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TED: Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

  • fetsiboomsticks: Cultural ghettos are places where we congregate with people just like us. Where we otherise others by affirming ourselves and by actively ennumerating what differences the differences of others.
  • frustration is very stimulating. Learning a language, being frustrated that you can't express in fine detail keeps you trying.
  • a reader wants to see the manifestation of the identity of the author in the story
  • fetsiboomsticks: you are not a creator, an actor takes roles that he 'agrees' with, that he is prepared to endorse, that's what we think.
  • multicultural writers are expected to write their culture, English writers are allowed to be more imaginative
  • she was prosecuted for words she had written and she objects because it is fiction writers are entitled to their opinions, but it is not politics its fiction, separate things
  • fiction is a connector, politics is a divider
  • Muslims read books by Palistinians and vice versa, they connect. Politicians stop you from listening
  • She likes not knowing what she will write about next or what characters will do in the next ten pages
  • Perhaps we should not teach students to write what they know, instead write what we can feel outside of their cultural ghetto
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