Thoughtful and interesting take, Blake! Really enjoying your posts—they push and provoke so amazingly. Another quote for your quiver—from Maria Popova of The Marginalian: "Right now what I’m very troubled by is this whole thing about cultural appropriation because when you think about education, learning, that is appropriation. You are literally taking in somebody else’s knowledge and incorporating it into your own corpus of knowledge and calling it your own. That is what it means to learn anything. And so without appropriation, there could be no learning."
I really appreciate this thoughtful post. You are getting at something pretty subtle but important. Coming from the disability world, "euthanasia fiction" has an extra poisonous ring to it. Some people literally want us dead. Making a seductive story about a beautiful death that convinces "normals" that death is in fact the kinder solution is not a neutral act, then. Having written about (and while in) longterm pain, I feel like I have an acute sense of what a book is trying to add to my life, and it's something I think about carefully in my own writing. If it's going to hurt, or try to convince me that everything is impossible, it better be a damn good piece of art. I'm all filled up on that. Can't fit a single person more trying to tell me that.
However, whilst her views may actually be as extreme as you say, I don’t think Yanagihara is actually saying what you imply she is in this instance.
My interpretation of her misquote: writing in the voice of another community is not sufficient in and of itself to cause harm. That alone is not enough to condemn a piece of work. The key word being “by” in her quote. So really she is paraphrasing Kushner appropriately. I haven’t watched the Dua Lipa interview myself, so I’m assuming you’ve quoted verbatim.
Edit: if “by” were replaced with “when” I would agree with your interpretation.
While on a case-by-case basis I don't think it is harmful for a person to write through the lens of another culture or sexuality, I think the trend of straight women writing as gay men is interesting and potentially harmful (?). Overall, I think how women write about gay experiences and characterize gay men is reductive and fits into feminine ideals and understandings of sexuality that are not true to the genuine gay experience. I find this especially prevalent in YA gay romances, where they sanitize what it means to be gay, potentially giving questioning teens the wrong idea. But idk!
Yeah. I'm also not bothered that she's writing about gay men. My personal taste in books tends to shy away from trauma stories. Maybe that's because there is an escapist element to why I read. Maybe I'm just not wired for catharsis. But I also feel like it feels a little... easy? As an author, I can write a book where I torment the main character, and he can't push back. He's Job and I'm God. And so the way that Yanagihara said that the Jude character got to a place where his life was so awful, his only option was to kill himself... I'm like, yeah. You did that! You made his life awful. You tormented him!
Maybe I'm overstating this, because I'm re-reading Kafka's "The Castle," right now, and you could say that Kafka torments his main characters by putting them in these surreal worlds with an unachievable goal. But... that seem different. Kafka's wrestling with what it feels like to be alive. I've never heard anyone describe A Little Life that way.
Thoughtful and interesting take, Blake! Really enjoying your posts—they push and provoke so amazingly. Another quote for your quiver—from Maria Popova of The Marginalian: "Right now what I’m very troubled by is this whole thing about cultural appropriation because when you think about education, learning, that is appropriation. You are literally taking in somebody else’s knowledge and incorporating it into your own corpus of knowledge and calling it your own. That is what it means to learn anything. And so without appropriation, there could be no learning."
I really appreciate this thoughtful post. You are getting at something pretty subtle but important. Coming from the disability world, "euthanasia fiction" has an extra poisonous ring to it. Some people literally want us dead. Making a seductive story about a beautiful death that convinces "normals" that death is in fact the kinder solution is not a neutral act, then. Having written about (and while in) longterm pain, I feel like I have an acute sense of what a book is trying to add to my life, and it's something I think about carefully in my own writing. If it's going to hurt, or try to convince me that everything is impossible, it better be a damn good piece of art. I'm all filled up on that. Can't fit a single person more trying to tell me that.
Thought provoking!
However, whilst her views may actually be as extreme as you say, I don’t think Yanagihara is actually saying what you imply she is in this instance.
My interpretation of her misquote: writing in the voice of another community is not sufficient in and of itself to cause harm. That alone is not enough to condemn a piece of work. The key word being “by” in her quote. So really she is paraphrasing Kushner appropriately. I haven’t watched the Dua Lipa interview myself, so I’m assuming you’ve quoted verbatim.
Edit: if “by” were replaced with “when” I would agree with your interpretation.
While on a case-by-case basis I don't think it is harmful for a person to write through the lens of another culture or sexuality, I think the trend of straight women writing as gay men is interesting and potentially harmful (?). Overall, I think how women write about gay experiences and characterize gay men is reductive and fits into feminine ideals and understandings of sexuality that are not true to the genuine gay experience. I find this especially prevalent in YA gay romances, where they sanitize what it means to be gay, potentially giving questioning teens the wrong idea. But idk!
Yeah. I'm also not bothered that she's writing about gay men. My personal taste in books tends to shy away from trauma stories. Maybe that's because there is an escapist element to why I read. Maybe I'm just not wired for catharsis. But I also feel like it feels a little... easy? As an author, I can write a book where I torment the main character, and he can't push back. He's Job and I'm God. And so the way that Yanagihara said that the Jude character got to a place where his life was so awful, his only option was to kill himself... I'm like, yeah. You did that! You made his life awful. You tormented him!
Maybe I'm overstating this, because I'm re-reading Kafka's "The Castle," right now, and you could say that Kafka torments his main characters by putting them in these surreal worlds with an unachievable goal. But... that seem different. Kafka's wrestling with what it feels like to be alive. I've never heard anyone describe A Little Life that way.