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[CCBC-Net] Octavian Nothing
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From: Elliott BatTzedek <ebattzedek>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:31:57 -0500
I think Octavian is an astounding book, and could easily become definitional in terms of the how young adults are taught about race and history in the U.S. While there are so many picture books, novels, and nonfiction books about slavery, and many of them quite good, I've not yet encountered anything as seeringly true about the role and attitudes of white people in creating, justifying, and maintaining the mindset that allowed chattel slavery to become a social norm here.
Too often, books give many details about the horrors of slavery, and how African American communities and individuals resisted it, but most shy away from the issue of holding white people of the time fully accountable for what they did. And then there are so many books which attempt to redeem the situation via discussion of anti-slavery advocates as the only white individuals discussed vs. the anonymous "slave owners." (Rather like the whole stream of movies in the 80s showing how individual virtuous white South Africans sacrificed so much to fight Apartheid. Yes, some did, but that accounting always centers the white and not the Black citizens.)
In Octavian, M.T. Anderson has just done something so courageous in letting us see into the hearts of a variety of white characters and so see exactly the places where their hearts, and minds, are completely broken and warped by their white-ness. The tragedy is almost too much -- reading the final scene of volume one, I don't think I was so scared, or felt so betrayed or disturbed by an act of betrayal since sobbing for days over Black Beauty as a very young horse-book-loving child.
In some ways, Octavian is, finally, an authentically American response to Huckleberry Finn, and they should absolutely be read together, alongside slave narratives and historical documents.
And his language is stunning. And the use of multiple narrators the kind of "best of what literature can be" that I'm so thrilled is being carried into YA literature.
And who will be the first to assign a compare/contrast essay between the final scene of Octavian and the final scene of Monster?
Elliott batTzedek Curriculum and Collections Development Children's Literacy Initiative
Received on Thu 11 Jan 2007 03:31:57 PM CST
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:31:57 -0500
I think Octavian is an astounding book, and could easily become definitional in terms of the how young adults are taught about race and history in the U.S. While there are so many picture books, novels, and nonfiction books about slavery, and many of them quite good, I've not yet encountered anything as seeringly true about the role and attitudes of white people in creating, justifying, and maintaining the mindset that allowed chattel slavery to become a social norm here.
Too often, books give many details about the horrors of slavery, and how African American communities and individuals resisted it, but most shy away from the issue of holding white people of the time fully accountable for what they did. And then there are so many books which attempt to redeem the situation via discussion of anti-slavery advocates as the only white individuals discussed vs. the anonymous "slave owners." (Rather like the whole stream of movies in the 80s showing how individual virtuous white South Africans sacrificed so much to fight Apartheid. Yes, some did, but that accounting always centers the white and not the Black citizens.)
In Octavian, M.T. Anderson has just done something so courageous in letting us see into the hearts of a variety of white characters and so see exactly the places where their hearts, and minds, are completely broken and warped by their white-ness. The tragedy is almost too much -- reading the final scene of volume one, I don't think I was so scared, or felt so betrayed or disturbed by an act of betrayal since sobbing for days over Black Beauty as a very young horse-book-loving child.
In some ways, Octavian is, finally, an authentically American response to Huckleberry Finn, and they should absolutely be read together, alongside slave narratives and historical documents.
And his language is stunning. And the use of multiple narrators the kind of "best of what literature can be" that I'm so thrilled is being carried into YA literature.
And who will be the first to assign a compare/contrast essay between the final scene of Octavian and the final scene of Monster?
Elliott batTzedek Curriculum and Collections Development Children's Literacy Initiative
Received on Thu 11 Jan 2007 03:31:57 PM CST
