Rethinking Schools article on AMERICAN GIRLS

Elizabeth Marshall, a former elementary schoolteacher, has a terrific article on the Rethinking Schools site. Titled "Marketing American Girlhood" she makes excellent points again and again about what this well-marketed series hides or glosses over. Here's a paragraph about Josefina:

Josefina's story takes place on a rancho near Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1824 before the Mexican-American War. The nonfictional "Looking Back: America in 1824" at the end of Meet Josefina dilutes this colonial history by limiting discussion to two sentences about the Mexican-American War and pointing out that when it ended in 1848, America "claimed most of the land that is now the southwestern United States" (Tripp, 1997, p. 83). The author of this history then moves on to describe the benefits of this war. "Although Josefina would never have imagined it when she was 9 years old, she would one day be an American — and the cultures and traditions of the New Mexican settlers and their Pueblo neighbors would become part of America, too" (p. 83). It is important to note that this loss of sovereignty was especially significant for New Mexican women, who had many more rights as Mexicans than they had as Americans — like the right to own their own property. The creators at American Girl favor a whitewashed version of this history, and Josefina's narrative reads as a melting pot story in which difference is assimilated into a larger American girlhood identity. Like Meet Josefina, each of the historical fictions takes place in the past and in this way allows issues such as racism, colonization, and war to be presented as things that America has overcome.

In 2006, one of my students brought Josefina's World, 1824: Growing up on America's Southwest Frontier to class. Marshall quotes from Beverly Slapin's review of Kaya. A couple of years ago, Jean Mendoza and I visited the AG store in Chicago. I wrote about that visit, and Roger Sutton, editor at Horn Book, blogged about the series, too.

During our visit, Jean and I wondered about the stage performance they do there but didn't want to rearrange our visit to see it. There is, however, a review in Theatre Journal [to read the entire review, see Theatre Journal 60.2 (2008): 303-306]. The author of the review is Matt Omasta from Arizona State University. Do click on his name to read about him. He's doing some fascinating work, including a stage adaptation of Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue. Here's some excerpts from his review of the American Girls production. He begins with:

I believe that Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) is a cultural pedagogue. As corporations further their reach into today's world, I am interested in interrogating what these companies "teach" young people vis-a-vis their popular performances like The American Girls Revue. Viewing the production confirmed my suspicion that children would be indoctrinated into consumer identities and encouraged to avail themselves of the plethora of American Girl products available in the adjoining shop. More surprising and perhaps more troubling for me was the Revue's implicit yet deeply embedded hegemonic discourse that prescribed social roles based on children's race, class, and gender.

In the Revue, a group of girls show another how to play American Girl. Each one picks her favorite girl and acts out a scene. Omasta described three of them-- Felicity, Josefina, and Addy--and the scenes they act out. Then, he writes:

I see a troubling dichotomy when I consider these stories: affluent white people are encouraged to break free from their hegemonic roles, while impoverished minorities should rely instead on inner peace, since attempts at material social change will prove futile.

Of the males in the production, he writes:

With the exception of one kindly avuncular figure, males appeared only in apathetic or aggressive/hostile roles: a confederate soldier, a cruel animal-abuser, a drum-beating Native American who paid no heed to the troubles of his tribe.

Thank goodness, the shows are shutting down. The economy is probably the reason. Wouldn't it be great if they were going dark due to objections from the public? From teachers?

Omasta concludes his review saying that the Revue is the rule, not the exception, in theater for young audiences. Sounds a lot like children's and young adult literature. While some say American Girl is invested in diversity, we have to pay attention to what that diversity is. If it is just decoration, it's not real. It just lets people feel like they're living a liberal or progressive politic.

In short, in "American Girls" there's a lot to think about.

American Girls - the store in north Chicago

Earlier this week I was in downtown Chicago, just walking, with dear friend Jean Mendoza. We walked past the American Girls store and decided to stop in and see the Kaya doll. Neither of us had been there prior to this.

Our first stop was the displays there on the ground floor. All kinds of products. Puzzle books, paper dolls, non-fiction, fiction... as many of you know, American Girl is a huge business success.

I learned that Kirsten has a "secret Sioux friend, Singing Bird." I never paid much attention to all the books, but probably ought to look into the ways that American Indians are presented in the historical dolls stories. Kirsten's stories are set in 1854 in Minnesota. My quick look into the Lakota history (in Duane Champagne's Native America: Portrait of the Peoples) says "By the early 1800s, many Sioux bands moved onto the Plains from their original woodland homes in Minnesota..." (p. 163). It was primarily Ojibwe's (Chippewa's) in Minnesota in the 1800s and now.

This is only a quick look into dates/tribes of Minnesota during the time of Kirsten. More extensive research could (and should) be done. Any teachers out there willing to take a class through such a study?

The historical dolls are displayed in the basement floor, so we went there next. First diorama to our right were things of Kaya's tribe (Nez Perce). Nearby was a diorama of Josefina. I noted the presentation of the horno (outdoor oven). There was a (fake) fire inside, and a loaf of bread on a paddle placed as though it had just come out of the oven. Thing is, when you actually cook bread in these ovens (we Pueblo Indians use them, too; our Tewa word for oven is panteh--can't put the correct mark over the a in this blogger software), the fire is completely extinguished and ashes cleaned out before the bread is placed in the oven. It would be better if American Girl removed the fake fire from the oven.

In the center of that floor section was a table on which Kaya and a tipi (spelled tepee) were displayed. She's almost as tall as her tipi, which is an error in scale. Same with her pony. The small scale of the tipi reminds me of the ways that igloos are typically shown in children's books. In truth, they were and are rather large. Again and again, however, they're shown to be about the size of a doghouse. That's a tangent, though. Back to American Girls.

Further along the way was a theater where stage shows (musicals) are presented several times a day. There were large posters of some child actors and scenes from the historical dolls. I didn't see one of Kaya. I asked a salesperson in that section about the shows. He said they do a musical that includes all the historical dolls as characters. He handed me a brochure. I studied it and said "I don't see a girl who is dressed as Kaya." He pointed to one and said "That's her. She does more than one character." He also talked about their other shows, with "bitty characters" and described, with great enthusiasm, the products for toddlers, how they're child-safe, and how they are designed to introduce children to American Girl. (This is when I really started feeling grossed out by the place.)

We went into the larger room with displays of the dolls and their things. In that area there were 15 foot-long (or thereabouts) displays for all dolls, except for Kaya. I asked the sales clerk (and there are many, all through the store) where the Kaya display was. She said it was around the corner, over in the other room. I asked why it wasn't with the others in the big room. She said they didn't have enough space, and decided to put her out there, because she didn't have as many accessories as the other dolls.

I replied that it was pretty typical, actually, to marginalize Native Americans, put them elsewhere, not in the mix, as it were.

She went on to say that they were trying to be authentic. According to her (or her script), American Girl has decided that, to be authentic, Kaya has to have little in the way of accessories. Clothes, furniture, etc.

Hmmm... I thought to myself. I guess all the other girls, according to this salesperson, had more in the way of material goods. The pioneer girl, the immigrant, etc. etc., they all had plenty of goods. How accurate is that?

The salesperson then said that Kaya would be in with the rest of the girls when they move to their larger building.

By then I was utterly disgusted with the entire place. I thanked the salesperson, and we left. I wasn't confrontational.

I should remind readers that, while I did ask questions that may have suggested I felt that Kaya ought to be in the big room with the other girls, that exclusion/inclusion/marginalization is just one slice of this discussion. Several weeks ago, I posted a review (read it here) that points to the multiple errors and flaws in the Kaya books. American Girl could do better, and you, as a consumer, can find much better books about American Indians for the children you work with, or parent, or teach....

(Note to Jean: If you want to add anything, please do!)

And, those of you who have more knowledge of the American Girl books, please comment, share what you know about the ways that American Indian characters are presented in the stories.

Note at 9:01 PM---Roger Sutton noted my post here over at Read Roger. Follow comments there, which are about the commercialization aspects of AG.
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American Girls Collection: Kaya

A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children, edited by Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin, includes a review of the Kaya books in the American Girls Collection. Far too often, popular books aren't given the critical attention they should receive. And, far too often, the reviews they do get fail to note problems regarding the ways that American Indians are portrayed. Some reviews from A Broken Flute appear on this blog, but, by far, the best option is for teachers, librarians, parents, professors, editors, publishers and students to buy the book itself, and get it directly from Oyate. Doing so allows Oyate, a non-profit organization, to continue to do this work. [Note: the review is used here with permission, and may not be published elsewhere without written permission of Beverly Slapin at Oyate.]

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Shaw, Janet, “American Girls Collection,” illustrations by Bill Farnsworth and Susan McAliley. Middleton, Wis.: Pleasant Company. Color illustrations; grades 3-6; Nimíipuu (Nez Percé)

Book 1—Meet Kaya: An American Girl. 2002, 70 pages

Book 2—Kaya’s Escape! A Survival Story. 2002, 72 pages

Book 3—Kaya’s Hero: A Story of Giving. 2002, 73 pages

Book 4—Kaya and Lone Dog: A Friendship Story. 2002, 81 pages

Book 5—Kaya Shows the Way: A Sister Story. 2002, 73 pages

Book 6—Changes for Kaya: A Story of Courage. 2002, 70 pages

Kaya and the River Girl. 2003, 48 pages

Little girls have been playing with dolls for as long as we have been human. If you are a Native mother, you would be hard put to find a doll to give to your daughter that would come near to being a representation of herself unless you made it. And that is what makes this Nimíipuu (Nez Percé) doll in the “American Girl” series so enticing. It’s too bad that the Pleasant Company did not produce something that genuinely transmits the Nimíipuu culture.

This series of stories taking place in 1764 could have been worse. The young protagonist has a name, a family, and friends. In the course of the series, she grows and matures. The author does not represent the Nimíipuu people as savages. But whatever information she got from her advisors is filtered through a white consciousness and further adapted to fit the mold of this formula historical fiction series. All life-threatening conflicts are resolved by the end of each story, and all moral and emotional conflicts are resolved by the end of the series. This writing style is an especially bad thing in historical books about Indian people, whose conflicts—over, for instance, water and land rights, the government’s theft of treaty funds, the issue of sports mascots—are ongoing. And books conceptualized as teaching tools—or worse, books enlisted in the cause of selling a product—usually result in writing that is stilted and boring. This series is no different. Some of the problems:

• Indian parents and grandparents lecture so that the author can convey information about the people. Besides being culturally dissonant, this breaks the cardinal rule in literature of “show, don’t tell.”

• Anachronistic wording such as the Lakota word “teepee” and the French words “travois” and “parfleche” are used throughout, even in dialogue. Nimíipuu words during that time period might have been translated as “dwelling,” “pony drag,” and “carrying bag.”

• By having Kaya talk in similes and metaphors, comparing all her thoughts to nature—“her thoughts whirled like smoke in the wind,” “she glides over the ground like the shadow of an eagle,” “her feelings were all tangled up like a nest of snakes”—the author misses the subtleties of Indian language and thought patterns. Throughout, faces are “dark” and “gleaming,” eyes are “dark,” cheekbones are “high,” expressions are “fierce,” and Indian characters “cock their heads” in thought.

• Traditionally, Nimíipuu names given to children had to do with ancestors, place, and responsibility; and names were changed several times during a person’s life. Unless the baby was dying and had to be named very quickly, naming was done after great consideration, often by an elder or holy person. It’s unbelievable that any 18^th Century Nimíipuu mother would name her baby for the first thing she saw after giving birth—this is a stereotype that goes back even further than Will Sampson’s joke in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”[1]

• Swan Necklace was the English translation of a Nimíipuu leader’s name, but one wonders why—and in some cases, how—the author came up with names for characters such as “Speaking Rain,” “White Braids,” “To Soar Like An Eagle,” “Light On The Water” and “Bear Blanket.” Did she research traditional Nimíipuu name giving or did she just spin the wheels for authentic Indian names?[2]

• One can understand the author’s quandary in not wanting to use “Tonto-speak,” but sign language, a visual-gestural form of communication, has a different syntax than spoken languages and does not translate into standard grammatical sentences. Here, Kaya signs to Two Hawks: “But there’s hardly any game up this high. We’d still have nothing to eat.”

• A prepubescent Indian girl in 1764 would not have had a relationship with her father that included physical touching. Generally, girls stayed with their mothers or aunties and grandmas; and boys stayed with their fathers or uncles and grandpas. Unless it was an emergency, it is not likely that Kaya would have ridden behind her father on a horse, holding onto him. Nor is it likely that she would have “put her arms around his neck while he held her tightly against his chest for a long time.”

• Horse-stealing raids were not the same as raids to capture women and children, nor were they done at the same time. Nor would raiders feed captive children “only scraps from their meals.” Captive children were taken into adoption, often given to a family to take the place of children who had died, and treated as well as the other children.

• The “enemy tribe” is unnamed; in any event, people from horse cultures did not whip or otherwise abuse their horses. Previously owned horses were accustomed to being ridden and wild horses were gentled—not “tamed”—by their owners.

• Hunters would not have brought back buffalo to camp and given “the meat and hides to the women.” Rather, the camp moved to the hunting grounds so that the women could butcher the meat right there.

• Kaya’s sightless sister, “Speaking Rain,” as all Native children, would have been taught to take care of herself. She would not have to hold hands while walking with someone, nor would she be constrained from picking berries or gathering firewood, nor would she ask questions about things she could figure out for herself.

• The people all look alike, they are all the exact same tone of brown, and their facial and physical features are the same, too. In pictures where the women and girls are sitting, they’re sitting in the wrong position. Indian women in this time period would not have sat with their legs crossed, nor would they have sat with their legs up, hugging their knees.

• Kaya and the River Girl, a 2003 tack-on to the series, is the most stupefyingly contrived of all of them. Here, Kaya loses a spontaneous foot race to a girl named Spotted Owl, who is from the “River People.” For 21 pages, Kaya obsesses about losing the race: she’s angry and miserable, her pride is injured, her feelings are bruised, her voice is grim and cold, she struggles with her shame. Finally, when the two girls come together to rescue an elder woman named Elder Woman, they become great friends.

• The non-fiction sections at the end of the books, called “A Peek Into the Past,” are uneven. While some parts convey good information, particularly the boarding school story in Kaya’s Escape! and the story of the Dalles Dam in Kaya Shows the Way, other parts are rife with error. For instance, in Meet Kaya, the author states, “Early white explorers, including French fur trappers, mistakenly believed that all Nez Percé wore shells through their noses and gave them that name.” How could anyone look at someone and “mistakenly believe” him to be wearing a shell through his nose? The Nimíipuu people were called “Nez Percé” by the French because they pierced the septa of their horses’ noses so that the horses could breathe better and run faster.

• By setting these books in 1764—before white encroachment—the author and publisher were able to sidestep the nasty parts of what happened to the Nimíipuu and to relegate some of the history to the “Looking Back” sections. The series oversimplifies and sanitizes Nimíipuu history, and by doing so, makes history more palatable to the contemporary sensibilities of the young non-Native girl readers for whom this series was conceptualized.

The Kaya series exactly illustrates the problem with which we are constantly contending: It’s almost impossible to tell another people’s story in a believable way, no matter how good one’s intentions may be and no matter how many cultural advisors there are. And writing to formula is never a good idea.

—Beverly Slapin

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[1] The punch line is too raunchy for this publication. Rent the movie.

[2] Thank-you to Tom King, Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour.