Culture

FECKLESS AND FRECKLED | Cultural Appropriation in Fiction: A Liberal Hoax?

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“You liberals get off my lawn!” commands Lionel Shriver in her recent New York Times Op-Ed. Shriver, who might be more well known for her bellicose opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival earlier this month than any of the 13 books she’s published, has more than several bones to pick with the “left,” or anyone who is not a blatant homophobe, sexist, racist or otherwise elitist. The author was asked to speak on the topic of “community and belonging.” She chose instead to focus on identity politics.  A valid substitution, given all the discourse about campus activism and trigger warnings. Personal identities have never truly been personal; they’ve always affected our communal spaces.

Entertainment

THE WORLD AROUND YU | An Experiment in Poetry

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Toward the end of last semester, and leading into the summer, I began to dabble in the hobby of poetry writing. The works I produced, while some of them are so atrocious that they will never see the light of publishing, were often very cathartic to write. I’ve found that poetry is a form of relaxation and internal note-taking. With it, I can spew out my conscience, feelings, thoughts and queries. I can then bend these rudimentary words in interesting ways: playing with sentence structures, grammar or even language itself, until I have made something that captures the essence of the subject matter at hand.

Blogs

GOOD TASTE ALONE | A High Quality Post

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It’s hard, in fiction, to write about writing. It’s hard to write about most creative enterprises, because if you write about a character who is a world-renowned contemporary poet, you’ll probably have to write about some of his or her poems. Maybe even include an excerpt. And then you’re essentially calling yourself a world-renowned poet, because you’re the one writing what the poet is writing. When I read young adult novels about characters whose writing was praised by another character, I was always really skeptical, because the writer was essentially complimenting him or herself. I came to accept, over time, that if you’re an established figure in the industry — if you routinely churn out creative endeavors that critics and consumers deem “good enough” — you have the liberty to write about good writing.