Cultural Appropriation

In researching this subject, I learned that cultural appropriation is the exploitation of one culture by members of another culture, often without proper acknowledgment or respect. Cultural appropriation is especially unacceptable when a ruling culture perpetuates stereotypes against a minority culture.

Since I am a white male of Scottish/Norman heritage, with a heavy percentage of Anglo-Saxon thrown in, what gives me the privilege to write about Middle Eastern medieval times? Below is my response.

Regardless of the fact my career oversaw work to counter enemy threats stemming out of the Middle East, in which I encountered the cultures of the people there, I don’t think my personal experiences are relevant in writing literary historical fiction. I would agree when I write my modern-day thrillers in the Middle East, having a deep understanding of the people and their cultures is important. I write about the places and people of the Middle East with reverence. Anyone reading my Cuckoo Bird series would know I depict the female Afghan main character and her world with careful devotion.

How about history? I answer the question this way. Several years ago, I researched my family tree. My dad’s surname came here in 1684. My mom’s surname came here in 1673. Ancestors marrying into the two lines arrived here well before 1684 or 1673. In fact, on my mom’s side, I had ancestors who arrived in Jamestown in 1607. Both sides had people on the Mayflower and were accusers and defendants in the Salem/Andover witch trials. My family tree is a remarkable collection of stories. So, why don’t I write about them? I could one day. Maybe I will. Yet, more importantly, I cannot put myself in the shoes of my ancestors. They lived in a different time and their culture differs vastly from now. Consider life in 1924. No one then had a smart phone that fit in their hands. They wouldn’t even know what a person meant by mentioning the Internet. Telephones were large and bulky and to call long distance, a person needed an operator, and there were no towers to transmit calls. Cultural? Imagine taking away mobile phones from young people who never knew a time before Apple or Samsung.

The problem with history, other than recent history, is no one is alive today when it happened. What we have is what chroniclers wrote during the times as compendiums of the times. Some were accurate, some were propaganda. Adequate research separates the truth from fiction through empirical study.

Although I have some American Indian DNA, I cannot qualify myself as being indigenous. Therefore, is it culturally appropriate to write a novel involving the indigenous people of North America? The answer is yes, if written in historical terms. I believe if I conduct detailed historical research and learn everything I can about a given indigenous people, and if I show appreciation by staying true to the research and provide an honest assessment of a people and their lives, I believe it shows respect of a culture not my own. When I wrote The Woman of a Thousand Veils, Topaz-Spotted Blue, or The Cat's Claw, I spent months researching the times, the places, and the people. In both cases, I read actual narratives by chroniclers, books by historians, watched videos, and comBlogpiled over two hundred files to hone my knowledge of time and place. If someone reads either of those books, or any future literary historical fiction I’ll pen, I treat the reader to accurate depictions of the times, and provide historical notes at the end of the novels to back up what I’ve written.

Therefore, I leave this thought. In studying the life of James Clavell, who wrote Shōgun, regardless of his personal contact with Japanese during World War II, he needed to research the times and people to write what would become amazing. James Clavell was not Japanese, but anyone reading his novels or seeing the series on television can easily see his respect for the history of the Japanese people. In my case, I believe it was incumbent on me in writing Topaz-Spotted Blue to avoid judging the ruling class that used slaves to build their world. I could easily have, but respect means gazing at life as it is, not as I wish it to be. Therefore, when someone reads one of my books, they are getting history as it happened. The characters may have their opinions, but they are not necessarily my own, nor should they be.