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You’ve probably heard the old adage, “Write what you know.”
Well, what happens when writers write about what they don’t know?
If your Facebook feed is dominated by writers, like mine is,
then you have certainly heard about the new Calvin Trillin poem, “Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet?” Trillin’s poem was recently published in The New Yorker,
and the literary community is in an uproar.
Now, why are people incensed by this poem? If it had been published
in The Onion, or in the humor section of The New Yorker, it would have been
received very differently. Instead, what we have is an 80 year old white male publishing
a poem in a “serious” magazine in which he complains about there being too many
kinds of Chinese foods. Yes, seriously. Read it for yourself. (And read this hilarious book report summarizing the poem.)
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Cultural appropriation seems to be the theme of my week. In my
nonfiction class, we read a memoir by a woman who become the first black
Buddhist nun—even though she had no connection to Buddhism before traveling to
Thailand as a college undergrad. In fact, she had never even meditated before taking
her vows!
I was one of the more vocal students in my class, chastising
this woman for blatantly doing something for the sake of research and recognition.
I think it would have been a wholly different situation if she had some
connection to the culture or the religion before become ordained as a Buddhist nun
(she only stayed at the monastery for a few weeks).
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Don’t get me wrong, she was only twenty years old when all
of this happened. She had just taken time off from Harvard to figure herself
out. I get it. I had the same sort of crisis when I was twenty. I hopped across
continents and tried on different cultures. If I ever wrote a memoir of that
time, it would be more of a travel narrative, and not an “inward journey” as
the title of her memoir implies. I wouldn’t pretend to truly know those
cultures intimately when I was merely a visitor passing through.
But she wrote her memoir about 15 years after the fact—plenty
of time for her to realize that her reasons for ordaining were quite shallow. I’m
not saying that she shouldn’t have written her memoir, but I am saying that she
should have acknowledged her privileged place as outsider in a country where many
people become ordained as monks and nuns simply in order to have a roofs over
their heads.
Another book I read for this week was Indra Sinha’s Animal’s
People, a novel set in a fictional town in India modeled on Bhopal, the town
that was destroyed in the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster. Sinha was born in
India and, although he has spent much of his adult life living in England, he
has also devoted a lot of his energy to relief efforts for the victims of
Bhopal. Unlike Trillim’s poem and the Buddhist nun memoir, Sinha has a stake in
this culture and this disaster is a situation that he knows intimately. For these
reasons, his motives for writing the book do not feel exploitative or
fraudulent, and his novel does not carry the bitter taste of cultural appropriation.
I am not saying that writers are condemned to only writing
from the perspective of their own race and gender forever and ever. But I do
believe that writers should write what they know. There are many different
kinds of knowledge. There’s intimate knowledge, and superficial knowledge, and I
think writers have the responsibility to write from a place of deep
understanding.
Katherine Boo’s work of
nonfiction, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, is an excellent example of writing responsibly
outside your own culture. A white journalist writing about a slum in Mumbai is a tricky tightrope to walk, but Boo's work is deeply researched and thoughtfully executed.
For example, I’m really interested in Native American
culture, but I don’t know enough about it to write about it from a place of
honest truth. I can sing a few songs and I’ve heard some of the stories, but it
is not a culture that I know from deep inside my gut. If I do write about it, as
fiction or nonfiction, it will be as an outsider, because that’s all I can ever
truly be when it comes to Native American culture. I recognize this.
On the other hand, the novel I’m working on is set in Miami.
The characters are two teenage girls growing up in a neighborhood very similar
to the one I grew up in. They’re not rich but they’re not poor either, kind of
like my family. Although their experiences are very different from my own
teenage life, the story sits on a foundation that I know on an intimate level. I
am building on the knowledge that I have, and making that base knowledge work
for me. Maybe one day I’ll write a book from the perspective of a Lakota medicine
man, but if I do, I promise you that it will take years of in-depth research
and cultural immersion. And even if I spent years on the project, pulling it
off in a way that honors and respects that culture would be very tricky.
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Readers invest a lot in a book when they read it, and I should
hope that writers invest just as much when they write it. It is our
responsibility as writers to write about different cultures from a place of
respect and deep understanding, and if we feel that we cannot write about a culture
in this way, then we shouldn’t do it. Anyway, there’ s no need to go looking elsewhere
for the story. The story is right where you’re standing! Everyone’s personal experience
is so unique; we all have a wealth of knowledge to write from if we mine the
deep well of knowledge that we have amassed over our lifetimes.
As Flannery O'Connor said:
“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”
Publication Update! Check out my new piece, "Matriarchy," in the latest issue of the Tahoma Literary Review! Read it online, buy it in print, or listen to it on SoundCloud!
