WoT and cultural appropriation allegations

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Hi all!

TL:DR - Does WoT participate in harmful cultural appropriation? Asking not in an accusing tone, but someone who's been a fan the majority of my life and really would like to hear some thoughts on this.

The story: I had a weird conversation in a FB group the other day where I recommended WoT to read. In my post I described how generally cool the world is, and how I liked that you can kind of see bits and pieces of different real world cultures reflected, or mashed up with other cultures. But, a few people responded to tell me that this was cultural appropriation; particularly if any of the cultures reflected in WoT are BIPOC cultures (and some are).

Has anybody else come across this when discussing or recommending WoT? And even if not, what are our (*dedicated fans) thoughts on it?

In that FB conversation I did bring up how in an interview (the one attached to the Audible editions), Robert Jordan brings up how he more or less considered any culture or society present in America to be free game to adapt to a fantasy world. And in general, I think it's safe to say that all fantasy pretty much borrows from some culture or other (though of course, cultural appropriation is a genuine concern for BIPOC cultures and a lot of fantasy is more Euro-based), so at the least it's arguable that we can't create a fantasy world that doesn't imitate real life in some way, because an author is only a product of their own universe, perhaps?

Personally, I guess I don't see the WoT as being harmful/cultural appropriation - things are far too diluted (if that's the right word) and mixed around to really make any one culture stand out as being represented enough to be mis-represented or appropriated. But I also don't want to dismiss this FB person's suggestion simply because I grew up loving these books and might have rose-colored glasses about it: I think it's okay to recognize that things written in the past, even the recent past, can have serious issues (similar to how gender issues in WoT have been discussed and addressed).

Anyways: all this to say, what are alls y'alls thoughts, if any? :) I'd be particularly interested in hearing from fellow BIPOCs, but please anybody chime in.
 

Ryu Shadowborn

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Honestly that is kind of the point, Almost every major culture in Wheel of Time is a Mixture of real world cultures and races.

The Aiel have quite a few cultures mingled together. The Number of Clans is pulled from Hebrew History, With their look and the use of the word clan being very Irish.
 

Elania al'Manir

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A bit late, but I don't think there's cultural appropriation in the books. It's not like he just picked up all of Japan and put it down in Shienar. There are some elements from various cultures mixed together to make something entirely new. And since it's technically the same world, only post-two-apocalypses (I think), it even makes sense for snippets of things to have been mixes and dispersed all over the world, over thousands of years.
 

Merena Orithana

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A bit late, but I don't think there's cultural appropriation in the books. It's not like he just picked up all of Japan and put it down in Shienar. There are some elements from various cultures mixed together to make something entirely new. And since it's technically the same world, only post-two-apocalypses (I think), it even makes sense for snippets of things to have been mixes and dispersed all over the world, over thousands of years.

Agreed. This is very similar to other series e.g. Mercedes Lackey, who mixes elements of different cultures.

There are some series that I think you can make an argument that they have more harmful cultural innuendos - e.g. Eddings' Belgariad and Torak's followers. However, RJ doesn't really identify any culture within his world as all 'bad' (except maybe Shara?).
 
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