tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27760240.post7454173159219216192..comments2024-03-27T14:08:51.191-05:00Comments on American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL): THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY, by Adam RexDebbie Reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14972409006633565859noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27760240.post-10061369615787223182017-01-27T13:51:30.913-06:002017-01-27T13:51:30.913-06:00Debbie, I have got to tell you, this book makes me...Debbie, I have got to tell you, this book makes me think of the short-lived TV show <i>The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer</i>. It was a sitcom dealing with Usonian slavery, and the NAACP protested it. Good thing it was short-lived.<br /><br />By the way, this book was loosely adapted as a film in 2015, called <i>Home</i>. As far as I can tell from its Wikipedia page, the film does not feature that "Chief", unlike the book. Hopefully it doesn't feature any other racist tropes.Sam Jonsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06037969317578064759noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27760240.post-1483697781161967292015-02-22T15:10:46.793-06:002015-02-22T15:10:46.793-06:00I really appreciate this effort to "unpack&qu...I really appreciate this effort to "unpack" the plot, the characters, and the language in this book. Sometimes it seems as if authors don't take their books as seriously as readers do. I say that because the author (Rex) seems to simultaneously hold varying degrees of consciousness about history, sensitivity to the issues of colonized people, and his own intentions/goals. <br /><br />You posed the question: Is it appropriate to write books for children that deal with serious, heavy topics, but do so in a superficial, humorous way? Is it appropriate to set up a metaphor for a specific historical event, but leave out the aspects that were devastating & horrific? <br /><br />My observations of children reading books is that most of the time they don't mind if the author spells out exactly how they should understand & interpret a story. They are used to this at home, in school, & in literature (the didactic or obvious or historically relevant kind). For example, The One & Only Ivan (by Applegate) and Wonder (by Palacio) are well-loved by many students who read them in class with their teachers milking the discussion for lessons. <br /><br />But if the author doesn't clearly specify which story elements are negative (stereotypical names or descriptions, the acceptance/dismissal of violence) and which are positive (authentic, multi-dimensional, diverse characters), then readers are left to their own devices. In my observation (as a parent & a children's librarian in a public library in a city) children's personal life experiences deeply affect how they interpret ambiguity. People can "hear" entirely different messages. It would be harder for a teacher to conduct a discussion about this, because kids would have to figure out for themselves what things mean, and whether or not they parallel real life. <br /><br />Will young readers assume it's fine to use "Cheif" as a nickname for any American Indian person? Will they assume that bad colonizers are unsustainable (& leave on their own accord), but good colonizers can reach an acceptable & happy equilibrium with the native population? <br /><br />What if different children get different messages about this book? Do all books need to be the kind that spell it out clearly? <br /><br />If the author had flawlessly presented a plot & characters that paralleled an American Indian perspective (embedded in a story about a mixed-race girl befriending an extra-terrestrial while simultaneously fighting an invading colonizing army), then we would have had a cohesive metaphor, instruction-ready, conclusions drawn. Nobody would miss the point. That would have been an entirely different book. <br /><br />As a children's librarian, I have recommended & would still recommend this book to readers - but readers see Gratuity as the voice of reason, the trusted narrator in this story. We need her to understand why using Frank instead of "Chief" mattered, like she saw through Frank's charade (& that of her school's namesake), and like she taught J-Lo why the invasion was wrong. <br /><br />Thank you for the long article that sparked many thoughts about the book.ericahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14334829596777284344noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27760240.post-53173488813943877612015-02-20T14:28:32.846-06:002015-02-20T14:28:32.846-06:00Came back to read Perry's comments-- thanks fo...Came back to read Perry's comments-- thanks for them! And thanks to Debbie for this thoughtful post.<br /><br />Don't want to sidetrack the conversation, but just to respond to comments about the Holocaust above: the Holocaust was of course not limited to Germany. People from countries all over Europe were murdered (including my Hungarian relatives.) Auschwitz, for example, is in Poland. I understand the comparison is meant to evaluate relative distance from historical events, but maybe there is a shared desire by some to feel more distance than is warranted. Also definitely agree that satire and humor vary between cultures and countries, but I'd be interested to know *who* exactly in Europe is joking about the Holocaust. My European family members who are survivors certainly don't.Sarah Hnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27760240.post-36006634662165970802015-02-20T12:38:18.085-06:002015-02-20T12:38:18.085-06:00Thanks, Debbie, for getting me interested in this ...Thanks, Debbie, for getting me interested in this book, which I hadn’t read before you alerted me to it. For the most part, i enjoyed reading it, and I have lots to say about it––enough to go past the number of characters allowed in a comment, so I’ve divided my response into two comments.<br /><br />Part 1: I think that Rex does some very clever things in terms of paralleling the alien invasion with what happened between imperialist invaders and Indigenous people in North America and elsewhere. I think, though that Rex's main interest throughout appears to be in exploring the humor of the situation, and while that means there’s often clever and funny satire that emerges from the colonialist parallels, that doesn’t happen consistently. Sometimes the novel is a colonial satire, and sometimes it isn’t.<br /><br />For instance, it seems that the appearance and character of the alien Gorg has satiric implications: they have the uniformity, the self-centered self-importance, and the obsessive single-mindedness of totalitarian overlords, like Hitler or the British raj or the European settlers of North America. But there is no satiric implication that I can find in the fact that the other aliens, the Boov, have a sizeable number of feet. It’s just a joke, just something that defines them as alien.<br /><br />Similarly, i think, what happens sometimes resonates in terms of the history of relationships between Indigenous North Americans and European colonists and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes, much worse, it resonates in what I see as negative ways that I suspect Rex wasn’t even aware of.<br /><br />I think that happens, for instance, with the portrayal of Chief Shouting Bear. Aspects of it are cleverly satiric. I like how the Chief slyly manipulates stereotypes of angrily politicized Native Americans in order to keep people from interfering in his life. He creates a safe space for himself by pretending to be something that confirms other people's negative stereotypes and makes those other people want to avoid him. But while the distance between the stereotype and the real, clever, kind man who hides behind it seems to imply the falsity of the stereotype, it also in an odd way also confirms the stereotype: the novel never suggests that there aren’t a lot of angry Native Americans who shout too loudly about their land and their rights, etc. Nor does it suggest that the anger is justified and even necessary, or that is anything but just silly and laughable. Indeed, the novel seems to be sending up the supposed silliness of politicized Native people who want to make others aware of their rights at the same time as it seems to be expressing concern about how powerful outsiders oppress people and deprive them if their rights. The novel is just too interested in making jokes and being funny to be consistent enough to be effective as satire. As a result, it undermines its own satire.Perry Nodelmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03180612700094566557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27760240.post-53632623721066390672015-02-20T12:30:50.552-06:002015-02-20T12:30:50.552-06:00Part 2: My main concern with the novel, though, is...Part 2: My main concern with the novel, though, is that while it makes significant points about how colonizers oppress others, points that seem modeled on the history of European settlers and Indigenous North Americans, it finally seems to want to dismiss the significance of that history and invite readers of all sorts to believe that the past is the past, what’s over is over, and that since we’re really all alike we should be forgetting our differences (and apparently the history behind those differences) and just treat each other as equals and get along. Gratuity, the protagonist who is telling what happened, implies that sort of tolerance message when she says, “The Boov weren’t anything special. They were just people. They were too smart and too stupid to be anythng else.” And the Chief agrees: “When you’re Indian, you have people telling you your whole life ‘bout the people who took your land. Can’t hate all of ‘em, or you'll spend your whole life shouting at everyone.”<br /><br />The novel also undermines its colonialist satire by identifying a number of other forms of oppressions of weaker people by more powerful ones: women by men, children by adults, etc. Even Gratuity herself has to acknowledge at one point that maybe she’s too bossy and should stop oppressing others. As a result, the specific history and issues of Native Americans become just one example of a more general attack on mean bullies who take advantage of weaker people; and the solution to that particular situation as well as all other situations and relationships is just being nice to others and treating them all as equals.<br /><br />To me, that reads like a massive copout, a way of avoiding the important political and historical issues that still control and limit far too many lives. And like, for instance, a lot of multicultural rhetoric, it works to erase the ongoing significance of the specific history of Indigenous peoples—what makes their situation different from those of all the other groups who now live together in countries like the US.<br /><br />One final point: for someone who spends a lot of time attacking and making fun of imperialists blind to the equal humanity of people they see as different and inferior to themselves, Rex himself, quite unconsciously, I suspect, makes a hugely imperialistic mistake. He asserts that the Boov force all the inhabitants of Earth to move to Florida, and then, changing their minds, to Arizona. But he then says nothing about how the Earthlings from, say, Europe or Africa, are going to manage to get to Florida. And when Gratuity arrives in Arizona, there is no mention of people who speak Swahili or Chinese, no mention of there being disputes involving people from different countries or continents, no mention of orders given in any languages other than English and Spanish. In fact, Rex has simply assumed that the Earth = the USA. All the humans who are not American are simply erased. It’s only in one sentence towards the end that Rex hints that maybe the Boov had rounded up other people in other parts of the world in different detention areas closer to where they live--a weird thing to suddenly tell readers about when we’ve been asked all along to assume that all humanity had ended up in Arizona. This is unconscious American imperialism at its finest, and as a Canadian, I found it exceedingly annoying.<br /><br />All things considered: I think that The True Meaning of Smekday is often a very funny novel, and often a cleverly satiric one. But while it certainly has the potential to give readers of all ages a lot to think about, I find myself saddened by the ways in which it sets up parallels that allow for shrewd commentary on American Indian history and politics and then squanders the opportunity to pursue that commentary in favor of jokes and a kind of obvious and dangerous message of thoughtless universal equivalence and tolerance.Perry Nodelmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03180612700094566557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27760240.post-21218844886470257052015-02-14T03:12:03.500-06:002015-02-14T03:12:03.500-06:00@mclicious.org
That's true, here in Europe we ...@mclicious.org<br />That's true, here in Europe we can't deny the Holocaust, and several movements inspired by Nazism are illegal. But I think the issue is different. Here in Europe, when talking about the Holocaust, unless you aren't in Germany, you're talking about another country, while the genocide of American Indians is at the roots of American 'civilization'. I hope I have not offended any American here, I'm just saying that in Europe the Holocaust is often an another country's issue. Obviously, I'm not saying that in Germany the historical episode isn't widely acknowledged and studied.<br /><br />Anyway, the book seems interesting, and I love how it mocks some episodes of America's invasion. Too bad it has some problematic elements!<br />For anyone who wants to read about Columbus and his action I recommend 'A Coyote Columbus Story' by Thomas King.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07182420878018292367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27760240.post-5916732729660609772015-02-12T17:26:48.455-06:002015-02-12T17:26:48.455-06:00I do think Rex was aware of the allegory he was ma...I do think Rex was aware of the allegory he was making, and that for someone (as far as I know) who is a resident of Arizona (he's from Tucson, where I'm from) but not a member of any native group, he does a pretty damn good job of knowing a lot and acknowledging things in subtle ways.<br /><br />The unwillingness to address deep wounds with humor is a very American thing, I think. When I was studying in Prague, I took a course on European perspectives of American literature, and one of the things my professor pointed out was that because it is ILLEGAL to deny the Holocaust (Europeans think we are absolutely crazy for allowing for complete denial under the umbrella of "free speech") and the Holocaust is openly acknowledged, studied, mourned, etc, it is also common for there to be Holocaust jokes. There are obviously appropriate and inappropriate times to make them, and like any humor, the real kind still pokes fun at the powerful, not the oppressed, but you do indeed apply humor to difficult and incredibly painful memories. So while it feels weird to you as someone living in the US, it's not an entirely taboo or even inappropriate thing to do, and I think using humor to address such things, especially with younger audiences, may very well make certain things more accessible. I would be interested to know if anyone teaches Smekday in a 7th grade class, for example.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27760240.post-1944359828735722642015-02-12T13:08:02.381-06:002015-02-12T13:08:02.381-06:00Could be a reference to War of the Worlds, also. I...Could be a reference to War of the Worlds, also. I mean, that can be read to be a criticism of English colonization in Africa, in Asia and in America.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com