The fact is, no writer, teacher, reader, or editor has an easy answer to these questions, and I wouldn’t trust one who did. Paisley Rekdal: This is going to give people the wrong impression about how publishing works, but I was approached to write the book after an editor saw a post on Facebook I’d written about Anders Carlson-Wee’s poem “How To.” My post took the question that eventually became the frame of Appropriate and applied it to Carlson-Wee’s poem: what are the desires about race and identity on display in this appropriative work? If we erase the dialectical frame of the poem, what message are we left with? The editor who saw this post sent me a message asking if I’d be interested in writing a book about cultural appropriation and literature my first reaction was to say “No.” But the more I thought about my own time in the classroom and in publishing, the more I realized I myself had too many questions about appropriation, cultural appropriation and race to ignore the opportunity to think through these issues at length. I’m so thankful that someone as brilliant as you has written something to help me navigate and think through some of my own experiences and some of these larger cultural situations you mention in the book. Victoria Chang: How and why did you decide to write your book, Appropriate (Norton, 2021)? This book felt very much so like a service to all teachers, students, and frankly everyone in this moment in history.
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