Arica L. Coleman's review of Patricia Hruby Powell's LOVING VS. VIRGINIA - Not recommended

Loving Vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case (Advanced Copy) 

By Patricia Hruby Powell; illustrated by Shadra Strickland 

Publisher: Chronicle Books, 2017 

Reviewed by Arica L. Coleman, Ph.D. 

Not Recommended

Opening

Patricia Hruby Powell has written a young adult documentary novel to commemorate the 50th anniversary of this landmark Supreme Court decision in which the nine justices unanimously overturned anti-miscegenation laws (state proscriptions against interracial marriage) declaring such laws unconstitutional. 

I learned of Powell’s book a couple of months prior to its release while conducting a Google search. I reached out to the author in a comment on her blog which featured the book's cover, stating "I cannot wait to read your book. Here is a link to my work on the Lovings. There are additional links to other articles and my book!" Powell responded, stating, "you know I've read your chapter," meaning the chapter on Loving in my book That the Blood Stay Pure and she graciously sent me an advanced copy stating in an email: 

“I look forward to your reading my book as well. And how I addressed the issue of Sydney Jeter.”  

The book received excellent advanced reviews on Goodreads and has since been highly recommended by School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and many other reputable experts of young adult literature. My review, however, will focus on the book’s merit as a historical text. While the conceptualization and execution of the work is noteworthy, its title claim as a documentary novel, I believe, is oversold, given Powell's penchant to ignore historical facts and her inability to place the work within its proper context of interracial marriage in the U.S. The essay is structured using the hackneyed phrase “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” First. . .

The Good

Powell’s documentary novel is an attractive oversized book with the author’s first person poetic prose set in large easy-to-read print. Much of the book has been typeset with the traditional black letters attractively spaced on white pages. Yet, interspersed throughout the book are black and white photos, and black pages with white lettering to emphasize major historical events that add to the beauty of this work. The illustrations of renowned picture book artist Shadra Strickland adds value to this aesthetically pleasing product. 

The book is well organized with a focus on the years 1955-1968. Those familiar with southern culture can easily imagine themselves at a gathering on the Loving’s front porch in rural Central Point, Virginia listening to the victorious plaintiffs take turns recounting the pains and triumphs against racialized state imposed marriage sanctions. The book’s structure is reminiscent of James McBride’s classic work The Color of 

Water.[1]

Screen captures of the narrative structure

In Loving Vs. Virginia, the narrative fluctuates beginning with Mildred, then Richard, then Mildred again. 

This pattern repeats, until the confluence of their narratives joins at the point of their marriage in Washington D.C., where it is spread out over several pages and then resumes the earlier pattern for the remainder of the book. 

Powell’s splendid writing style shines through in this work. The prose is lyrical with a flow and pace that makes the reader glide from one page to the next.  

The Bad

First, the salient problem with Powell’s book is that she characterizes the work as a “documentary novel.” In her blog post, "Documentary Novel vs Historical Fiction," writer Susan Santiago describes three definitions for "documentary novel." She also writes that Loving Vs. Virginia is only the second book she's seen that claims to be a documentary novel. Hence Powell's book would have benefited from an author’s note with a clear definition of the term and how her work fits within that definition. 

Second, assuming that Santiago’s first definition of the term, "True event + real people told in a narrative format" is the one Powell would use, there is very little primary material in Powell’s book which directly relates to the Loving case. While the majority of the photos and quotes are related to the issue of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, the author does not adequately connect the dots to demonstrate how such events as Brown v. the Board of Education, King’s "I Have a Dream" speech, the signing of the Voting Rights Act or the Freedom Rides directly relate to the issue of miscegenation, Virginia, or the Loving case. In other words, her fictionalized narrative has little to no direct connection to the documentary “evidence” much of which reflects her own interpretations of historical events. 

Third, and this relates to the issue of documentation and its lack of specificity, Powell provides a 1958 map of the United States with the states with anti-miscegenation laws colored in gray; however, the states are not labeled; although she acknowledges that one of the Virginia counties closed its public schools for five years rather than integrate, she does not identity the location as Prince Edward County. 

Fourth, documents that are a must for this book such as The Racial Integrity Act, The Loving Supreme Court decision, the Loving’s District of Columbia Marriage License, and Mildred’s 1963 letter to the ACLU are absent.[2] The latter two documents are most important as they establish the fact that Mildred self-identified as Indian. That they were not included is a gross oversight which I will address in the next section.

The Ugly

Powell’s choice to tell this story in the first person narrative is a cautionary tale. The salient problem with this point of view is that the author’s biases and assumptions are imposed on the speakers. This problem occurs very early in the first chapter which is Mildred’s biographical narrative. There, the reader learns about her family life. Mildred identified an older sibling by noting his etched name in her school desk. “There’s J.J.,” who she assumes is “my much older half-brother James Jeter." She identified three additional half-brothers later in the chapter and explained (p. 24), “What makes them half-brothers is their mama. Daisy. She died. And then Daddy married our mama.”[3]

It is indeed understandable that Powell wanted to get across the fact that the Jeters were a blended family, but she imposed a eurocentric definition of family on southern people of color who do not quantify familial relations. In addition, Powell imposed a family history on the Jeters based on assumption, but an assumption that is inaccurate (p. 18): 

Our Jeter ancestors have lived here

in Central Point

for centuries,

hunting and fishing.

Daddy and Mama

are both part Indian.

We are also descended

from African slaves.

And their owners. 

While the Jeters ancestral roots are Indian, European, and African, there is no evidence that the Jeters were descended from slaves. In fact, Mildred’s father, Theoliver Jeter was descended from a line of white and free women of color (African, Indian or both) that stretch back at least to the 1760s. 

Moreover, Powell’s causal mention of the Jeter’s Indian ancestry on several occasions throughout the text at once acknowledges and erases Mildred’s Indian identity as the aforementioned example demonstrates. Another example is her characterization of Central Point as a tri-racial harmonious community as demonstrated by the statement (p. 28): “If I stop and watch I see . . . Indians, Negroes, Whites—all mixed together. . .Whites and coloreds—we go to different schools . . . churches, drink out of different water fountains. But our section is different.” 

Powell relies on outdated information which constructed Central Point as a colorblind society, a narrative begun by famed African American journalist Simeon Booker in his feature article on the Lovings not long after their Supreme Court win.[4]

Yet, as my work demonstrates, new information highlighting inter and intra-racial tensions in the small rural community of Central Point, tensions which persist to this day, called for a reevaluation of Booker’s earlier conclusions. Again as demonstrated here and here, Central Point was a microcosm of the lived experience of racial politics in Virginia, the South, and indeed the nation. 

What is most unfortunate is that Powell does not provide Mildred adequate voice to explore her self-identity as an Indian woman. Case in point, when Mildred and Richard arrive in the District of Columbia to obtain a marriage license, Powell's depiction of their conversation is as follows. On the left is Mildred; on the right is Richard (p. 117):

This exchange is reminiscent of a dialogue between James McBride and his mother when he discovered that she was not, as he had long suspected, the light skinned black woman she had always claimed to be, but was in fact an Ashkenazi Jew who spoke fluent Yiddish. 

Powell’s scenario does not work and in fact seemed rather bizarre. I mean, what an awkward time to have a conversation or--as it seemed here--a debate about your future wife’s racial identity. Mildred’s race never mattered to Richard before. Why make it an issue now? Her racial self-identity was indeed full of complexity and intrigue. For example, in her 1963 letter to the ACLU Mildred stated, 

“I am writing to you concerning a problem we have . . . My husband is white and I am part negro, part indian.” 

On page 176, instead of providing her readers with the letter [5] which features Mildred’s own words in her own handwriting...  [Update on January 3, 2018: In response to a reader's request, I have inserted the text of the letter. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see it.]

... Powell chose to highlight a quote from King’s Letter from A Birmingham Jail. In doing that, Powell did something that many white writers do when they imagine real people as characters: she erased the very people to whom she claims to give voice. That Powell would use Mildred’s Indian heritage as mere honorable mentions rather than provide space for this woman of color to use her own words to explore a central aspect of her self-identity is most unfortunate.[6] 

The Uglier

Now to discuss Sidney Jeter. As demonstrated in my work on the Lovings (see endnote 6 and here), Mildred was already a mother when she and Richard began dating. Sidney was born in January 1957 which places his time of conception in April 1956. According to Powell’s time line, Richard and Mildred’s courtship began in November 1955. Five months later in an entry dated May 1956 Mildred stated (p. 72): 

“Didn’t see Richard for awhile. I missed him. But he’s coming steady again.” 

By September, Mildred, who was at least five months pregnant, was in a quandary over how to break the news to Richard which she does a month later after they attended a dance together. Keep in mind that by this time a very slim Mildred is at least six months pregnant. They are seated in his car when (p. 94), “I tell him,” she says. "I tell him everything." 

The problem is, the reader does not have a clue what Powell meant by “everything.” Was the pregnancy the result of a rape? Of a one night indiscretion? The reader is left to wonder. 

I find Powell’s handling of Sidney Jeter’s paternity unconscionable.  If she felt that this aspect of the story was too controversial for a teen audience, she should have left it alone. Since she chose to include it, then she should have simply told the truth rather than perform a slight of hand by attempting to adhere to a courtship timeline which has been adequately disproven.  Unfortunately she creates complication where truth and simplicity would have been sufficient. 

Even more unacceptable is Powell’s explanation for Richard’s resuming his relationship with Mildred whom she characterized as an innocent child in need of protection.  Speaking about leaving Mildred in the dark about their impending confrontation with the county Sheriff who was sure to arrest them when he learned of the couple’s marriage, Richard stated (p. 131), “I knew she was pretty innocent. Innocence what got her Sidney—sweet Sydney. Hell, I love her innocence.” Hmmm, riddle me this—What in the hell is Powell talking about? 

And more egregious still was Powell’s use of the N-word when speaking for the Sheriff who was present when the couple arrived for their hearing at the courthouse stating (p. 151): “There’s the white trash and his nigger.” Yet, earlier in the novel when the couple was pulled over by the Sheriff who, after admonishing Richard about speeding, stated (p. 102), “Now you take that little negress home where she belongs.” Why the change in language? The use of the N-word was/is unnecessary and offensive. The argument that the use of the word is necessary for historical accuracy does not hold water in this case as it was not a direct quote, but was deliberately placed there without regard for its detriment particularly to young readers of color.

Equally offensive is Powell's dialogue on Mildred's passing, in which she states (p. 81):
I'm not real dark--'bout the color of a grocery sack--and I have good hair, but I surely couldn't pass." Or the statement by a passerby who, when seeing Mildred and Richard arm-in-arm, says (p. 81) "Nice piece o'colored ass." It is clear that Powell gave no thought to the feelings of young girls of color when she chose to include these statements in her novel.*

The Conclusion of the Matter

I attempted to review this book several times since receiving it in late 2016, but my frustration with the text caused me to set it aside with the hope that when I resumed the effort, I would feel better about the work. I think I wrestled with this book these many months because deep down I wanted to like it. I recognize the tremendous time and effort Powell put into this work for which she is to be commended. Notwithstanding, good writing cannot substitute for accuracy in historical context and facts; and the pitfalls of the first person narrative are too glaring to ignore. Its subtitle as a “documentary novel” places a claimed authoritative validity on the work that requires a standard of execution that is higher than if it were categorized as historical fiction. Being bound by both professional and personal ethics requires that I provide an honest assessment. While I applaud the concept of the work, the lack of focus, historical inaccuracies, and the imposition of the author’s personal biases have derailed what could have been an excellent book.

---

[1] James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His Wife Mother (Riverhead Trade), 1997.

[2] What appears at the beginning of Powell’s book is the first page of a pamphlet issued by the Virginia State Registrar’s Office about the new Act to Preserve Racial Integrity. Text of the actual law appears on subsequent pages; documents relating directly to issues surrounding the Loving case are easily accessible via The Eugenics Archives in addition to other online sources.

[3] There is a gross imbalance between Mildred’s narrative in chapter one and Richard’s narrative in chapter two. The reader is provided extensive information about the Jeters, but nothing about the Lovings. In fact, it is Mildred, not Richard who introduces the reader to her in-laws. Where is the research on the original Mr. and Mrs. Loving?

[4] Simeon Booker, “The Couple That Rocked Courts,” Ebony Magazine, September 1967.

[5] Mildred's mention of the Attorney General appears to be an afterthought. There is no evidence of correspondence between Mrs. Loving and Bobby Kennedy. 

[6] For more on Mildred Loving’s racial identity see Arica L. Coleman, “ Beyond Black and White: Afro-Indian Identity in the Case of Loving V. Virginia,” in That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia (Indiana University Press, 2013), 151-176; and “Mildred Loving: The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Woman” in Virginia Women Their Lives and Times, Vol. 2 (University of Georgia Press, 2016), 313-319, for further discussion on the first-person-viewpoint see, https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2015/09/deborah-wiles-debbie-reese-and-choosing.html.      


*This paragraph added on Jan 2, 2017.

Update, January 3, 2017
Here is the text of Jeter's letter:

1151 Neal St.
N.E. Wash. D.C.
June 20, 1968 

Dear sir: 

I am writing to you concerning a problem we have. 

Five yrs. ago my husband and I were married here in the District. We then returned to Va. to live. My husband is White, I am part negro, + part indian. 

At the time we did not know there was a law in Va. against mixed marriages. 

Therefore we were jailed and tried in a little town of Bowling Green. 

We were to leave the state to make our home. 

The problem is we are not allowed to visit our families. The judge said if we enter the state within the next 30 yrs., that we will have to send 1 yr. in jail. 

We know we can't live there, but we would like to go back once and awhile to visit our families + friends. 

We have 3 children and cannot afford an attorney. 

We wrote to The Attorney General, he suggested that we get in touch with you for advice. 

Please help us if you can. Hope to hear from you real soon. 

Yours truly,
Mr. + Mrs. Richard Loving

Update, Jan 10, 2018
See Debbie Reese's review of Powell's book.  
                                             

"Circle the wagons" will come out of next printings of Robin Benway's FAR FROM THE TREE

Robin Benaway's Far from the Tree, published in 2017 by HarperTeen/HarperCollins, won the 2017 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. The story itself, as the description shows, has nothing to do with Native people:

Being the middle child has its ups and downs.

But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including—

Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties. Having grown up the snarky brunette in a house full of chipper redheads, she’s quick to search for traces of herself among these not-quite-strangers. And when her adopted family’s long-buried problems begin to explode to the surface, Maya can’t help but wonder where exactly it is that she belongs. 

And Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, who has no interest in bonding over their shared biological mother. After seventeen years in the foster care system, he’s learned that there are no heroes, and secrets and fears are best kept close to the vest, where they can’t hurt anyone but him.

Don't miss this moving novel that addresses such important topics as adoption, teen pregnancy, and foster care.

Yesterday (Dec 19, 2017) I was tagged (in Twitter), by @bookishadvocate* about a phrase in the book. Benway was tagged, too. Here's the tweet:

Pg 263 in this NBA winner contains the microaggressive phrase "circle the wagons." @RobinBenway & @harperteen need to remove it in future publications. If they're already addressing this, great! If not, fix it please. Great story, but that phrase...yikes. @debreese - read it yet?

*With permission, I'm adding this note: Bookishadvocate is Emily Patterson Visness, a middle grade teacher. She blogs at The Bookish Advocate.

Shortly after that tweet went out, Benway responded (text on left; screen cap of tweet on right):

"Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. I just looked up the phrase and had absolutely no idea of its racist origins. I apologize for the offense and will talk to Harper tomorrow about removing it from future printings. Again, thank you for letting me know."



Then--today (Dec 20, 2017), Benway tweeted again, responding to @bookishadvocate, saying:

Thank you so much for sharing it with your students! I just spoke with Harper and the phrase is being removed from future printings. 

I haven't read Far from the Tree but because I keep track of revisions like this, I did this quick post about it. If you are an author who makes a similar change, even if the content is not specific to Native peoples, let me know!

_____
Update: AICL maintains a page of phrases like this one, with information on their history that explain why they are ones you might want to stop using.

Recommended: Wild Eggs: A Tale of Arctic Egg Collecting

by Suzie Napayok-Short (Inuk). illustrated by Jonathan Wright

Publisher: Inhabit Media, 2015
Review by Jean Mendoza

Wild Eggs: A Tale of Arctic Egg Collecting opens with a little girl stepping off a bush plane, holding a stuffed polar bear. Akuluk and her mother have come from Yellowknife to a remote part of Nunavut. She is about to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. She’s apprehensive, and thinks she'd rather visit her cousin in Montreal. But her mother says that her grandparents have “much to show her” and that she will “learn lots of new things.” Indeed, Akuluk’s first days with her grandparents are packed with things that are new to her, and yet very old – traditions of her family’s people.

The book is apparently intended for children ages 5 – 8. It’s full of information, from Inuktitut words (pronunciation guide in the back of the book) to details like duck-skin mittens and traditional ways of egg-gathering on remote Arctic islands. It's all woven into Akuluk’s experience, as her mother and grandparents (mainly her grandfather) explain things to her during the course of their normal activities. The characters are more than just conduits for information, though – they are warm, kind, and attuned to each other. Suzie Napayok-Short is from the community she writes about, and it shows. She also spent many years as an Inuktitut translator and interpreter in Canada, and in a sense Wild Eggs interprets some traditions for both the protagonist and the child who hears or reads the book. 

Wild Eggs could be just right for a child in Akuluk’s situation, growing up away from her family’s home culture. I think any child can also learn from and appreciate Akuluk’s experiences. The only problem I can foresee is that the word count is higher than is typical for read-alouds for that age group. For an adult sharing the book, that might mean taking care to call attention to what’s in the illustrations. Or, with some of Napayok-Short’s descriptions, the adult might want to invite children to close their eyes and picture the scene, such as this one:

“Suddenly there were black and white and brown wings everywhere, birds cawing and crowing, almost filling the sky with their colors. Once in a while, Akuluk saw a king eider with its beautiful emerald green head and bright orange beak.”

The text is full of sensory details, and the illustrations do justice to the author’s descriptive language. Artist Jonathan Wright’s bio in the book is vague, so I looked him up. Turns out he’s married to Inuk documentary-maker Alethea Arnaquq-Baril. He did artwork and animation for her film “Angry Inuk,” which looks at the ways Arctic indigenous people have been affected by protests against seal hunting. Wright doesn’t claim to be Indigenous. But his illustrations for Wild Eggs suggest that he’s deeply familiar with the people, landscape, weather, and creatures of the area where the story takes place. Some of the illustrations are playful, such as the 2-page spread (pp. 6-7) of Arctic hares scattering as a taxi speeds past them, throwing gravel, Akuluk’s amazed face pressed to the back window. Other pages express beauty– check out the spread on pp. 16-17. On one side, three silhouetted figures bounce across the tundra on a big ATV. Opposite them, a caribou watches, indistinct but commanding, while a large dark bird (crow or raven) flies overhead. Sorry about the poor photo quality, but I hope you get a sense of how it works:

The detail and use of color are striking throughout the book. (On his blog, Wright says he used Intuos to illustrate Wild Eggs but has since switched to another platform he much prefers.) 

I wanted to see and hear more of Anaana, Akuluk’s grandmother. Ataata, the grandfather, is a distinctive character, but the grandmother says little and her facial features are always partial, shadowed or blurred. Maybe the world needs another book about Akuluk – one about lessons from her Anaana.

Some extra-textual thoughts: The hunting practices of Indigenous communities in that region (including killing of marine mammals) have been the subject of protests by people concerned about the long-range survival of bird and animal species. Some might object to a book that portrays humans taking wild eggs for food, even though, as Ataata explains, traditional egg-collecting is done carefully with the survival of the bird species always in mind. Also, the traditional clothes Akuluk is given are made of animal skins – which may bother those with a particular perspective on the relationship between humans and animals.

Adults sharing the book should familiarize themselves with the issues involved. By that I mean not just the perspectives of middle-class folks in the lower 48 states who “hunt” in the supermarket aisles and (rightfully) object to maltreatment of livestock, or who cut out meat altogether. I mean also the perspectives of people who traditionally relied, and still rely, on wild foods, fur, and skins for survival. The palaugaaq, bannock bread, that Anaana serves on Akuluk’s first night has been “traditional” only since the introduction of flour after the European invasion of North America. But wild eggs helped sustain generation after generation of Arctic Indigenous peoples. So did the Arctic mammals, some of which face existential threat from decades of the greed and wastefulness of non-Indigenous commercial hunting. Plus habitat reduction and anthropogenic climate change. (I'm not neutral on this.) People wishing to protect threatened or endangered species have often tried to halt even the traditional practices that keep specific Indigenous cultures going, which has those Indigenous communities deeply troubled. They've been cast as the bad guys (and sometimes -- ridiculously -- as ignorant of their own impact!), hardly their role through the millennia in the fragile ecosystems they call home.

In other words, sharing Wild Eggs with children could lead to interesting discussions about Inuktitut words, about eggs, about grandparents and what they have to teach us. Or it could mean navigating emotionally-charged conversations about topics like food sovereignty, ethical practices in human relationships with other species, and the future of animals and Indigenous cultures and the planet on which all of us must somehow co-exist.

In any case, I recommend sharing it, thoughtfully, with children, be they in Nunavut, Nebraska, or New Mexico. There's lots to think about.

Not recommended: STOLEN WORDS by Melanie Florence

I picked up Melanie Florence's Stolen Words with a bit of trepidation because her previous picture book, Missing Nimama, was so troubling. It, and her novel, The Missing, felt off. (Here's my post about them.)

At the time, I couldn't put my finger on why her books were unsettling. Some time after reading the two books, there was a writing contest in Canada. Florence supplied the prompt for it. When I read the prompt, I understood why I had so much trouble with those two books. Rather than holding people with care, she seemed to be using people who had been through traumatic loss as subjects for her writing. Some might say that she's a good writer and that she writes in compelling ways, but rather than moved, I felt manipulated.

With that as background, I am here today with my thoughts on Stolen Words. 

****

Imagine. That's what writers do. They imagine a place, a time, and the people of that place and time.

It is very hard to do well, especially when the writer is crossing into a place and time that is not their own, where every word they write is drawn from that imagining.

On her website, Melanie Florence writes that she's Cree/Scottish. She also writes that she never had the chance to talk with her grandfather about his Cree heritage and that Stolen Words is about a relationship she imagines she had been able to have with him. In other words, she didn't grow up as a Cree person. She didn't grow up in a Cree community. Without a tangible connection to Cree people, the risk that we have a story that is more like something a Scottish person would write, is very high.

Stolen Words opens with a seven-year-old girl skipping and dancing on her way home from school. She is holding a dream catcher that "she had made from odds and ends. Bits of strings. Plastic beads. And brightly colored feathers." Apparently that was a craft project at school. Why, I wonder, were they making dream catchers at school?

As she walks home with her grandfather, she asks him how to say grandfather in Cree. He doesn't remember how to say it, he tells her, sadly. "I lost my words" he says. She asks "how do you lose words" to which he replies that "they took them away." Her subsequent questions build on the answer her grandfather gives to the previous one. Slowly we read that he was at a residential school. Their words, he says, were taken to the same place he and other children were taken away from home and from their mothers. When asked who took them away, he replies that it was "men and women dressed in black" who locked their words away and punished them if they used those words. The illustration for this part of the story shows a group of children. Thin ribbon like streams flow from their open mouths and take shape in the form of a raven that is being captured in a bird cage by a priest:

Source: https://goo.gl/MSvs2R

I was describing that scene to Jean Mendoza. She said it sounds a lot like the scene in Disney's The Little Mermaid when Ursula takes Ariel's voice from her. Jean's right! It is a lot like that--and therein I come to my greatest concerns with Stolen Words. It is more like a fairy tale than a story about what happened to Native children in the residential schools.

After that, we see the little girl's grandfather in tears. She touches his "weathered" face and tries to wipe away his sadness. She gives him the dream catcher and says she hopes it will help him find his words again, but in fact, it is she who helps him--which dovetails nicely with the fairy tale treatment of the brutal realities of the schools.

The next day when he meets her after school, she's got a worn paperback in hand. She greets him with "Tanisi, nimosom" and tells him that she found his words in a book titled Introduction to Cree that was in her school library. There may, in fact, be a locally published Introduction to Cree somewhere, but I was surprised by this page in the story. It is plausible that such a book would be in the school library, but it feels like a pretty big stretch. We're in fairy tale land, again.

Turning the "much-loved pages" her grandfather finds the word for granddaughter and whispers it. Kind of magical, isn't it? Florence writes that "The word felt familiar in his mouth." The word felt like his home and like his mother.

Pretty words, for sure, that mightily pull on heart strings. In the next illustration he is holding the book to a page where there's a bird cage like the one we saw above. This time, though, ravens are flying out of the cage and a few pages later, we have a happy fairy tale ending, with the two walking together.

Need I say that I intensely dislike Stolen Words? The words and the art exploit readers and turn something that was very painful and genocidal into a fairy tale. For the most part, Florence's storytelling is working on White readers. It is getting starred reviews that it does not deserve. I find this book much like A Fine Dessert with its happy slaves hiding in a cupboard.

Stolen Words by Melanie Florence is much like 

A Fine Dessert with its happy slaves hiding in a cupboard. 

For another critical look at Stolen Words, see Ann Clare Le Zotte's twitter thread on November 22, 2017.

As citizens of the US and Canada learn about the boarding and residential schools that were designed to 'kill the Indian and save the man' we need stories that do justice to the experiences of the children who were in those schools. Because of growing awareness of the schools, we will see writers use them as a topic. That is fine but they must be done with care and respect. Melanie Florence doesn't give us that care or respect. She's given us a fairy tale. The characters aren't real. There was, and is, no magical happy ending. We all deserve better than that, and I implore writers, editors, reviewers, and teachers to keep that in mind.

If I was clever I might come up with some way to critique her chosen title, too. Overall the book feels like a theft, like she's robbed Native people who do not have to imagine--as she did--what this experience was like.

Published in 2017 by Second Story Press, I do not recommend Melanie Florence's Stolen Words. 

Not Recommended: THE METROPOLITANS by Carol Goodman

Carol Goodman's The Metropolitans, published in 2017 by Penguin, includes a Mohawk character. I do not recommend her book. Here's the description:

The day Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, four thirteen-year-olds converge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where an eccentric curator is seeking four uncommonly brave souls to track down the hidden pages of the Kelmsbury Manuscript, an ancient book of Arthurian legends that lies scattered within the museum's collection, and that holds the key to preventing a second attack on American soil.  

When Madge, Joe, Kiku, and Walt agree to help, they have no idea that the Kelmsbury is already working its magic on them. But they begin to develop extraordinary powers and experience the feelings of King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, and Lancelot: courage, friendship, love...and betrayal.  Are they playing out a legend that's already been lived, over and over, across the ages?  Or can the Metropolitans forge their own story?

As the description indicates, the setting for this story is 1941, on the day when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. There are four main characters. Joe is Mohawk, Kiku is Japanese American, Walt is a Jewish boy whose parents sent him to London from Germany, and Madge is White. The focus of my review is Joe.

Meet Joe

When the story kicks off, Joe has run away from the Mohawk Institute, a residential boarding school in Canada that students called the Mush Hole because of the food they were given there (more on residential schools, below). He's been in Manhattan a few days trying to find his older brother, Billie, who is a steelworker. Goodman gives a physical description of him as having "dark hair, and eyes the color of burnished copper. His skin was a lighter copper except where it was smudged with dirt on his sharp cheekbones" (p. 18). He's tall and apparently muscular enough that he's the one who is seen as the one that can get into physical fights when necessary. He speaks with a lisp and we learn that his special power will be one that allows him to read, speak, and understand any language. When he eventually knows his Mohawk name (Sose Tehsakohnhes) and some Mohawk words, we learn that his name means "he protects them" (p. 346) and Kiku thinks it is the right name for him.

Not all Native people have dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes, and prominent cheekbones, but that is the default physical description a lot of authors use. Overused, and done that way, it is stereotypical. So is the idea that Joe is the one who will do the physical fighting. And his Mohawk name treads very close to the stereotypical ideas that circulate in US society about Native naming. Most troubling for me, however, is his power. I'll say more about that below.

The Mush Hole

Joe is 13 and had been at Mush Hole since he was five. The first time he ran away, it was wintertime (we don't know how old he was). He remembered his "Tota" (grandmother) telling him that bears go into caves in the winter, so he does that but wants to get back to Akwesasne. The third day after he took off, the principle finds him and takes him back to school. He is beaten for running away and for wanting to speak Mohawk. The second time he ran away he made it home but his dad tells him he has to go back. His brother (Billie) tells him to tough it out till he's sixteen and able to work with Billie. Before he goes back to Mush Hole, his grandmother whispers his Mohawk name in his ear so that he won't forget it, but at the school, he's beat again and forgets his name and other Mohawk words, too. One day he is walking by the principle's office and hears him using the strap on someone. He hears a voice and recognizes it is his little sister, Jeanette. He goes into the principal's office, takes the strap from the principal, and hits him with it. The principal falls and hits his head. There's blood everywhere. Jeanette tells him to run, so, he does. This third time running away from residential school is what brings Joe to Manhattan. 

Some of you are aware that there's been an uptick of books that are about Native kids in boarding or residential schools. Some were/are run by religious denominations, some were/are run by the U.S. or Canadian governments. The schools were designed to 'kill the Indian and save the man' which meant they were one way in which the federal governments sought to eradicate Indigenous nations, our languages, religions--every aspect of our cultures. Anyone who follows Native news knows Canada established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Children's literature is one way that more people can learn about the schools--but the content has to be accurate and it must be handled with great care and respect. Too much of what I'm seeing is over-the-top exploitation. There's no care in that kind of writing. It is harmful to Indigenous people for whom the schools are part of their family experience. And it is harmful to everyone else when they walk away from a book thinking they've learned something about Native people or a particular nation or moment in history. 

Goodman's decision to create a Mohawk character who was at a residential school could have been a good thing, but the stereotypes I noted above demonstrate what I see as a shallow treatment of Joe. Goodman doesn't seem to know much, overall, and it causes missteps like that part in the book where Madge offers a cab driver "an Andrew Jackson." That line is meant to add to her edgy character but it is a powerful indicator that Goodman doesn't really know much about the things that are of concern to Native people. For some background on him see Adrienne Keene's article on Jackson in Teen Vogue.

It seems to me that Joe and the history of residential schools are playing on calls for diversity in children's literature. The way she's created Joe feels appropriative. She's exploiting that history for the sake of a story she wants to tell. She does that with other characters, too, whose people have similar genocidal and oppressive histories.

Joe's Dream--and the Manifestation of Evil

The night before Joe meets the other kids in the museum, he has a dream of Stone Giants who are (p. 27):

...a race of fearsome monsters that hunted the people of the Six Nations to feast on their bones and flesh. No arrow could pierce their stone skin. No matter where the people hid, the Stone Giants' eyes could see into the darkest places. That's what it felt like when the Stone Giant in his dream had looked at him--like he saw into Joe's darkest places and wouldn't mind snacking on his bones--and the Stone Giant had worn the face of the main the gray fedora.

The man in a gray fedora is a man in the museum. Joe and the other kids see him steal a manuscript page from a display case. They chase him but he vanishes, like a fog. Turns out, that man was in the dreams of the other kids, too. We're going to meet this figure again near the end of the book when it senses that Joe is the kid with the most anger and therefore the strongest candidate to be won over to its plan to poison the people of NYC, much like it poisoned the people in camps in Germany. That figure is Mordred.

As the description of the book indicates, it has a King Arthur thread, throughout, and while Goodman likely thinks she's been clever in weaving all this together, I find it utterly disgusting. It feels to me that she's transferring responsibility for genocide to a fictional figure rather than the human beings responsible for that genocide. And it feels that she's equating an figure in Mohawk tradition stories (the Stone Giants) with Mordred, making the Stone Giants a pure evil, too.

The Naming of Native People in Acknowledgements--and Who Can Tell These Stories

In the acknowledgements, Goodman writes that she talked with two Mohawk people. That might signal that we can rely on what she's done with Joe, but we don't know if the people she names read the book and gave her feedback on it. Would the two people Goodman named be ok with her use of "Stone Giants" in this story, in this way? What is the source for the Stone Giants Goodman depicts? Is it one of them? 

As noted earlier, Joe's power is that he can read, hear, and speak languages. One goal of the residential schools was to wipe out Indigenous languages. It feels wrong for a White writer to give a Native kid this particular power and I think a Native writer would have developed Joe's character and the rest of the story with greater care.

Not Recommended

Clearly, Carol Goodman's The Metropolitans is getting a Not Recommended tag from me. There's too much wrong in the small bits and the entire storyline is a huge step over the line of storytelling about peoples histories--with care and respect for those of us who are still here.