From: Nancy Feresten <nfereste>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 10:36:17 -0400

Kathleen Horning brings up an important point in her posting. What race we believe these characters are seems strongly dependent on our own assumptions about the relationship between race and class.

I read Make Lemonade at the same time as my then eleven-year-old daughter. We both loved the book. Abby asked me what race the characters were (which means, of course, that she was thinking about it, not assuming), and I said I had assumed that they were black. Why did I assume? Not because I'm black. I'm not. Partly because of the name LaVaughn, I think. But also partly because LaVaughn is a poor urban teen living in a housing project, and, at least in my mind
(shaped by a childhood in a white middle-class suburb and teen summers spend working side-by-side with poor black teens in an inner-city daycare center), that set of circumstances suggests that she would be black. Maybe the fact that my daughter didn't make this assumption means that her childhood (much of it in a multiethnic, multiclass neighborhood in New York) allows her to have a more open mind.

I think that Virginia Euwer Wolf's experiment and the wide range of reader interpretations of LaVaughn's and Jolly's race(s) are encouraging. They suggest that the stereotypes of class and race that are clearly resident in my mind are not as widespread as I would have guessed, even among adults, and that they may be fading from the lives of children. Race certainly does matter, and perhaps it's old?shioned to suggest that it shouldn't, but though no one of any race should have to be in LaVaughn's or Jolly's circumstances, I find the idea that they could be any race cheering, a sign of positive change in our culture.

Nancy Laties Feresten National Geographic Children's Books
Received on Wed 11 Jul 2001 09:36:17 AM CDT