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ccbc-net digest 31 Oct 1999
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From: DaneBauer at aol.com <DaneBauer>
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 22:49:57 EST
How deeply I appreciate Maia's generous, thoughtful response to my questions.
And I agree, as deeply, with what answer she can offer me. Yes, of course, whatever I write--on any topic at all--I am always writing toward a positive, a life?firming message. And how much more this would be true when part of my topic must have to do with the reality of, the right to existence of a whole people.
Here is my story. My great-grandfather, as I mentioned before, brought a colony from England to the Red River Valley in northwestern Minnesota in the 1870's. He was a clergyman, a scholar, an idealist. Not at all a practical man or one accustomed to any kind of physical labor, according to family stories. He, in fact, lost his church in England because he sided from the pulpit with the farm workers who wanted to unionize, and the offended land owners withdrew their support from his church. He brought to Minnesota a group of tradespeople, none of them farmers, none of them equipped to face the harsh realities of the plains. They expected utopia--it's what my great-grandfather, who had visited in the balmy summer, had told them they would find--and arrived to a March blizzard. He and his wife and nine children moved on less than two years later after the grasshoppers wiped out all the hard-won crops. I don't know what his relationship might have been with the Native population of the area, but I can imagine--as my story begins to stir in my mind--that in any kind of conflict the community might have had with the people they were displacing, this man would have been on the wrong--that is to say the Native--side. I know in real life his congregation decided, once more, they could no longer support him, which is why he and his family left.
So ultimately my story will have a positive human message, about Native Americans, about our human potential to stand for the right. I'm not concerned about the integrity of the message I will tell or its appropriateness for children. What I am concerned about--and this past month's discussion has made that concern more acute-is that if I am honest about the way many if not most of the settlers saw the Native population, I and my story will be condemned. Not by everyone, of course. But by voices strong enough and powerful enough to be of real concern. I haven't the slightest question about my story's theme. But I have the distinct impression that, on this topic, some are not reading for the overall message.
They are reading for evidence of the author's "racism."
I am, incidentally, preparing to write this story for the Scholastic Dear America series, and I know that the editor I will be working with there shares my concern. Frankly, she doesn't really want me to touch anything Native American, but I don't see how I can write of this time and this place as though the land was simply lying there, unclaimed, waiting for the white settlers to come "conquer" it. My impression is that Scholastic has been seen by some people in this discussion as oblivious to criticism. Perhaps it will help to know that they are not. But I'm not sure that the quality of the caution which has been engendered is entirely useful either. I know I don't find it so.
This story is an important one to me. I want to write it well. And accurately. And honestly. And to do so I have to be able to write without looking over my shoulder, anticipating criticism. I am not asking the many people seriously engaged in this discussion to give me "permission" to do what I am going to do. I must give that to myself. Rather I am asking those who are searching stories, line by line, for points of offense to do what I try to teach young readers to do. Consider the story. The whole story. If the story itself misses the mark, by all means say so. But if Ma sees the Native people as savages and is terrified of them, but Pa has a wiser, more understanding perspective, then perhaps the story itself isn't racist. Perhaps it both reflects a people and a time and has a larger, more humane theme.
I've said enough. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to bring empathy and understanding to this discussion from many different perspectives. I move toward the story I will be writing with renewed respect both for its complexity and its importance.
Marion Dane Bauer
Received on Sun 31 Oct 1999 09:49:57 PM CST
Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 22:49:57 EST
How deeply I appreciate Maia's generous, thoughtful response to my questions.
And I agree, as deeply, with what answer she can offer me. Yes, of course, whatever I write--on any topic at all--I am always writing toward a positive, a life?firming message. And how much more this would be true when part of my topic must have to do with the reality of, the right to existence of a whole people.
Here is my story. My great-grandfather, as I mentioned before, brought a colony from England to the Red River Valley in northwestern Minnesota in the 1870's. He was a clergyman, a scholar, an idealist. Not at all a practical man or one accustomed to any kind of physical labor, according to family stories. He, in fact, lost his church in England because he sided from the pulpit with the farm workers who wanted to unionize, and the offended land owners withdrew their support from his church. He brought to Minnesota a group of tradespeople, none of them farmers, none of them equipped to face the harsh realities of the plains. They expected utopia--it's what my great-grandfather, who had visited in the balmy summer, had told them they would find--and arrived to a March blizzard. He and his wife and nine children moved on less than two years later after the grasshoppers wiped out all the hard-won crops. I don't know what his relationship might have been with the Native population of the area, but I can imagine--as my story begins to stir in my mind--that in any kind of conflict the community might have had with the people they were displacing, this man would have been on the wrong--that is to say the Native--side. I know in real life his congregation decided, once more, they could no longer support him, which is why he and his family left.
So ultimately my story will have a positive human message, about Native Americans, about our human potential to stand for the right. I'm not concerned about the integrity of the message I will tell or its appropriateness for children. What I am concerned about--and this past month's discussion has made that concern more acute-is that if I am honest about the way many if not most of the settlers saw the Native population, I and my story will be condemned. Not by everyone, of course. But by voices strong enough and powerful enough to be of real concern. I haven't the slightest question about my story's theme. But I have the distinct impression that, on this topic, some are not reading for the overall message.
They are reading for evidence of the author's "racism."
I am, incidentally, preparing to write this story for the Scholastic Dear America series, and I know that the editor I will be working with there shares my concern. Frankly, she doesn't really want me to touch anything Native American, but I don't see how I can write of this time and this place as though the land was simply lying there, unclaimed, waiting for the white settlers to come "conquer" it. My impression is that Scholastic has been seen by some people in this discussion as oblivious to criticism. Perhaps it will help to know that they are not. But I'm not sure that the quality of the caution which has been engendered is entirely useful either. I know I don't find it so.
This story is an important one to me. I want to write it well. And accurately. And honestly. And to do so I have to be able to write without looking over my shoulder, anticipating criticism. I am not asking the many people seriously engaged in this discussion to give me "permission" to do what I am going to do. I must give that to myself. Rather I am asking those who are searching stories, line by line, for points of offense to do what I try to teach young readers to do. Consider the story. The whole story. If the story itself misses the mark, by all means say so. But if Ma sees the Native people as savages and is terrified of them, but Pa has a wiser, more understanding perspective, then perhaps the story itself isn't racist. Perhaps it both reflects a people and a time and has a larger, more humane theme.
I've said enough. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard to bring empathy and understanding to this discussion from many different perspectives. I move toward the story I will be writing with renewed respect both for its complexity and its importance.
Marion Dane Bauer
Received on Sun 31 Oct 1999 09:49:57 PM CST
