I dread to think what my old college creative writing program has turned into, since it was pretty damn Woke already when I attended; overall in literature discussions there was the attitude that if you wrote a character who was of a certain culture or sexuality, a Chinese transexual or a Jewish bisexual, as examples, you damn better BE a Chinese transexual or a Jewish bisexual. Everything you wrote was assumed to be coming from your own experience and some sort of personal point of view, even an agenda of activism, that characters were representative, not that your IMAGINATION was at work or even that you RESEARCHED to come up with a character.
AT THE SAME TIME in literature classes author's writing was being deconstructed and had various THEORIES such as Marxism or Freudism applied, without regard of the author .... We were to know nothing of the author, their heritage, background, politics, or point of view at the time in their life when they wrote what they wrote.... Try doing that to ARTISTS.
I wonder what would be SAFE to express verbally or in writing in that program today, how a student who wrote without concern for pleasing professors or TA's or fellow students would be treated by WOKE peers. (I can tell you that if their characters were perverted, that would likely fly.) I think of the day I made a comment about a Native American character and my peers seemed to bristle, as if they did not know if I had the right to make that comment out of some percentage of Native American in my DNA or if I could not be right because I had no percentage. (I had taken a college class at another college about Native Americans of the South West and California and had also done quite a bit of research for myself on those who had lived in my neighborhood historically.)
I was witness to a vegan staring down another student who dared eat a tuna salad sandwich, kind of like the way young environmental activist Greta Thunberg stares down people with hatred, appearing to want to kill someone with intent.
I wondered if my TA who smoked and ate lunch meat was doing so just to hold onto his own culture or as a kind of autonomy...
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Salman Rushdie I last saw at a UCLA LA TIMES Book Fair. I didn't get into his presentation, but as the fair was closing down I saw him alone, rolling his suitcase behind him, going to his transportation like all other stragglers. I thought about how he'd had to go into hiding because of a book he wrote that was deemed against Islam. He has paid the price for being an author in this world. So I am glad that the attack hasn't censored him.
It is horrible that he was attacked and lost his eyesight in one eye because of one more mentally ill, demon possessed person who kills others just because. I used to be one of those people who said that if killing was wrong we should not have the death penalty. (I should research to see how many states that have the death penalty are also against abortion.) Lately I rethink that. I'm through feeling sorry for criminals.
This article from the Daily Mail is typical of their newspaper on line. You have to deal with irritating popups, articles that are clearly ads, articles that are duplicated in more than one space, a lot of celebrity trash including all those desperate for attention and showing off their selfies such as the Kardashians, and the chronic hatred of President of the United States Joseph Biden and all things Democrat (except for rock stars). I have sworn off reading it - I started during the Edward Snowden and Julian Assange reportage - and am weening myself. Finding what you're interested in reading in Daily Mail is like trying to find a diamond that fell in a pile of shit, icky but possible.
DAILY MAIL : RUSHDIE and COX LEADING BACKLASH AGAINST WOKE PUBLISHERS
EXCERPT:
'Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship,' Rushdie wrote on Twitter.
'Puffin Books an the Dahl estate should be ashamed.'
PEN America, a community of some 7.500 writers that advocates for freedom of expression, said it was 'alarmed' by reports of changes to Dahl's books. ' If we start down the path of trying to correct for perceived slights instead of allowing readers to receive and react to books as written, we risk distorting the work of great authors and clouding the essential lens that literature offers on society,' tweeted Suzanne Nossel, chief executive of PEN America.
Laura Hackett, a childhood Dahl fan who is now deputy literary editor of London's Sunday Times newspaper, had a more personal reaction to the news. 'The editors at Puffin should be ashamed of the botched surgery they've carried out on some of the finest children's literature in Britain,' she wrote ...
C 2023 Christine Trzyna
