A tangent

Date: 2005-02-22 04:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jonquil.livejournal.com
I wish the author didn't harsh on Paul Bunyan; it's one of the fakes that became real. First version was a creation; the tenth is a folktale, with community accretions. The same thing happened to certain broadsheets: they were good enough to be passed on through the folk process.

The body of the article is devastating.

Date: 2005-02-23 02:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] katranides.livejournal.com
Read the abstract and knew I couldn't go on. Rant, rant. Who cares!?! If they tell the kiddies that Puerto Ricans eat tacos, then I'd get uppity, but like you said, Lizzie, isn't the story that counts? I mean, if they are publishing a kids book for Western kids, isn't it okay if it's more inspired by than an exact copy of the original? Maybe I wouldn't have written such simplistic analysis if I'd read the whole article, but there's a derivative novel I want to go read.

Date: 2005-05-24 01:40 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Aha! I found your blog!

I skimmed this and yeah, it's annoying and preachy (also, for someone so strong on authenticity, he gets at least a few details of his own wrong-- for one thing, the Coretta Scott King Award is not for "nonviolence," it's for a book by an African-American author).

On the one hand, its' the Right Thing to Do to be sensitive to stories' cultures of origin, and one generation's charming folktale adaptation is another's racist throwback (cf Little Black Sambo, Tikki-Tikki Tembo, 5 Chinese Brothers) (and I like some of those! but lots of people have objected to them). And native Americans in particular have had so much of their culture "adapted" out of all recognition, especially in children's books...oh, I could go on and on but I know you've heard/read it before. It's something I struggle with all the time when choosing books for my library and deciding what to read to kids.

But nothing's pure. Eric Kimmel changes Jewish folktales when he adapts them, and he's Jewish! And yeah, authentic Native American stories have a different style, one that maybe non-Native kids could be exposed to more. But it's not what they're used to, and it won't grab them the way what this author calls "schoolbook" writing style will. So authors--including natives of the culture whose folktales they're adapting or retelling-- make an authorial choice, to make these folktales more accessible to their audience. It can be a slippery slope into cultural misappropriation. But this guy's stance borders on the absurd.

Oh, bleah, please excuse the length of this and its relative incoherence. I'm sneaking on from work and don't have time to make it shorter or better...

Date: 2005-05-24 01:41 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Oh-- the above message was from me, elswhere, from Travels in Booland (elswhere.blogspot.com)

In case you didn't guess ;-)

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