It was three in the morning in Seoul. I hadn’t slept properly in 36 hours, and I was tempted to tell the long, winding story of my life to the person on the other end of the line, as if she were my therapist. Perhaps it was the view of Gangnam outside my window that made me nostalgic. Or maybe it was the jet lag. Then I remembered that I was talking to the public editor of The New York Times about what had happened in Brisbane, Australia, that anything I said could be written up in the paper, and that the reason we were speaking at all was that the Times earlier that day had embroiled me in a controversy involving an American novelist who has a thing for sombreros.

Before last Friday, I had never heard of Lionel Shriver. As I settled into the back row of the room where Shriver was to give the keynote speech to the Brisbane Writers Festival, I was more concerned with giving myself a clear path to the exit in case my jet lag caught up with me. I gathered that she was famous, at least as far as writers go, and that she had written a book called We Need to Talk About Kevin that had been turned into a movie. But mostly I registered the fact that she was to give a speech on the theme of “community and belonging,” and that, like other festival speeches of this sort, there was a good chance it could be sleep-inducing.

It was anything but. Shriver—a thin middle-aged woman with spectacles and brown hair—began her speech by describing herself as a “renowned iconoclast.” She declared that she would not, in fact, be exploring the theme of “community and belonging,” but would instead discuss the issue of “fiction and identity politics.” In a diatribe that has since become notorious, she proceeded to enumerate the various ways in which cultural appropriation—the idea that white artists and communities have stolen elements of minority cultures in ways that are oppressive—was harmful to people everywhere. She asserted, “Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived.” She tempered what amounted to a right-wing case against affirmative action and political correctness with a paean to cultural exchange, proclaiming, “I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad,” because the exchange of cultural ideas is “one of the most productive, fascinating aspects of modern urban life.” She then theatrically donned a sombrero to show her solidarity with those drunk, sombrero-wearing American college students in Cancun who supposedly are not giving any offense to Mexican culture. Shriver said she was merely an advocate for people trying on other people’s hats.

The most upsetting aspects of the speech won’t be found in the transcript.

People began to walk out. Yassmin Abdel-Magied, an Australian Muslim, went back to her hotel room, where she wrote an essay called, “I walked out of the Brisbane Writers Festival Keynote Address. This is why.” The essay would go viral, inspiring dozens of thinkpieces and Twitter essays on white supremacy, white arrogance, and white ignorance. But back in the hall, for those of us who remained, it was hard to pinpoint exactly what was so offensive about this spectacle—there was so much to choose from. Shriver questioned whether white people are even allowed to eat Pad Thai anymore. She chose extreme examples of counter-cultural appropriation gone awry, citing Oberlin students apologizing for the inauthenticity of sushi in their cafeteria as being insensitive to Japanese people. She asked, obtusely, if a crime writer should have criminal experience to write authentically in her genre. She chastised an unnamed writer for including “mostly Chinese” characters in his novel: “That is, that’s sort of all they were: Chinese. Which isn’t enough.”

But the most upsetting aspects of the speech won’t be found in the transcript. It was the sight of a white woman who has had great literary success playing the victim. It was the arrogance with which she declared that being Asian is not an identity; sure, we don’t want to be stereotyped according to race either, but who is Lionel Shriver to tell us that? It was the casualness with which she declared that “any story you can make yours is yours to tell,” and that, “in the end, it’s about what you can get away with.” And it was the smugness with which she put that sombrero on, looking defiant, as though she had just won some childish bet. Her whole attitude conveyed her annoyance, but for those of us whose identities—racial, sexual, and cultural—have branded us as others throughout our lives, her smirks went straight through like a bullet.