My journey into the expanse of the lyric essay began when I opened Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. At that time, I had been writing poetry for over ten years, exploring motherhood, mental health, and my Asian American heritage. I saw my work as lyric poetry that drew from the bloodlines of my first love, Sharon Olds, and her transformative poem, “Monarchs.”
In this encore broadcast of a March 2021 conversation, host Lauren Korn and poet-essayist Paisley Rekdal, author of ‘Appropriate: A Provocation,’ dive into the nuances of cultural appropriation in literature. What is the difference between depicting a character unlike one’s self and appropriating their culture and identity? What is the difference between one’s politics and one’s ethics?
Host Lauren Korn and poet-essayist Paisley Rekdal, author of
Appropriate: A Provocation, dive into the nuances of cultural appropriation in literature. What is the difference between depicting a character unlike one’s self and appropriating their culture and identity? What is the difference between one’s politics and one’s ethics? They explore these topics and more, this week on
The Write Question.
New York Times Magazine and
American Poetry Review, as well as on NPR. She teaches at the University of Utah and is the state’s poet laureate. She lives in Salt Lake City.
Paisley recommends
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Why Violence Goes Viral: A Thread in Six Parts
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THE MOVEMENT FOR BLACK LIVES has grown during the pandemic. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are shaping so many people’s sense of racial justice. The problem is, social media is a technology of the white gaze. It feeds off of racial violence; killings go viral. Hooked to our phones, we circulate and cycle through Black death.
We need more life. Asian Americans in particular need strategies for demanding recognition beyond the schema of racial violence especially so our visibility does not form at the expense of Black people.
In this essay, I turn the gaze onto non-Black people who make a show of looking at Black death. I close read the viral discourse compiled by #AhmaudArbery. I examine social media virality itself and surface the contradictions that organize discourse about racial justice.