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Wynema: A Child of the Forest

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S. Alice Callahan

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“In a world where every society and every civilization has borrowed heavily from the cultures of other societies and other civilizations, everyone does not have to go back to square one and discover fire and the wheel for himself, when someone else has already discovered it. Europeans did not have to continue copying scrolls by hand after the Chinese invented paper and printing. Malaysia could become the world’s leading rubber-producing nation after planting seeds taken from Brazil. Yet the equal-respect “identity” promoters would have each group paint itself into its own little corner, with its own insular culture, thus presenting over all a static tableau of “diversity,” rather than the dynamic process of competition on which the progress of the human race has been based for thousands of years.”

CultureProgressTradeCooperationCultural Appropriation
Book:The Quest for Cosmic Justice
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“The people of Earth cannot progress in isolation from each other. The family unit, community spirit, and society as a whole are fragmenting at alarming rates as we sit inert behind our devices and social media. Fear of cultural appropriation inhibits the inspiration necessary for others to create new things. We must build on the towering achievements of all those who have gone before us. Then, by pooling our resources, regardless of race, colour, creed, gender, sexuality, or physical ability, we ensure that our legacy is a rich inheritance for all those yet to be born.”

CommunityHuman RaceIsolationInheritanceSociety HumanityFuture GenerationsCultural AppropriationLegacy Life LessonsPooling Resources
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Now, let me preface this story with the following: If you think that I am in any way endorsing cultural appropriation by writing this, you should just stop reading. I swear to Goddess,* if I hear about any one of you reading this passage and deciding, “Okay, yeah, great, the moral of this story is that Jacob thinks it’s awesome for white people to dress up as Native Americans for Halloween, so I’m gonna go do that,” I will use the power of the internet to find out where you live and throw so many eggs at your house that it becomes a giant omelet. Or if you’re vegan, I will throw so much tofu at your house that it becomes a giant tofu scramble. The point of this passage is not that white people should dress their children as Native Americans for Halloween. That’s basically the opposite of the point here. Capisce? All that being said, it was 1997. I was six years old and hadn’t quite developed my political consciousness about cultural appropriation or the colonization of the Americas and subsequent genocide of Native American people at the hands of white settlers yet. I also didn’t know multiplication, so I had some stuff to work on. What I did know was that Pocahontas was, by far, the most badass Disney princess. Keep in mind that Disney’s transgender-butch-lesbian masterpiece Mulan wasn’t released until a year later, or else I would’ve obviously gone with that (equally problematic) costume.”

Cultural DiversityWhite PrivilegeCultural AppropriationNative American Genocide
Book:Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story
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“...Sabina [was] onto something about mehendi not being tantamount to temporary tattoo, and how it's been appropriated by Western capitalist culture. But the mehendi originated in Africa, and so India appropriated it from a people of color as well, according to Upma, and thus we shouldn't wear jeans or listen to Queen, then. But Freddie Mercury was Indian, Sabina pointed out, Parsi, and plus, half of these things are made in India anyways if you check the tags. Somehow eventually arriving at: Whatever it was, why did a white girl have to wear it before it was regarded as cool?”

Cultural Appropriation
Book:Born Confused
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“What would our debates about fiction look like, I sometimes wonder, if our preferred verbal container for the phenomenon of writing about others was not 'cultural appropriation' but rather 'interpersonal voyeurism' or 'profound-other-fascination' or even 'cross-epidermal reanimation'? Our discussions would still be vibrant, perhaps even still furious—but I’m certain they would not be the same. Aren’t we a little too passive in the face of inherited concepts? We allow them to think for us, and to stand as place markers when we can’t be bothered to think. What she said. But surely the task of a writer is to think for herself! And immediately, within that bumptious exclamation mark, an internal voice notes the telltale whiff of baby boomer triumphalism, of Generation X moral irresponsibility …. I do believe a writer’s task is to think for herself, although this task, to me, signifies not a fixed state but a continual process: thinking things afresh, each time, in each new situation. This requires not a little mental flexibility. No piety of the culture—whether it be 'I think therefore I am,' 'To be or not to be,' 'You do you,' or 'I contain multitudes'—should or ever can be entirely fixed in place or protected from the currents of history. There is always the potential for radical change.”

FictionNovelsCultural AppropriationFascinated To Presume
Author:Zadie Smith
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