It' s Worth Thinking About

 

I recently received an email from a friend re the controversial Dr. Seuss books, wondering how I felt about removing/banning some of his books. She said: I think it’s the same as Book Burning!  use the examples as a teaching moment from the times they came from.  Most all his books were read to me and I don’t think they turned me in to a racist or white supremist!

Well, first of all, it's not actually banning. It’s the people who own the copyrights  and the publishers who are choosing not to print the specific books.  Dr. Seuss has a left a fine legacy of great, socially aware stuff--most especially The Lorax and I can imagine that he, or in this case, his estate, would rather not tarnish his memory with ethnic stereotypes, innocent though they seemed at the time.

But it’s a question I’m pondering as I read stuff to Josie. Some of my favorites from childhood are incredibly racist by today's standards. William Green Hill on the Old Plantation comes to mind.  Yes, there can be teaching moments though how much a three-year old will absorb of that and still enjoy the story, I don’t know. 

Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Seventeen, the list is endless. In all of these Black people are portrayed as charming but gullible and laughable, at best.  Grow up reading these, as I did, and these attitudes help one accept things like segregation and the fact that my grandmother kept a separate set of dishes and eating utensils for her Black maid, and my grandfather insisted on starting the lawnmower for Fred, a Black teacher with a MA, who mowed lawns on Saturdays and donated his earnings to his church.

Like my friend, I don't consider myself a racist or a White Supremacist. But I'm embarrassed that I ever accepted things as they were in the South of the Fifties.  

I think a good standard to apply is, If I were reading this  to a child of the ethnicity being portrayed/caricatured, would I feel uncomfortable? If the answer is yes, probably time to retire this work—which was written when WASP was the default mode for most readers.

Retire, not ban. 

 

 

 

S

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

WOW!!

I mean, really, WOW!

This is Some Book. Don't take my word for it -- check out all the reviews. And then there's that Pulitzer Prize thing -- not bad for a first novel.

(Of course, Diaz had been polishing his prose, publishing stories in The New Yorker for some time.)

I was going to save this post for a while, since I just carried on about a book the other day. But I wanted to acknowledge Banned Books Week and this book would undoubtedly make some folks' banned list -- language, sexual situations, violence -- and in the Dominican Republic, I have no doubt it would Not be popular among many.

The book is, on the surface, the story of Oscar, whose Dominican heritage haunts his nerdy, role-playing gamer, fat boy, loser life. But what it really is is an exploration of that heritage, that curse, that land called the Dominican Republic.

A bit of history -- Trujillo, who ruled the DR with an iron hand (and US support for many years till the CIA allegedly arranged his assassination) was as cruel and lunatic a dictator as Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Stalin, Idi Amin, ____(insert name here).

Trujillo ordered the death of any Haitians living in the DR or of any Dominicans with Haitian blood -- sending his minions to do the execution with machetes. All of this to make the DR a 'whiter' nation. (Trujillo himself was a quarter Haitian.)

He was infamous in lechery -- an eye for the ladies and girls -- who, single or married, were all available to him -- or else.

And our government supported this man, fearing that with him gone, the Socialists would take over. When his excesses become too excessive to overlook, he was removed and another dictator, almost as bad if not so psychotic, was installed.

Oh, it makes me want to weep.

But this wonderful, sprawling, quirky, somehow good-humored, in spite of all that is evil, book is a testament to the light that still shines in the heart of one Dominican.

Banned Books Week

Take a banned book to lunch -- it's the American Library Association's Banned Book Week! And yes, it's true -- massively ironic, but true, that Bradbury's beautifully told story of a society that bans and burns all books has itself at one time been banned -- for use of profanity.

It's in good company -- along with Harry Potter, Huck Finn, Joyce's Ulysses, the Bible, Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, A Wrinkle in Time . . . the list goes on and on. Books are challenged for political, sexual, or religious content. Books are challenged because nervous parents or governments think these books will teach readers witchcraft . . . make them believers . . . or atheists . . . or turn them into homosexuals . . . or liberals . . . or people who think for themselves.

Of course there are some books not appropriate for young children. And parents should be aware of what their children are reading -- should maybe even read it first rather than make an uninformed decision. But things get dicey when one set of parents wants to decide for everyone.

As a lifelong reader, the thought of not being allowed to read something, just because someone else decided I shouldn't, is anathema. And I salute the brave librarians who stand up to those who would attempt to limit others' right to read.

(Yes, one book, and that my own, was harmed in the making of this blog. But it had already suffered major water damage. Still, it was a weird feeling, setting fire to a book.)