much out in the public domain - they are even in Pokemon, for heavens sake! Altho in Oz foxes are feral animals & totally unpopular, so that brings its own set of risks! (I'm afraid readers might draw negative parallels with Asian immigration).
Anyway, the whole issue stretches my thinking and that's a good thing.
BTW Nalo, is that anthology already published? Sounds like an excellent process & an interesting collection.
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Nav
Unregistered User
(7/16/03 9:38 pm)
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Nice to see my post was edited.
I'm hoping this was a technical glich and that censorship isn't practiced here, because that would really be disappointing considering this is a messageboard frequented by those to whom censorship should be most reprehensible. Not to mention there was nothing there worth censoring.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(7/17/03 12:45 pm)
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Glitch
Looks like a board hiccup to me. I seriously doubt you were edited...in fact, I think you're the only person who *can* edit you.
Greg
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Nav
Unregistered User
(7/17/03 7:27 pm)
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You're probably right
It's irritating. My whole point was in the second half of the post, and at this time I couldn't and am not interested in trying to reconstruct it. Probably just as well. Thanks, Gregor9.
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Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(7/18/03 8:32 pm)
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On topic and off
Nav and everyone else,
Registered users can edit their own posts and their own posts only. As owner of the board, I am also able to edit any post, but these will always be marked by the EZBoard system as having been edited. I'll edit this one after posting it to show how this works.
EZBoard is not a foolproof system however and sometimes things are lost. I recommend copying long posts before sending to EZBoard for posting and checking to make sure the post goes through. These glitches do not happen very often anymore, but it is always best to be prepared.
I am traveling and attending a Children's Literature Symposium this
weekend. Susan Fletcher spoke this morning on this very topic, describing
how she was told to quit writing Shadow Spinner since she
was not a part of the culture. She went into great detail to explain
how she did have supportive readers inside the culture vett her
manuscripts for her. Shadow Spinner has been well-received
overall, and even translated into Farsi in which it has been honored
in I believe she said Iran. The country wasn't in my notes. Also,
she explained she was more comfortable writing about an older civilization,
not a modern one in which she cannot hope to portray the culture
as smoothly. She made the point that no one living has lived in
ancient times, so we all have to use some imagination and license
to portray it.
That is all paraphrase and all mistakes are my own. Fletcher's hour was the highlight of the symposium for me so far, both inspirational and informative.
Heidi
And this is what an edit looks like. Even I can't do it secretly.
HAH
Edited by: Heidi Anne Heiner at: 7/18/03 8:34 pm
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