The View | Balancing cultural appropriation with good business
The fine line between a fashion statement and political correctness
The Hong Kong International Literary Festival kicks off this Friday, and among the events is a dinner with the US novelist Lionel Shriver.
Interestingly, Shriver just spoke at a similar festival in Australia, and was afterward rebuked, with the festival organisers scrubbing links to her speech from their website.
The reason? Shriver, a white woman, defiantly wore a Mexican-style sombrero and delivered a scathing attack on the concept of “cultural appropriation”.
In case that’s a new one on you, the expression typically means members of a dominant group exploiting the culture of less privileged groups, often with little sensitivity of the latter’s history and and traditions.
In Hong Kong, however, Shriver’s talk sold out very quickly. Is this because people in this city are not aware that writer is an offender of modern sensibilities, or do they just not care?
Shriver has long been defending writers against charges of literary cultural appropriation, that’s when authors write in the voices of other cultures (or genders, economic classes, etc).
