There are limits to "lived experience."
This month has been a big one for Times Opinion: Pamela Paul, one of our three new columnists, published her first column yesterday, a powerful argument on how we determine the gatekeepers of culture, and what may be lost if we are overly narrow in that definition. Pamela's debut follows Tressie McMillan Cottom's April 12, a sharp commentary on shaming and stigma in America today. I hope you will read both. We also announced two weeks ago that Lydia Polgreen, a widely celebrated reporter and editor, will return to The Times as a columnist in September. They join other new voices we've added to the mix since early 2021, including Zeynep Tufekci and Ezra Klein. |
With these newest columnists, Times Opinion is expanding our stable of signature voices to include more smart, insightful analysis on culture, society, politics and foreign policy. Now, I'll let Pamela take over from here to tell you more about herself and her column … |
— Kathleen Kingsbury, Opinion Editor |
Who has the right to create art about whom? Can someone weigh in on work even if it doesn't reflect their "lived experience"? And what is "lived experience" — a phrase that originated in academia and has since proliferated wildly on social media — anyway? |
That's what I tackled this weekend in my first column for Times Opinion. Given my 9-year stint as the editor of The New York Times Book Review, a position I recently left, this first piece examines a debate in the literary world as well as the larger creative world. |
The question of who gets to write about which subjects has been around for a long time, and it's one I encountered as a freelance writer, even before I came to the Book Review. A dozenish years ago, I told an oncologist friend about a story I was working on about women who get cancer while pregnant. I had interviewed doctors, spent time with patients, reviewed the most recent medical literature. The story I wanted to tell was about our understanding of chemotherapy and the fetus, but also about what it felt like to bring life into the world at the same time your own life was threatened. |
"Why wouldn't an oncologist be the one to write that?" my friend responded. But, I sputtered, that isn't journalism — the job of the magazine writer is to weave together a variety of experiences. What an oncologist would choose to emphasize was different from the priorities of the patients. The researchers were pursuing their own questions. My friend seemed to be questioning the very foundations of journalism, which often involves reporters coming from the outside world — whether it's as a foreign correspondent in Ukraine or as a magazine writer investigating detention centers at the American border. |
The idea that one needs to have experienced something directly carries another risk — bringing you too close, blinding you to information that's difficult, inconvenient or somehow contradicts a personal agenda. A decade ago, while working on assignment about the adverse effects of a common medical procedure, I realized the story affected a member of my immediate family. I was distraught by the answers I was finding and told my editor that I needed to pull out. Readers deserved a story from someone open to whichever facts surfaced through the reporting. |
There's a reason many memoirists wait years to write about a personal experience: Distance can be helpful. |
What troubles me most about the increasingly dogmatic emphasis on "lived experience" is that it feels like yet another way of policing and limiting culture. Most creative people are open-minded, empathetic and imaginative; they build worlds that let us cross borders. Recent efforts to contain and limit expression is a worrying one, and an issue I expect to return to in columns to come. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
Contact us If you have questions about your Times account, delivery problems or other issues, visit our Help Page or contact The Times. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment