Showing posts with label Forrest Carter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forrest Carter. Show all posts

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Not recommended: THE LAST THING YOU SAID by Sara Biren

Earlier this year, a reader wrote to ask me about The Last Thing You Said, by Sara Biren. It is published by Amulet Books, and due out on April 4, 2017. The reader pointed me to the review in School Library Journal, which said that Biren's use of inuksuk (singular)/inuksuit (plural) in her story is an example of cultural appropriation.

Before going on, I want to point to something readers should know. The School Library Journal review is eight sentences long. At the Barnes and Noble website, you can see all eight sentences, including the one about cultural appropriation. Here's the last three sentences:
The setting, a small Minnesota town, is fully realized and gives added depth to the characterizations as well. However, the appropriation of an Inuit cultural practice, inuksuk, as a symbol for the two white teens' relationship is a poor choice. VERDICT Cultural appropriation mars an otherwise promising debut that's recommended for libraries with a high demand for romance.—Elizabeth Saxton, Tiffin, OH
Over on Amazon, however, you will find only one sentence from the SLJ review:
"Fans of Sarah Dessen and Huntley Fitzpatrick’s books will find much to love in this emotional romance."
From what I understand, publishers decide what goes on the Amazon site. They obviously didn't want you (Amazon users) to see that SLJ had a significant concern about Biren's book. This occurs quite a lot. My advice to people who buy online based on reviews: read Barnes and Nobles page(s) on whatever book it is you are considering.

Back to the reader who asked me about Biren's book.

I turned that reader's question into a post in my "Debbie, have you seen" series. Because inuksuit originate with Inuit people, I wondered about them being in Duluth (where The Last Thing You Said is set).

A day later I received a pdf copy of The Last Thing You Said from Erica Finkel. She is Biren's editor. She saw my post and said that SLJ's review was based on a galley, and that she wanted me to have the final copy. I assume that means there were some changes between the galley and the final--based on SLJ's review. I don't have the galley that SLJ had when they wrote their review, so I can't compare the two. If someone does send me the galley, I'll be back with an update. I think that being able to track revisions in a book is tremendously useful to writers, readers, editors... all of us.

Here's the description of the book:
Last summer, Lucy’s and Ben’s lives changed in an instant. One moment, they were shyly flirting on a lake raft, finally about to admit their feelings to each other after years of yearning. In the next, Trixie—Lucy’s best friend and Ben’s sister—was gone, her heart giving out during a routine swim. And just like that, the idyllic world they knew turned upside down, and the would-be couple drifted apart, swallowed up by their grief. Now it’s a year later in their small lake town, and as the anniversary of Trixie’s death looms, Lucy and Ben’s undeniable connection pulls them back together. They can’t change what happened the day they lost Trixie, but the summer might finally bring them closer to healing—and to each other.

So. Here are my notes/comments as I read.

In chapter one we meet Lucy. She lives in Lake Halcyon, a small town in Minnesota. She's at her summer job at a resort there. We learn about vacation cabins that Trixie's aunt and uncle have owned "for generations" and about the restaurant her own family owns. It, too, has been in the family for generations. That "for generations" framework is annoying because it conveniently obscures who that land belonged to, before any of these characters and their families built cabins and restaurants on it. At this point, this book is an All White Book. Written by a white person for a white audience.

In chapters two, three, and four, we learn that Ben is angry at Lucy, her brother, Clayton, and at himself, too. The summer before, Ben, Lucy, Clayton, and Trixie were out together on the lake. Clayton and Trixie went for a swim. At the moment when Trixie (Ben's sister) was dying, Ben and Lucy were flirting. Ben is angry at his mom, too, for her worry about how Lucy is doing.

In chapter five, we meet Hannah Mills. She's from Mitchell, South Dakota. Her mom has written over 20 best selling historical western romances. Hannah moved to Halycon Lake after Trixie drowned. She's who Lucy hangs out with now.

In Chapter twelve, Ben is in his room. He used to polish rocks. On his desk is an agate, which reminds him of one he gave to Lucy, and a lot of other rocks he's collected. This is the first mention of an inuksuk (p. 63-64):
I balance a few rocks into a small stack, careful to keep it from tumbling over. It reminds me of an inuksuk. Dad told us about them on our first trip to Duluth years ago when we saw a couple along the side of the road. They’re stone structures that the Inuit used as guideposts, to mark good hunting or fishing, to give direction—practical reasons, but spiritual ones, too, Dad said, as memorials or to mark a place of respect. Last summer, that last trip before Trixie died, we saw at least fifty of them at one of the rocky beaches. 
My tower is irregular, off balance, but the clink of the stones as I stack them is like a balm on my soul. I’ve created something.
But unlike an inuksuk, these rocks don’t tell me which direction to go.
I sweep my hand across the stack and the stones crash to the desk.
There are, in fact, inuksuit in Duluth. Biren isn't misrepresenting their presence. In that passage, Ben's dad tells him that they have a practical and a spiritual significance to the Inuit. There, I think, is the line that Biren crossed: they have a spiritual significance.

Think of your own religious denomination and things in it that are used to memorialize something. If someone not of your denomination were to take and use that thing, would that be ok? I think the ubiquitous nature of inuksuit is similar to a lot of items from specific peoples (Native and not) that someone thinks is cool, and then someone else does, too, and before you know it, everyone has the item. Its meaning and significance to those who it originated with are lost as that thing becomes kitsch. This is the case for dreamcatchers and kokopelli, too. 

I gather that in her story, Biren's characters are using inuksuit for healing. But, I wonder, what is Ben's own religion? I guess it isn't enough to help him with his grief. 

On page 82 in chapter 14, Ben goes to a place where he and Trixie used to climb trees. He gathers rocks and stacks them against one of the trees. They tumble as he does. Then, he rearranges them so they are balanced. 

On page 98 in chapter 18, we learn a bit about Ben's friend, Guthrie.  He is part Irish and part Ojibwe. Then on page 101, there's a bit more:
When he’s not fishing, he’s reading. He never knew his Ojibwe grandfather, and in fourth grade, he decided to learn everything he could about his ancestors. He didn’t stop there. He learned about other Native cultures and then moved on to German and Scandinavian immigrants, and French-Canadian trappers. He’s like a walking Minnesota history book. 
Interesting. Why didn't he know his Ojibwe grandfather? Why is he described as having this ancestry? Is it going to matter somehow? Or is it decoration?

In chapter 24, Lucy remembers the polished agate stone that Ben gave to her on a trip they'd been on, together, to Duluth. 

On page 138, Ben is remembering the trip, too, and the inuksuit they found on the shore of Lake Superior. There were at least fifty of them. Lucy had watched Ben try to make one, too. He realized, then, that he was in love with her. 

On page 159, Ben is with Guthrie at his house on the lake. There are rocks there, and as he talks with Dana on the phone (who he is dating but wants to break up with), he stacks the rocks. They keep falling over. After he gets off the phone with Dana, he looks for more rocks, pockets some, and makes a tower. Then, he makes another one. It falls over, onto the first one. He starts over, and rebuilds both of them, carefully, and then lets out a long breath (p. 160):
“Hey.” Guthrie is behind me. I turn to face him. “You are on the right path,” he says. 
“What?” 
“Those look like inuksuit. One of the meanings of inuksuit is ‘You are on the right path.’ A marker. It’s a way to let others know that you’ve been here, that this is the right path.” 
“Oh,” I say. “Right.” 
We go back to the fire and Guthrie rattles on about this new hot spot he found on Papyrus, but I can’t stop thinking about what he said. 
You are on the right path. 
Nothing feels right.
Hmmm... Remember Guthrie's reading about other Native cultures? He knows about inuksuit. 

Thought it isn't spelled out, my guess is that there's something going on with that passage. Ben wants to break up with Dana. As he talks to her, the tower he builds falls again and again. Once he hangs up, he is able to make a tower, and then another, next to it. There isn't any explicit mention of Lucy, but I think she's in the background. He is still in love with Lucy. He's able to build two towers that don't fall over. They're meant to be him and Lucy. He can make the two towers that represent him and Lucy; hence, he's on the right path. He doesn't get it, yet. 

In chapter 30, Lucy takes off (without her parents permission) with Hannah, Dustin (he's Hannah's boyfriend) and Simon (Lucy's current boyfriend) to a rodeo in Mitchell, South Dakota. She has sex with Simon hoping to forget Ben (it doesn't work, and when she gets back home, she's grounded for the rest of the summer).

When chapter 31 opens, Ben is with Guthrie. He learns that Hannah is missing. Guthrie knows where she is. Ben decides to go there, too, but halfway there he changes his mind and turns around. He is crying, at one point as he drives, and pulls over at a park near a lake. There, he looks for rocks and remembers the ones he got while he was at Guthrie's. He makes a tower and thinks about the many towers he has made, and where he's made them. Building them soothes him.  

In chapter 36, Lucy sneaks into town to the used bookstore. She remembers that she got a complete set of the Little House books there, and that her mother would read them aloud to her. Whenever I come across a reference to that series, I cringe. And I hope that the author is aware that uncritical references to that book yank readers--who are aware of the racism towards African Americans and Native Americans in the series--right out of the book. I would absolutely be ok with a character who says "hey, that series sucks" but I've not yet found it yet. (Have you?)

Lucy gets a text from Simon who has spotted her through a window. It is awkward, especially because Ben is there, too, at another store, and sees them. Lucy declines Simon's invitation for a ride home. She cuts through a park on her way home and stops to rest on a bench. She sees a stack of rocks at the base of a tree (this is the one that Ben made earlier) and remembers Ben stacking rocks at Lake Superior. 

In chapter 38, Ben's parents talk with him about Lucy and why the two aren't friends. They also bring up his drinking. All through the book, he's had beer, sometimes other liquor Sometimes he takes liquor out of his dad's liquor cabinet. He's clearly in pain over his sister's death. 

In chapter 41, Ben is drunk. Guthrie, who is now dating Hannah, picks him up. They go to Guthrie's house and watch The Outlaw Josey Wales. I wonder if Biren knows the author of the book that the movie is based on is "Forrest Carter" -- who masqueraded as a Cherokee when he wrote The Education of Little Tree. Probably not, but, for me, this is another reference that yanks me out of the story she's telling.

In chapter 42, Hannah has a birthday party at her house by the beach. Lucy is drinking (she's still supposed to be grounded), and Ben is drunk. Simon is there, and so is Dana (Ben's girlfriend). There's lots of tension and heated words. Lucy leaves the house and walks to the teach. All along the woods are stacks of rocks, like the ones she saw at Lake Superior, the ones Ben called inuksuit. She lies beside them and passes out. 

Ben (who had a fist fight with Simon) finds her there and carries her to the porch. Dana finds them and there's another argument. Lucy doesn't remember much of this the next day. Her parents are angry but think her being grounded for the summer wasn't a good idea because she needed friends to help her get through the summer without Trixie. 

Ben goes to a Watermelon Days carnival. So does Lucy. They end up meeting, there, and it seems they'll get together again but, nope. They end up arguing. She walks away; he gets in his car and drives off. 

Chapter 51 is one line, all alone on the page. It is Ben thinking "This is not the right path." 

In the next chapters, Ben sends Lucy a gift, telling her that he loves her. She breaks up with Simon. On the evening before the first anniversary of Trixie's death, Lucy tells Ben she broke up with Simon, but she's busy (remember, she works at her family restaurant) and can't say any more than that. The next morning, Ben resolves to tell Lucy he's sorry about all that has happened. 

Ben's day starts with him heading out to build an inuksuk for Trixie. For weeks, he's been gathering giant rocks. There are six of them. They're in the trunk of his car. When he's finished with it, it is nearly as tall as he is. He's made it by the lake, near where Trixie died. Then, he texts Lucy, telling her he's at the park and that he wants to talk. There, by the inuksuk, they talk about Trixie, and what has happened since her death. They hug, kiss, and hold hands as they walk to his car, to go wherever their paths lead them. 

 That's it. End of the story. 

In her Author's Note, Biren says that she became interested in inuksuit when she lived in Duluth during her college years (p. 303):
It was then that I became interested in the history of inuksuit, the stone structures of the Inuit. Although the Inuit are not native to the area, it is not uncommon to see rock structures or sculptures along the North Shore Scenic Highway, in parks throughout the city, or in art galleries.
She goes on to say that the idea of inuksuit as guideposts on life's journey came to her as she wrote The Last Thing You Said. 

As I noted above, Biren's representation of them as present in Duluth is not a problem. What is a problem, however, is that her characters don't question why they are there. I'd like to know why they're there. Finding out who first put them there, though, might be an endless pursuit that leads nowhere. In those instances, we can step away from that pursuit and have a character think critically about them. Daniel Jose Older did something like that in Shadowshaper. 

There isn't any critical thinking of that kind in The Last Thing You Said. There are many opportunities for doing that, with the inuksuit, or the references to Little House and Outlaw Josey Wales, or, in Guthrie not knowing anything about his Ojibwe grandfather. These are, however, missed opportunities. I agree with the SLJ review. There is cultural appropriation in Biren's book. It also feels like she's tacked on Guthrie's Ojibwe identity to meet the calls for diverse characters. When that is superficial, however, it doesn't work.

I'm glad that Finkel (Biren's editor) sent me the book. Finel and Biren missed a lot, and I hope this long look at the book helps them see things they missed. Whether or not they agree with my critique, I hope they talk about it and share it with others, too.  

Friday, September 12, 2014

I read THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE

So! Scott (a colleague) wrote to ask me if I'd read The Education of Little Tree. I've written about that book here on AICL several times because it is not really a memoir. It was published as the memoir of a Cherokee named Forrest Carter, but that author's brother outed him as Asa Carter. Yeah, that guy. Of the KKK.

Scott said that a friend's daughter is reading it as a class assignment. She is telling the teacher that there are problems with it, but the teacher things there are valuable lessons in it, so I guess that means the teacher thinks they can ignore the problems. I don't know what the daughter is pointing out. Scott owes me big time for having to read this book...

This afternoon, I read The Education of Little Tree. Published in 1987 by the University of New Mexico Press, it is set in the 1930s. Little Tree and his grandparents are amongst the Cherokee people who did not go to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears.

As I read, I was shaking my head, sighing deeply, again and again as I read. I just can NOT see what ANYONE would see of value in this book.

There are several words in the first chapter that we are meant to understand as Cherokee words. Using the Cherokee Nation's translator, I found that one or two of Carter's words are close to what I found as being good translations but most of them don't work at all. So--if you think you're learning Cherokee words by reading this book, you're not.

That first chapter is called Little Tree. It sets the stage for why this five-year-old is now living with his grandparents. His mother has died. He gets on a bus with his grandparents who've come to his mom's funeral. As his grandfather is paying the bus driver, that bus driver turns to the passengers, holds up his right hand, and says "How!" They all laugh, and Little Tree thinks they are friendly people. There's another part there, where a passenger calls out "Wa...hooo" as they walk past her seat.  We, the reader, know what's going on, and we go along with Carter, thinking that the driver and the passengers are racist. Maybe that is what draws people into the book. The thing is, with Carter being a fraud, I think readers are the ones who are the butt of his joke.

Once they've gotten off the bus and are walking into the mountains where his grandparents live, he hears his grandma singing an Indian song and that makes him feel safe. I guess that means his mom sang those songs to him? Nonetheless, he's about to learn a lot of what it means to be an Indian by living with these grandparents.

Like in "The Way" --- which is chapter 2. Here we learn of "Mon-o-lah" or "earth mother." If you search on "Mon-o-lah" you're going to get a lot of hits about this book. You're also going to get some hits to New Age sites and some odd stuff, too.

In "The Way" Little Tree and his grandfather see a hawk hunting quail. It gets one, and Little Tree is sad. His grandfather says:
"Don't feel sad, Little Tree. It is The Way. Tal-con [I think we're supposed to think that is the Cherokee word for hawk] caught the slow and so the slow will raise no children who are also slow." 
That was one of the shake-my-head moments. That struck me as a twisted eugenics philosophy. Grandpa continued:
"Tal-con eats a thousand ground rats who eat the eggs of the quail--both the quick and the slow eggs--and so Tal-con lives by The Way. He helps the quail."
Not only does Tal-con kill slow quail, he kills the rats who eat the quick and slow ones before they're hatched, too. I know Carter's trying to get us to buy into some Circle of Life thing but, this hawk/quail/rat cycle is kind of messed up.  And then, he says:
"It is The Way. Take only what ye need. When ye take the deer, do not take the best. Take the smaller and the slower and then the deer will grow stronger and always give you meat. Pa-koh, the panther, knows and so must ye." 
That's just baloney. Animals do that "smaller and slower" hunting, but human beings do not do that. Human beings leave the female deer alone. That is the way it is done. A doe is smaller than a buck. If you kill the smaller, you kill the females and then guess what? No more deer! This seems silly to even say, but my guess is that a pregnant doe would be a bit slower than the rest of the deer, too. According to Carter's "The Way" she's the one to kill! This is just a bunch of nonsense.

But it must work! For millions of people who love this book, it works. WHY?! Because the portrayal of Native people as animals rather than humans has been done so well, that readers don't notice this nonsense!

More animal-like framing happens in chapter six, "To Know the Past." Little Tree's grandparents tell him it is important to know the past, so, they tell him about the Cherokee removal. According to Carter, the soldiers came after harvest time. That harvest time, though had been preceded by springtime, when
"...the Cherokee had farmed the rich valleys and held their mating dances in the spring when life was planted in the ground; when the buck and doe, the cock and peahen exulted in the creation parts they played."
Mating dances?! EVERYONE should stop reading at that point. Why bother reading this book? How 'bout we just all agree not to assign it any longer?

(Note: There's a lot more sillyness in the rest of the book. You'll find the stoic Indian who feels no pain. Carter's going to give you a bogus explanation for the word "How." In "To Know the Past" Carter tells us that the Cherokees refused to ride in the wagons on the Trail of Tears. He goes on and on about the empty wagons behind them. That doesn't reflect anything I've read about removal, including the accounts on the website of the Cherokee Nation.)

Update, Saturday September 13

In an earlier post (Where is Your Copy of The Education of Little Tree), I quoted from Daniel Heath Justice's article. In a comment to this post last night, Daniel pointed me to a documentary on Carter.

There's also a short film about the words Carter uses in the film. The people in it are Cherokee speakers. The words Carter uses are not Cherokee.

Monday, August 20, 2012

PBS documentary on "Forrest Carter" and THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE

On August 26th, a handful of PBS stations will air The Reconstruction of Asa Carter.  He wrote The Education of Little Tree, passing it off as an autobiography by a Cherokee man named "Forrest Carter." It was accepted as an autobiography upon publication, as evidenced by the abstract in WorldCat: "The autobiographical remembrances of the author's Indian boyhood with his eastern Cherokee hill country grandparents during the Great Depression." Some library systems still have old information in them:
Forrest Carter is best known for his autobiographical work, The Education of Little Tree (1976). Carter was orphaned at the age of ten and raised by his grandfather. In the Education of Little Tree, he wrote of his happy childhood in the isolated woods of the Tennesee Hill Country and lovingly recalls his grandfather who gave him a unique education based heavily on his Cherokee heritage. Carter once estimated that he never spent more than six months in a formal educational setting.

The Education of Little Tree is not the autobiography of a Cherokee man.

In fact, Asa Carter was in the KKK and a speechwriter for George Wallace, and the book itself is a hoax.

A couple of years ago, I asked librarians "Where is your copy of The Education of Little Tree? Though Carter's book was exposed as a fake in the New York Times in the 1990s, there are still a lot of people who don't know it is a fake. About one-third of the libraries in the Illinois Heartland Library System, for example, still have it cataloged as biography or autobiography, and I imagine that is the case across the country. Perhaps the PBS film will get a conversation started again and it will get reshelved or deselected completely.

Here's the trailer: