PBS did a "Great American Read" project recently. Their list of 100 most-loved books doesn't have a single Native writer on it.
Stereotypes of Native people are in some of those books...
But the list doesn't have a single Native writer on it.
What does that tell you?
Established in 2006 by Dr. Debbie Reese of Nambé Pueblo, American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) provides critical analysis of Indigenous peoples in children's and young adult books. Dr. Jean Mendoza joined AICL as a co-editor in 2016.
The list's inclusion of not only Twilight, Tom Sawyer, The Help, and Gone with the Wind, but also Left Behind (which is as poorly written as Twilight, but which also sold a lot) alongside Americanah, Things Fall Apart and Invisible Man tells me two things:
ReplyDelete1. PBS isn't going by quality or by racial/social goodness at all, but rather by popularity, which, as you certainly already know, is quite a lousy factor to use when judging any books.
2. Too many people know about books like Gone with the Wind and Last of the Mohicans (which isn't actually on that list, but still...) yet apparently have no idea that books like The Wind Done Gone, or any books by Tim Tingle or Cynthia Leitich Smith, even exist.
Oh--and here's a link to the PBS list, which I think you should have put in the post: http://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/books/
ReplyDelete