How do we properly define cultural appropriation, and is it always wrong? Creative writing professor Paisley Rekdal addresses a young writer to delineate how the idea of cultural appropriation has evolved - and perhaps calcified - in our political climate. Rekdal examines the debate between appropriation and imagination, exploring the ethical stakes of writing from the position of a person unlike ourselves. What follows is a penetrating exploration of fluctuating literary power and authorial privilege, about whiteness and what we really mean by the term "empathy."
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