Writing

I’m currently engaged with a novel and two partially complete short stories. Things have been slow.

Based on something I saw on twitter today, I want to also write a piece on, let’s say, cultural inclusiveness in Western fiction. The point of the tweet I responded to was that in some show that I haven’t seen, an indigenous person was little more than a caricature in the storyline.

I want to analyze the portrayal of out-groups by dominant cultural groups in light of current attitudes regarding cultural appropriation.

My own experience is that of a white/straight/male/atheist/euro-american, but I’ve at least had a reasonable amount of contact with south asians, homosexuals, christians, buddhists, muslims (and a passing zoroastrian) that I would feel not so uncomfortable portraying characters at least in some way similar to my reference points.

On the other side, honestly, I have had next to no interaction with Chinese, African or Native American culture. Given that, I wouldn’t even try to include a character from those backgrounds, not because I’m a crazy bigot, but because I don’t want to misrepresent their cultures.

And within certain groups or cultures—alongside a respectable and needed reconquista—there is pushback, wherein they reject cultural appropriation, which is to say, they reject, a bunch of white folk using them and their cultural as exotic props, background for otherwise white-american fiction.

We’ll see where this goes.

Addendum: as I look out my window, I would feel pretty comfortable representing or at least parodying alt-right white supremists, but this also is part of the question: Do they deserve to be fairly depicted as well, even if their culture is abhorrent or anathema.

I think the last bit comes down to whether or not they what to kill my friends.

I would have concerns if the recent 4-wheeler trumpists rode by with rifles (as they have in the past) if I had POC friends visiting.

(I should interview them.)

So now I feel like I committed to a non-fiction piece. It’s low on my list. I also want to see what kind of comments my responding tweets get, if any.

#racism #culture #writing #fiction #inclusion #exclusion