Malinda Lo
Blog
Sep 19, 2011
What does “authentic” mean, anyway?
On Saturday at KidLitCon, there was a panel on diversity in blogging about children’s and YA literature. I was not there (bummer! sounds like it was a great panel), but author Brent Hartinger was on the panel, and via Twitter I learned that he said this during the panel:
Brent handily encapsulated a whole mess of things I’ve been thinking about recently. (Edited to add: He also just sent me a link to this post he wrote about the Kidlitcon panel and his thoughts on diversity; it’s well worth a read.) Some of this is entwined with the wider discussion over the #YesGayYA situation, which prompted me to write last week’s post on the statistics about the state of LGBT YA publishing.1 Some of this is entwined with discussions I had earlier this year during the Diversity in YA tour, when we were routinely asked questions like, “How do you write about diversity authentically?”
So, Brent’s tweet says it all. There is so much concern over authentic representations of minorities because there are so few of them. Nobody really worries about whether they’re being authentic in representing white, heterosexual people, because there are so many of those representations in the media.
But with minorities, we’re working with a small number of representations. So, among people who care about these things, there are debates about how to represent minorities authentically.
I hear this so much, but in my mind, authenticity is a ghost. You can chase it but you can never catch it. I talked a bit about this at the School Library Journal Day of Dialogue back in May, and promised months ago to blog about it later on, and well, it’s later on. Here are my notes on what I think about “authenticity.” (Warning: theoryspeak ahead.)
I wrote a thesis on authenticity as it relates to Chinese cookbooks for my master’s degree in cultural anthropology at Stanford. If you’re really interested, you can read it here. In this paper, I explored authenticity through a variety of disciplines, ranging from philosophy to cultural studies to anthropology.
I think my favorite analysis of authenticity comes out of existentialism, which I am not going to delve into deeply here, but very briefly: It’s arguable that the truly “authentic” can never be grasped. If you actually do grasp onto an authentic experience or situation, then it has already vanished.
I also thought about authenticity through the lens of poststructuralism, which allows me to view authenticity a construction. By “construction,” I mean a cultural construction2, but you can also understand it as a physical construction. One example of the latter is a place like Colonial Williamsburg or any other historical reenactment theme park, which aims to deliver an “authentic” cultural experience to the tourist.
Colonial Williamsburg now includes African Americans
What I’ve just said is chock full of academic theory, but in normal everyday life, popular concepts of authenticity are much less specific. They seem to revolve around somewhat vague feelings of “realness,” combined with personal experience and a kind of gut-check emotional reaction. This is something that is difficult to discuss because it is so undefined.
So, when we’re discussing authenticity in relation to, say, representing minorities in young adult fiction (which is the broader discourse I’m participating in here), I think it’s more useful to talk about two concepts that are related to “authenticity,” but are much more specific: (1) anxiety; and (2) authority.
Anxiety — This is an anxiety over cultural boundaries, or marking out what defines a particular identity. You can see this in the question, What makes a “real” American?
Authority — In other words, who has the authority to declare that something is authentic? Or, when writing about the Other, who is authorized to do so? This is entangled in issues of power and appropriation.
I would much rather talk about anxiety and authority than debate who has an authentic voice, because:
- I don’t believe that the “authentic” is something that can be objectively measured. However, I think that most popular conceptions of authenticity do see it as something that can be measured; “the kung pao chicken at Eastern Garden is more authentic than at Hunan Delight,” for example. The problem is, this popular understanding of authenticity is actually a restrictive one. It draws a line around whatever is considered to fall within the bounds of “authentic” and keeps out whatever does not.
- The concept of one authentic identity/representation is problematic because cultures and traditions are not tightly bounded; they are fluid and many times hybrid. One Asian American’s experience of growing up in the US is not the same as every other’s.
- When we think about writing fiction, the idea of authenticity is often entangled with the idea of experience. “Write what you know,” etc. However, nobody expects a writer to go out and kill people before she writes murder mysteries.
All of this is pretty intellectual stuff, and it mostly applies to critiquing a cultural product, whether it’s a book or a TV show or a movie. What if you’re just a writer who wants to do a good job? In my opinion, that’s a different discussion, although it does touch on aspects of this critique.
Think of it this way: Human beings are infinitely varied in their experiences. No one is going to be identical to anyone else. Let’s say your main character is a Chinese American teen girl. She could have experiences that are totally different from 99% of the other Chinese American teen girls out there (for example, she could be some kind of psychic exorcist!), but that doesn’t mean those aren’t her own real experiences. They are authentic for her.
I say build your character the way he or she demands to be built, and try not to overly critique yourself in terms of whether or not you’re being “authentic.” At the same time, it’s a good idea to have an idea of what the broader context is, so that if your Chinese American psychic exorcist is totally unusual, you will know that she is, because she will also have to deal with that unusualness in her (fictional) world.
Make sense? What do you think “authentic” means?
- There are some really interesting discussions in the comments, and I intend to revisit some of those issues, especially regarding gender, in the future, once I’ve had time to think about them more. [↩]
- Something is a cultural construction when its definition varies from one culture to another. Concepts such as race, gender, and ethnicity are cultural constructions. An Asian person in the United States is seem differently than an Asian person in Asia. [↩]
Great questions–no easy answers. You do a great job distilling the academic theory too. Thanks so much for this post!
Malinda, I really needed to read this post exactly right now, both because of revisions I’m doing and because these same questions and discussions and uncertainties are paramount for parents of internationally adopted children (my husband and I just finished our home study a couple weeks ago).
As a writer, I might worry about whether or not my portrayal of a Chinese girl is authentic enough; as a parent I know my son or daughter is going to worry at some point about whether or not he or she is “Chinese enough” or “American enough.”
Anyway, thanks. Awesome food for thought.
Great article with some great exploration. And then there’s the “perspective” part. Just as different Americans around the country have different concepts and ideas of different minorities, different people around the word, in turn, again have different thoughts of this “authenticity,” especially when it’s combined with the history and culture of a respective country.
I’m reminded of a Doctor Who episode from some seasons ago that had a black character dressed up in a servants uniform, which created an outcry over here in the United States, while it wasn’t seen as such a poignant subject in the United Kingdom.
Thanks for a post that helps put things in perspective. I wish all summaries of academic perspectives could be as concise and clear. You’ve also clarified for me why I personally have never been one for support groups, particularly medical ones–experience is particular to the individual and must take into account more than one factor, and medical support groups tend to let the illness or condition dominate. People are complex, concepts like “authentic” simplify. When we write, our job is to create people.
Malinda, thank you.
This is something I’ve seen come up a lot in various discussions about writing about minority groups. I’ve seen people not of certain groups ask how to write them, and I’ve seen writers get frustrated when they get mixed signals, because they see reviews of such-and-such book where someone thinks that the portrayal is dead-on but someone else thinks that they screwed up.
People tend to forget, and I think most are guilty of this, that no one group is a monolith. Five different people can have five different opinions, and they can all be authentic. There is no one true answer.
I read an essay recently about writing The Other that was oddly reassuring. I sadly did not grab the link, but the gist was that if you’re writing The Other, then no, there is no way “to win.” If you screw it up, people will call you on it. If you do it well, some people will still think it’s inaccurate. If you have a really successful portrayal, some people will be upset because you, a white/able-bodied/straight/cisgendered/etc person are getting more attention for it than a person of the appropriate group would if they had. The conclusion was: There is no way to win, so write what is true to your story, and quit worrying about it.
I think more people need to take that to heart, rather than worrying about possibly being criticized.
I wholeheartedly agree that the authentic can’t be found, but I’ve gotten the sense that some of the concern about “authenticity” sees it as the opposite of stereotyping, which I think places a different spin on it. It’s not so much a quest as for the most authentic as it is a fear of making that Chinese girl a quiet, modest, Suzuki-method violinist and engineering student with “exotic” good looks.
I love this post, and not just because the sentence “Nobody expects a writer to go out and kill people before she writes murder mysteries,” made me laugh. I spend a lot of time thinking about authenticity, but my thoughts never get anywhere, so it’s nice to read something sensible.
For me, authenticity is like love. They are both hard to define. But those words don’t send us running to the dictionary because we all “know” what they mean. That is, have strong feelings about them. However, these words mean different things to each of us. The other day I got all fired up about an “inauthentic” egg cream. I identify with the egg cream because it comes from NYC, just like me, and I went on at length about how a real egg cream contains seltzer, milk, Fox’s U-Bet syrup, and nothing else. In my head, I know that it’s actually a neat idea to change a recipe. But in my heart, I only care about *my* egg cream, and all others are impostors.
When someone starts telling me about how things are authentic or inauthentic, I feel like I am getting to the core of who the person is, where she comes from, what she cares about, and how she’s been treated. That’s important stuff, so I shut up and listen. But I also know it’s only their opinion, and there is really no authenticity police. For sure, the concept of authenticity brings up anxiety and authority for me! When I write something from a POV that’s outside my own experience (like a transgender teen), I start to get really anxious that I am getting it wrong and I am just waiting waiting for someone to call me out on it. And I hope/fear that there is some authority who will say to me, “You did a nice job,” or “That sucked, Nora; stop writing about my people.” I know there are plenty of people who will happily tell me those things, but a real person is not the invented Authority I imagine who can give me the seal of approval or disapproval. A real person can only speak for themselves, not a whole group of people. I guess for me, chasing the ghost of authenticity is a worthy pursuit because it gets me thinking about the “broader context” and hopefully makes me a more sensitive writer, as long as I can remember that it is also a doomed pursuit. As long as it is helping me make my writing better, and not giving me a panic attack.
Bravo!
I think this is very true – the question of what feels widely authentic is also bound up with what stereotypes dominate the cultural landscape. The search for authenticity can lead to a (sometimes great) reaction against stereotyping.
But breaking out of that stereotype also comes with its own baggage. For example the female character who doesn’t like traditionally female activities can be seen as rejecting the female in disgust and embracing the male as the best thing eva! Not saying there aren’t female characters who do that while breaking out of the seterotype, but not everyone breaking from traditional elements of the gender they seem aligned to is ‘rejecting’. And going in the other direction I’ve seen gay characters talked about as being stereotypically flamboyant, because of the lack of diverse representation, when y’know some gay men just are and that’s the individual character’s experience. In some cases (not all by a long shot, many seterotypical representation work with the narrative in really gross ways to make the representation extremly negative) it’s the dominance of the stereotype in the cultural landscape and the audiences’ uncritiqued reaction to it, that makes that kind of indvidual representation kind of taboo. The representation is still some people’s valid experience, it’s just there’s too damn much of that experience in the cultural landscape, which results in single story problems and that representation is often badly, stereotypically framed if that makes sense. At least that’s what I think right now, but I may be missing a lot of stuff in my theory.
I agree, it can be useful as long as it’s not giving you panic attacks!
Thanks for your comment.
I think stereotypes do come into play. To play devil’s advocate, I’d say the fear about stereotyping is, in fact, still a discussion over anxiety and authority.
You’re welcome!
Glad it was helpful!
I love this, Malinda.
I have recently been working on a few stories where I write across gender and race. Dipping my toes in the water, a few weeks ago I wrote a story set in post-apocalyptic India. My boyfriend is from Delhi, grew up there and moved here seven years ago for school. My best friend is from Chandigarh, grew up in the states and regularly visits various parts of India where her extended family lives.
Neither of them thought my story was authentic. But they both pointed out completely different reasons why.
I do have a goal, as an author, to write a story for these guys that represents south Asian teens in an authentic way, that isn’t about poverty or sadness or being “other” (I know you know what I’m talking about here — so many (albeit wonderful) books about minorities are about the struggle rather than the triumph, the fun), but authenticity is so important. I know that as a white girl from suburban Maine I’m never going to achieve the perfect, truest level of authenticity, but I think you hit the nail on the head when you said what’s authentic for one person is completely crazy for another.
Hopefully having wonderful people in my life who are willing to read my nearly-blind traipses into another culture will help me know what I’m writing. I think that’s always going to be a key to writing an authentic “other.” Not necessarily research into customs and lifestyles, but having readers who can tell you that the voice of your character is way too bloody Western and you’d better start over from scratch.
Thanks for this post. It’s a keeper.
Right–which is why, when I read Tiny Cooper–I thought “wow, this dude is stereotypical! Why did they do that?” And then I thought, “No, Tiny Cooper is just this kind of guy. People will think he’s stereotypical because his experiences line up with the stereotype.”
This is so true. Given enough stories, some will definitely follow stereotypes, but others won’t. Seeing that variation makes the point that stereotypes aren’t totally made up, some (or even many) members of a group may very well have the stereotyped characteristics, but they aren’t a straightjacket. Or a given individual may have some stereotyped characteritics, but other parts of their personalities may be very against that type. But you cannot portray all of the variation within a group in one or even two or three characters.
I missed something–could you clarify how this statement is you playing devil’s advocate?
Great comment! For me, it’s research that helps me get as close as I can when I’m writing about someone who doesn’t share my background, and that research can come in all kinds of ways. I’m with you, though. It’s the individual character that counts, along with making the writing better.
Hope you avoid that panic attack.
I spun a post off this one because I think this one is so great, but I’m still mulling over what you’ve said. I think this issue is so complex, and you’ve done such a good job of touching on the matter of how complex it is, that I might not have a comment until WFC.
I just think the exploration of anxiety and authority is really important and even, dare I say, profound.
Also, I sound completely incoherent. Sorry. I’ll try again tomorrow.
I have the advantage of, er, ripping myself off (since I have that thesis handy).
I did all the thinking work about it 10 years ago, ha!
Just that the concern about stereotyping is actually still, also, about authenticity and anxiety. So it’s not much different than the concern about authority. (I’m arguing they’re the same thing.)
Ah! Yes, I’m with you. I think they are the same, or at least fraternal twins.
If authors worried about this issue, they would only ever be able to write autobiographies. Every other person on the planet is mysterious to us, to some degree or another. Authors use imagination to bridge the gap in all cases.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that an author bridges that gap convincingly every time. But they should never be prohibited, or even discouraged, from making the attempt.
Great post. And this doesn’t even bring up the issue of homelanders who are resentful (or worse) when the children (or grandchildren) of emigres claim to “be” homelanders. It is starting to become an issue at US universities. Students from Japan, for example, find themselves in classes with American students of Japanese ancestry who claim to speak with authority about Japanese culture. And they don’t like it – shade of the Irish folkpunk song “I Don’t Give a Fuck Where Your Grandfather’s From.”
Being of Irish descent and having lived in Ireland, my parents always admonished me never to call myself Irish. I was an American whose ancestors all came from Ireland. So the diaspora issue has always fascinated me. That emigres necessarily see their homeland through the lens of what it was when they left, not always recognizing that the future has happened there as well. The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Boston went all the way to the Supreme Court to be allowed to ban gays from marching. This was in 1995, even then people in Ireland were appalled. A typical reaction from Galway “Yes, we have a problem with the gays in the parade. They’ve won the float contest for three years running.” (Note: the gays are still banned in Boston.)
Diaspora populations keep civil wars and terrorist campaigns funded decades beyond their natural expiration date, without having to face the living in a frequently bombed police state. Is that authenticity? It is telling that the conflict in Northern Ireland could not be ended until extreme pressure forced the end of IRA funding from Irish-American sympathizers. All hail to Ted Kennedy for that.
I think cultural authenticity has to balance the pull of cultural heritage and traditions with an honest assessment of what it means that your foremothers and forefathers left.