Ursula Le Guin

[girliejones]

And from Ursula Le Guin's Guest of Honour Speech at Wiscon 20:

And ain't I a woman? And ain't I a feminist? And ain't I an American, and a radical, and ain't I politically correct? Yes I am. I'm as politically correct as I know how to be , and nobody is going to shame me out of talking the way I think is right and working for what I love and

Comments

[babalon_93]

*cheers loudly*

[transcendancing]

This.

[anonymous]

She is a great lady. I wish she would come to Oz.

Thoraiya

[adamhenderson]

God, you gotta love her. I hope I can keep that level of passion when I get to 80!

[alias_sqbr]

As much as I agree with the general sentiment (and think she's an awesome person overall), it seems deeply politically incorrect for a white American feminist to appropriate the words of an African American woman talking about the privileges given to white American women.

[girliejones]

I just quoted a bit of it and this bit directly follows on from her quoting someone else.

You know, I'm not sure about all this "appropriation" business. - about it being this big bad thing. Whatever happened to "nods in the direction of" or "being inspired by" or "referencing" someone else? Like, if she had quoted a white woman in that space instead, would you have objected to the lack of referencing the speech too?

[alias_sqbr]

I am for some reason really bad at articulating my issues with cultural appropriation, but I'll have a go:
Here's a general discussion of Cultural appropriation.

The way I see it, there would be nothing wrong with Ursula K Le Guin quoting any part of Sojourner Truth's speech which was talking about the rights of all women. And there would be nothing wrong with her being inspired to make a speech which had the same general feel, eg saying "You may think that being part of group X (black women, feminists, etc) means I'm not really a woman, but I am".

But to use the specific words "Ain't I a woman", which have huge cultural baggage in America and in their original context meant "Am I not as much of a woman as white women?"(*) is to implicitly equate her position as a white feminist with that of Sojourner Truth's as a black slave woman being oppressed by white women. Which is just...worse than Godwin's Law imo.

I read an eye-opening essay about a very similar situation at Wiscon a few years ago but it is now locked, I did find a

[bibliofilen]

And that is in turn a paraphrase of the Merchant of Venice and Shylock's famous speech "Am I not human..." talking about the oppression of jews.

[robinpen]

I celebrated Le Guin's legacy at 80 on my work blog, my quote "I would expect little rational argument against Le Guin being the most significant writer of fantastic fiction still working today."

Thought you'd like that.

[girliejones]

Finally got a chance to check out your post - I really enjoyed it!