Appropriation: “In Literature, Who Decides When Homage Becomes Theft?”
New York Times
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10/8/18
“The issue isn’t the right of artists to imaginatively enter other lives. What’s being questioned is the concentration of cultural capital, and how members of the dominant class, who tend to receive more resources and broader access to the public, are rewarded for telling “difficult” stories — like those dealing with the subjugation and suffering of minorities and the poor — even when they misrepresent the people they’re claiming to speak for. Often theirs are the loudest, if not the only voices heard on the subject. No one should proscribe artists from trying to transcend the limits of their experience; the joy of art and literature has always been how they free us from those limits. The answer is not to have fewer stories, but more.”