Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Simon Ortiz's THE PEOPLE SHALL CONTINUE


"The People looked around them and they saw Black People, Chicano People, Asian People, many White People and others who were kept poor by American wealth and power.

The People saw that these People who were not rich and powerful shared a common life with them.

The People realized they must share their history with them."

What you've just read is an except from The People Shall Continue, a poem written by Simon Ortiz. His poem was published as a picture book in 1977. If you read American Indian poetry, you are likely familiar with his work. He is from Acquemeh (Acoma) Pueblo, and "The People" are the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Ortiz begins The People Shall Continue with Creation. Not Genesis, but Creation, as viewed by several different Indian tribes. From the opening pages of his book, children learn that there is more than one way to view Creation. And they learn about diversity in lifestyle, diversity that is dependent on place.

As the story continues, Ortiz tells us that "something unusual began to happen." That something is the arrival of what he calls "strange men" who came "seeking treasures and slaves." This happened to the People, everywhere. He tells us about resistance as he recounts the many ways in which the People persevered in the face of government efforts to stop us from being who we were and are.

His book, in short, offers a history of American Indians.

Here we are, nearly 30 years after the publication of his book, and the rich and powerful continue to cause suffering.

The title of Ortiz's book THE PEOPLE SHALL CONTINUE helps me when I read the news each day and learn of yet another incident in which the rich and powerful denigrate people of color. This morning I read about a parody of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" written by students at Tufts. The re-written song is "Oh Come All Ye Black Folk." It takes aim at affirmative action, but also, specifically, at 52 African American freshmen at Tufts, who, it is suggested, are there regardless of D's and F's. For more on this, Inside Higher Ed has the story I read.

As noted in an earlier post, racial tensions seem to be on the rise on college campuses across the country. A student told me last week that over Thanksgiving break, she overheard students at a bar talking about their "Trail of Beers" party.

A comment to my post about Philbrick's book suggested that on this blog, I "doth protest too much." That individual is not paying attention. The pile of ugliness is huge and it is everywhere.

And so I will protest, and, THE PEOPLE SHALL CONTINUE.

The People Shall Continue, written by Simon Ortiz, illustrated by Sharol Graves, was published in 1977 by Children's Book Press.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Josefina, An American Girl

Today in class, one of my students shared a book in the American Girl "Josefina" line. The book is Welcome to Josefina's World, 1824: Growing up on America's Southwest Frontier. From the American Girl website is this synopsis:
Inside this beautiful hardcover book you'll see what growing up was like during Josefina's times in 1824 New Mexico. Look inside a Pueblo Indian village, and welcome a trading caravan from Mexico. 
To her credit, the student is critically analyzing the ways in which the series portrays dolls of color, and is finding problems with those portrayals.

One page of Welcome to Josefina's World includes an old, black and white photograph of two Pueblo women. One woman is sitting in front of the other. The camera position is behind and to their left. The woman in back has her hands on the shoulders of the woman in front of her. It is not clear what they are doing, but the caption says that lice were a problem, and that these two women were likely removing lice from each other.

Were lice a problem? Yes. Are they a problem? Yes. Only for Native people past or present? NO. Lice don't care about race, ethnicity, or class. Yet, it is one of those things that is attributed to lower class people of color. I'd have to get a copy of the "Welcome to..." book for each of the American Girls, but I'm willing to bet that the white dolls don't have lice. (If you're in a library with these books, you could help me and readers with this question... Send me an email or post your findings in the comments section of the blog.)

Thanks, Fi, for bringing this book to class.

Update: One of the other "Welcome to..." books (about Felicity, a white character) shows a lice comb as an artifact. I'm glad it is there, but I think that the two images are vastly different in what they convey and what they invoke in the reader. See comments below.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Scieszka's ME OH MAYA and Gibson's APOCALYPTO

Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto is about to be released. The previews promise a lot of action, and it looks like it features a lot of stereotypes, too, which means it'll probably do well at the box office. If you are interested in a critical review of Gibson's process of getting this film done, The Nation has one: Mad Mel and the Maya.

NOT RECOMMENDED
In the midst of the media attention of this film, I learned of a children's book by acclaimed author Jon Scieszka. Titled Me Oh Maya, it is part of his Time Warp Trio series of books in which three boys time travel, mostly to the past, but occasionally to the future. Me Oh Maya was first published in 2003 by Viking.

In Me Oh Maya the boys find themselves in a Mayan ball court. A "short brown-skinned guy in a wild feathered headdress stood on top of the wall looking down" at the boys and says to them "Explain yourselves or your blood will be spilled in sacrifice."

This guy turns out to be an "evil high priest" stands over them. His name, they learn, is Kakapupahed.

The Time Warp Trio series is pitched to kids who are "reluctant readers." This sort of book provides readers with clever writing that functions as a hook to draw in a kid who might otherwise not read. In this series, that hook is puns, lots of action, and, as the reviewer at School Library Journal notes, "a little bathroom humor."

In Me Oh Maya, the boys hear the high priests name and think "Cacapoopoohead":


They struggle, unsuccessfully, to contain their laughter. This "evil priest" is corrupt, and with the help of one of his relatives and her son, they manage to trick him and remove him from his position.

Reviews of the book say that kids can learn a lot about Mayan culture by reading this book. I don't think so. What they really learn is that it is perfectly fine to denigrate Mayan names and hence, the people who carry them. They learn that the Mayan's are fools who can be easily tricked ("primitive Indians" you know).

Those are my initial observations. There is much more to say about flaws in Me Oh Maya.

For now, I consider the context. A children's book. A feature length film. Both deeply flawed, yet those flaws escape notice. Why is that?