Classic, Award-Winning, Popular Books with Racist, Biased Depictions of Indigenous People

In my experience, a lot of people don't remember or realize that classic, award-winning, or popular books have Native content in them that is biased, stereotypical, or just flat out incorrect. I and others have written about several of those books. That writing is here on AICL but in research and professional articles and book chapters, too.

This post is a list of links to some of that writing. If you're a teacher or professor interested in using a children's or young adult book to teach critical literacy, these will work well for that sort of analysis.

Arrow to the Sun

Caddie Woodlawn 

The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses

Island of the Blue Dolphins

Little House on the Prairie

Sign of the Beaver

Touching Spirit Bear


What we need are books by Native writers! Check out AICL's Best Books lists.

Beverly Slapin's review of UNDEFEATED: JIM THORPE AND THE CARLISLE INDIAN SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM by Steve Sheinkin

Editor's Note: Beverly Slapin submitted this review of Steve Sheinkin's Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team. It may not be used elsewhere without her written permission. All rights reserved. Copyright 2017. Slapin is currently the publisher/editor of De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children. I (Debbie Reese) hope to read and review this book, too. See also the review at Reading While White. 

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Sheinkin, Steve, Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team. Roaring Brook Press, 2017; grades 6-9 (Potawatomi, Sac and Fox)

PREFACE

In “The School Days of an Indian Girl,” a chapter in American Indian Stories, [1], Zitkala-Sa (Dakota) writes of her experiences at White’s Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana:

The melancholy of those black days has left so long a shadow that it darkens the path of years that have since gone by. Perhaps my Indian nature is the moaning wind which stirs them now [2] for their present record. But, however tempestuous this is within me, it comes out as the low voice of a curiously colored seashell [3], which is only for those ears that are bent with compassion to hear it.

Zitkala-Sa devoted her life to seeking justice for her people and was one of the few early Native writers who wrote without the “aid” of a white editor, interpreter or ethnographer. While her stories describe the everyday humiliations, turmoil and pain that encompassed the Indian residential school experience, she also wrote of resistance and rebellion.

It’s my firm belief that no one could or should attempt to represent what the children experienced in the Indian residential schools without listening to the stories of their descendants, and with “ears bent with compassion to hear it.” And even Zitkala-Sa is not saying that those people are entitled to voice, much less to interpret, what they have heard.

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The 1951 movie, entitled “Jim Thorpe, All American” (starring Burt Lancaster as Jim Thorpe), begins with this hyperbole-laden voiceover:

“Jim Thorpe, All-American, the man of bronze who became the greatest athlete of all time, an Oklahoma Indian lad whose untamed spirit gave wings to his feet and carried him to immortality. Here in a mighty cavalcade of sport are all the giants who faced this champion among champions, each test adding new honors to his ever-growing fame. Here is the thrilling panorama of the Olympic Games, the nation’s praise for its returning hero, and behind the glory and glamour, colorful days at Carlisle University [sic]…” 

Stories of heroism and singlehandedly overcoming adversity are well received in European and European American children’s literature as well, and Jim Thorpe fits into this mold. He’s larger than life, a legend, almost mythic, so many stories about him—both true and false—lend themselves to the persona we know as “Jim Thorpe.”

That’s why, especially in a biography for children, it’s important to get things right. Unfortunately, Sheinkin writes through a cultural filter that objectifies Native lives, histories, and experiences, and in doing so, misleads young readers about Jim Thorpe, the real person.

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“CARLISLE INDIAN SCHOOL,” COVER AND BACK MATTER

Although Sheinkin refers to the “Carlisle Indian Industrial School” by its full name a few times, he then shortens the name to “Carlisle Indian School,” the name that’s reflected on the cover and front matter as well. Omitting the word “industrial” from Carlisle’s name—which Sheinkin does often in this book—belies the school’s purpose: to train its Indian students to be servants and other low-wage workers, rather than to educate them. (Referring to the school as the shortened version, “Carlisle,” after using its correct name is acceptable. Not acceptable is referring to “Carlisle Indian School” as its correct name.)

On the front cover flap—the first text the reader sees—there is this, in large print:

JIM THORPE:

SUPER ATHLETE, OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST,

NATIVE AMERICAN

POP WARNER:

INDOMITABLE COACH, FOOTBALL MASTERMIND,

IVY LEAGUE GRAD

Here, Jim Thorpe is identified by his ethnicity, while Pop Warner is not. This introduction objectifies Jim Thorpe and sets the stage for much of what is to come.

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JIM THORPE AND BLACK HAWK

A caption on page 12 reads:

Young Jim’s first hero, Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, Black Sparrow Hawk, or Black Hawk. Black Hawk was a member of the Thunder Clan of the Sac and Fox, the same clan as Jim Thorpe.

This 31-word caption goes off in several confusing directions, echoed in the text that follows it. 

(1) Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak was a Sauk war leader whose name, as interpreted into English, was “Black Sparrow Hawk.”

(2) Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak was born into the Thunder Clan of the Sauk Nation. He was not a “member of the Thunder Clan of the Sac and Fox.” The Sauk and Meskwaki Nations formed a political alliance after 1732, and, although the US government referred to them as a single entity, the “Sac and Fox Confederacy,” each treaty had a separate place for Sauk and Meskwaki chiefs to sign, and the Sauk and Meskwaki remain two separate nations. As Johnathan Buffalo, Preservation Director of the Meskwaki Nation, explained to me, “We are Meskwaki. When we deal in government-to-government relations with the US, they refer to us as Sac and Fox. We’re stuck for legal reasons but not for cultural reasons.” He added, “They can terminate the Sac and Fox, but they can never terminate the Meskwaki because only our God can do that.”

A lot of people, including Jim Thorpe’s family, refer to themselves by the government name, “Sac and Fox,” or even use “Sac Fox,” and historians and biographers should note the distinction. Sheinkin did not.

(3) Since Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak was born around 1767 and Jim Thorpe was born in 1887, Thorpe’s clan citizenship was the same as that of his Sauk ancestor, not the other way around.

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THE DAWES ACT

On pages 9-10, Sheinkin briefly describes the land rush that occurred after the General Allotment Act of 1887 (Dawes Severalty Act):

Three years later, twenty thousand settlers lined the edge of what had been Sac and Fox land. A government agent fired a gun, the signal for the land rush to begin, and everyone raced on horseback or in wagons, claiming open sections of land by driving stakes into the soil…. By nightfall, the plains around the Thorpes’ farm were dotted with settlers’ tents and campfires. In just a few hours, the Sac and Fox had lost nearly 80 percent of their land. [italics mine]

In the General Allotment Act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Severalty Act, the US government seized and split up Indian reservation lands held in common and “allocated” non-adjacent tracts of 160 acres each to individual Native families, forcing them into subsistence farming. The government then sold the “excess” 86 million acres of formerly communal lands to white settlers.

The government’s intent was to break up tribal communities, which is what they did. By seizing and “redistributing” the land, the government also destroyed the ceremony, social structure, kinship, respect for elders, and community child rearing—in short, the spiritual and material foundation of traditional Native beliefs and lives. Three years later, the government-sanctioned land grab stole almost all of the rest of the land. (Both the terms “allotment” and “severalty” euphemize what was actually theft of land and culture.)

After the US government forcibly relocated people from traditional lands to reservations, and, within a generation or two, from those communal lands to individual “allotments,” the Dawes Act became the metaphorical nail in the coffin.

When your family is abruptly cut off from land, community, and culture and surrounded by a hostile foreign environment, your life changes drastically. It’s not surprising that in this cultural vacuum—exacerbated by the easy availability of the cheap alcohol that can be likened to chemical warfare—Hiram Thorpe became a mean, abusive alcoholic, regularly threatening, beating and abandoning his several wives and many children.

Jim Francis Thorpe was one of six children (later 11) born to Hiram Thorpe and Charlotte Vieux Thorpe in 1887, the same year as the Dawes Act, and just before the massive white land grab. This was the difficult life—no, turmoil—that shaped Jim’s childhood. Land theft. Culture theft. Theft of Indian children into the government schools. A violent father. A strong, protective mother. He was not left unscarred. This is a crucial part of Thorpe’s life that Sheinkin leaves out.

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WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Native babies and children are traditionally named in different ways and through different practices. Buffalo Bull Who Sits Down (“Sitting Bull”) was named “Slow.” His Horse Is Crazy (“Crazy Horse”) was named “Curly.” Some children are traditionally given names that encourage them to “throw away” their baby names. (I’m reminded here of Joe Bruchac’s excellent historical novel, Brothers of the Buffalo, in which identical Cheyenne twins are named “Too Tall” and “Too Short.”) And the baby name of a good friend of mine translates from the Ojibwe, “Maniigimoogibineyans,” as “little bird making mess by making poo.” (She remembers, she told me, that she tried her best to learn how to use the potty so that everyone would stop calling her “little poo butt.”) Sometimes babies are named by their parents, sometimes by a grandparent or by a spiritual leader enlisted for that purpose. Sometimes babies are given a clan name.

Jim Thorpe was born into the Sauk Thunder Clan, which assigned him his traditional name, Wa-tha-sko-huk, meaning “The Light After the Lightning,” a Thunder Clan name. Unfortunately, Thorpe’s birth name is often cited as “Wa-tho-huck,” and erroneously translated as “Bright Path” by his biographers. Just about all of the references to “Bright Path,” which lead back to Jim Thorpe himself, have a romantic overtone, signifying that he was destined for greatness. Here, on page 9, Sheinkin writes:

Jim would later explain that his mother, following Potawatomi custom, also gave her sons names inspired by something experienced right after childbirth. Through the window near her bed, Charlotte watched the early morning sun light the path to their cabin. She named Jim Wathohuck, translated as “Bright Path.”

In any event, both of Thorpe’s parents would have followed traditional protocol and traveled to spiritual leaders in the community who were responsible for providing names. (Potawatomi and Sauk aren’t that far apart—they’re both dialects of Anishnaabemowin.) Or they would have followed the father’s traditional protocol. Although it’s possible that some individuals might name their children in this way (and “Bright Path” could have been an endearing nickname) this “first-thing-they-saw-after-childbirth” thing is a well-worn trope. It reminds me of the movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in which the great Will Sampson’s tongue-in-cheek story ends with, “But why do you ask, Two Dogs Copulating?" [4]   

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THE “OUTING” PROGRAM

One of the more infamous programs of the Carlisle experience was the summer “outing” program, in which the young students were sent to live with white farm families, who, more often than not, mentally and physically abused them. The reasons that Pratt gave for this program was for the students to experience living in the white world while being trained for regular work. The actual purposes of the outing program were to keep the students from going home for the summer and to continue to train them as domestic servants and farm laborers while they provided an equivalent of slave labor. Sheinkin does not acknowledge any of this. Rather, on pp. 100-101, he writes:

The Outing Program was a major part of life at Carlisle. The idea was for students to live with a “civilized” family, practice English, and learn how to run a farm. “When you boys and girls go out on jobs,” Pratt told students, “you don’t go as employees. You go and become part of the family.” [italics mine]

  Sheinkin continues:

That was not Jim’s experience. Assigned to a farm near Carlisle, he was put to work mopping floors and doing laundry. He was made to eat alone in the kitchen, and paid half of what a white laborer would typically earn.

While Pratt and the school administrators had full knowledge of the rampant cruelty from the white “patrons” to their young charges, Sheinkin describes the outing program as generally beneficent.

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ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT

On page 141, Sheinkin describes Gus Welch’s life with his grandmother and younger brother in the woods of northern Wisconsin:

Gus spent as much time as possible outside, hoping the cold air would keep his lungs clear. His grandmother taught the boys to paddle a birch bark canoe, to trap animals for their fur, to collect maple syrup and wild rice. Gus earned money for the family by taking furs into Duluth to sell—which is what had brought him to town the day he saw the Carlisle football poster. [italics mine]

Here, Sheinkin, in one sentence—a wildly inaccurate one at that—purports to describe everything two Indian children learned from their one grandparent. The way it’s worded, as well as what it leaves out, implies that Ojibwe (“Chippewa”) people were and are simple, primitive, nature loving, and technologically impaired. All of it absents the reasoning, the science, the skill sets, and the methods of traditional Indian education. And it absents the fact that these traditional skills—valuable pieces of Indigenous knowledge and technologies—have been handed down for thousands of years.

In terms of canoe building, maintenance and management, many stories were traditionally used as instructive mnemonic devices. My friend and colleague, Lois Beardslee, told me that children were taught everything about the physics of that canoe and all mathematical things to know about a vessel: construction, ratios of length to width, use and repair, how and where loads should be balanced. They were taught hydrodynamics (the equivalent of aerodynamics), how each of the materials the vessel is made of reacts with its environment. For instance, they were taught how and why to weigh down a canoe and store it in the water. They were taught that bark and wood fibers need humidity to swell so that they hold together; that opposing tensions hold these materials together and the caulking is spruce or pine-pitch with fat, using ash as filler. They were taught that a canoe needs the coolness of the water.

Lessons about how to trap animals for their fur were traditionally accompanied by stories about how trapping assists in keeping animal communities healthy through population control, how animals give themselves to humans and how they are to be respected, how they are thanked and quickly killed, and how the pelts are cleaned and dried and prepared. If there were any meat, it would certainly not have been wasted. (My friend, Barbara Wall, commented: “Yum—muskrat and beaver…beaver feast in midwinter!”)

Maple syrup is not collected. People obtain maple sap from the sugarbush and again, there are stories and mnemonic devices for children to understand how things are done in a certain way. Children were and are taught that, as Lois told me, “When we make the syrup, the sap is transformed. It’s all about chemistry; it happens very fast. When the first crystals are formed at a certain temperature, they are the catalyst for a massive rapid series of crystal formation. Our language describes this chemistry accurately. Outsiders could not, because they didn’t have the scientific language to describe it.”

“It takes ten gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup and six gallons of syrup to make one gallon of sugar,” Lois continued. “Earlier, we made maple sap into sugar cakes; it wasn’t until the 1950s that glass jars were affordable in the Indian community and we started making syrup instead of sugar. We’re always a generation behind, financially.”

Manoomin (“wild rice”) is not “collected,” nor is it “wild.” Anishnaabe families have harvested and processed the rice, and seeded, cared for, and protected the rice beds for thousands of years.

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CONCLUSION

On page 154, Sheinkin writes:

The Carlisle School was supposed to sever these young men from their heritage, to “Kill the Indian in them,” as Pratt had so famously said. But fans and sportswriters never let the players forget they were Indians—and there’s no evidence they wanted to forget. They did not call themselves the Carlisle Cardinals or the Carlisle Wildcats. They were the Carlisle Indians.

It was Pratt who named the team, “Carlisle Indians,” and the place they practiced, “Indian Field.” These names were certainly not the choice of the Carlisle students. The racist scorecards and the heavily altered “before-and-after” portraits that depict the students’ so-called journey from “savagery to civilization” were made into postcards and sold as souvenirs.[5]  And the stereotypic headlines (“Indians Scalp Army”) and articles (“With racial savagery and ferocity the Carlisle Indian eleven grabbed Penn’s football scalp and dragged their victim up and down Franklin field”) were written by Carlisle publicists to rake in money for the school, from which the Carlisle students did not benefit. Rather, there was an athletic slush fund diverting money from the Indian students. Although Sheinkin quotes from this material, he neither analyzes nor even questions it.

Sheinkin also fails to follow the money trail regarding letters from the Carlisle students. “Dear old Carlisle” is a phrase that shows up in virtually every student’s letters—because these were also used as fundraisers. There were many letters addressed to parents that were never sent, and there is clear evidence that students were required to turn letters over to the “outing” parents rather than sending them home. These letters were heavily censored; especially heartbreaking are the letters to “Dear old Carlisle” from students who had left, requesting the return of their belongings and the balances in their bank accounts.

In terms of what Jim Thorpe actually wrote, fact-checking material whose research is entirely based on hype is impossible; what’s available is inherently problematic and fundamentally wrong. Nothing is real or true. Jim Thorpe was encouraged to market his life, so everything he publicly said and wrote has to be viewed in this way. In searching out the truths of the Indian residential school era, it would have been necessary—and it would have been Sheinkin’s responsibility—to dig deeper. Rather, he chooses to represent “stereotypes as stereotypes” without question.

And that is the main problem with this book. Among the questions neither asked nor answered: Why is there a children’s cemetery on the school grounds with 192 headstones? Why were children sent home to die so as not to taint Carlisle’s statistics? Why was there a children’s jail on the school grounds? Why did twice as many children run away as were graduated?

Why did Sheinkin not interview descendants of the Carlisle students and especially, Jim Thorpe’s descendants? And why—when the sheer brutality that Pratt and his surrogates inflicted on his young Indian students, mentally and physically, has left generations of Indian people scarred and traumatized—does Sheinkin insist on finding “balance” in Pratt’s intentionality?

What does this say about Richard Henry Pratt and his life’s work? Was he a man who cared about the future of Native Americans at a time few other white leaders did? Was he a man who put down his rifle only to use his school as a weapon against the very people he was claiming to save? Can there be truth in both of the above? (p. 227)

The children who were in the clutches of the Carlisle teachers and administrators were parroting what they were expected to say. This is all clear from the school records—none of them document what the children actually experienced at the school. However, many first-person and descendants’ stories that relate the truths about Pratt’s “noble experiment” at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School have been passed down for future generations to know. But despite the copious research that Sheinkin conducted for this book (including 25 pages of source notes and six pages of works cited), his cultural filter as an outsider impedes his ability to tell the real story.

The purpose of this review is not to compare Undefeated with the countless other books and materials about Jim Thorpe, but it invites the questions: What if anything does Sheinkin offer here that is authentic, fresh or innovative? Is this an exceptional work?

“Nothing” and “no.” Just like the others, Sheinkin’s story only adds to the vast collection of what a friend calls “manifest mythology.” It’s no lie that Jim Thorpe was a remarkable human being. But praising only the achievements of one or two or a few Native individuals while all but ignoring the hundreds of Indian children whose lives and spirits were stolen from them in that same place is an injustice to the Carlisle students and their descendants and to both Indian and non-Indian readers as well. The forced removals and brainwashing of children, after forced relocation, after forced land theft—those are the stories whose importance is buried in the children’s cemetery, and in Sheinkin’s book. The greater win is empathy and compassion, and accomplishments and rebellions collectively shared. Whispering encouragement in Lakota to frightened younger children. Protecting little ones from being beaten for not knowing what is expected of them. Sneaking out in the middle of the night to give food to runaways. Secretly turning the children’s jail into a bonfire. Burying medicine bundles to save them from being destroyed. Pouring salt into a pot of mush or mashing the turnips with such fury that it breaks the jar. Many such stories have been told and many more are waiting to be told.

Sheinkin’s Undefeated is yet another addition to the cult of individual exception. It’s one person’s “bright path” superimposed over everyone else’s dirt road. Our Indian children deserve better.

—Beverly Slapin

3/28/17

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‘Chi miigwech to my dear friend, Barbara Wall (Citizen Potawatomi), whose grandfather was a student at Carlisle, and whose great-great grandmother on her father’s side was Jim Thorpe’s mother’s sister. You have strong shoulders and a good heart. And to my friend and colleague, Barb Landis, whose life’s work has been devoted to documenting the Indian students’ lives at “Dear Old Carlisle.” And to my friend and colleague, educator and poet Lois Beardslee (Anishnaabe), who ceaselessly speaks truth about power. And to my dear friend, Dovie Thomason (Lakota, Kiowa-Apache), for her brilliant and compassionate stream-of-consciousness telephone conversations and unwavering support. 

---

[1] Hayworth Publishing House, 1921

[2] Here, Zitkala-Sa is referring to her teachers at White’s Manual Labor Institute.

[3] Here, Zitkala-Sa, who was born of mixed parentage, describes herself as “a curiously colored seashell.”

[4] I substituted “copulating” for the actual word.

[5] These “before-and-after” portraits were made for two purposes: (1) as fundraisers for the school, and (2) as propaganda. The children’s complexions were often darkened in the “before” photos and lightened in the “after” photos. As well, children in the “before” photos were often “costumed” with props that were not theirs. For instance, on page 33, Wounded Yellow Robe and Chauncy Yellow Robe are wearing eagle feathers in their hair, standing straight up. These feathers were props.

Dear Michael (a letter to Michael Grant about GONE)

Note from Debbie on Nov 20 at 7:30 AM: This "Dear Michael" post is now a conversation between myself and Michael Grant. Here's a Table of Contents. Michael Grant's is submitting his comments/responses to me by email. 

November 17: Debbie's letter to Michael about GONE
November 18: Michael's response (submitted by email on Nov 18)
November 19: Debbie's response
November 20: Michael's response (submitted by email on Nov 19)
November 20: Debbie's response (about erasure)
November 21: Debbie's response (Lana's identity)
November 22: Debbie's note to Michael on dialog
__________ 


November 17, 2016

Dear Michael Grant,

Our conversation yesterday at Jason Low's opinion piece for School Library Journal didn't go well, did it? I entered it, annoyed at what you said last year in your "On Diversity" post. There, you said:

Let me put this right up front: there is no YA or middle grade author of any gender, or of any race, who has put more diversity into more books than me. Period.

Then you had a list where you were more specific about that diversity. Of Native characters, you said:

Native American main character? No. Australian aboriginal main character, but not a Native American. Hmmm.

You do, in fact, have a Native character in Gone. I'd read it but didn't write about it. So when you commented to Jason in the way that you did, I responded as I did, saying you'd erased a Native character right away in one of your books. With that in mind, and your claim that you've done more than anyone regarding diversity, I said you're part of the problem. You wanted to know what book I was talking about. Indeed, you were quite irate in your demands that I name it. You offered to donate $1000 to a charity of my choice if I could name the book. You seemed to think I could not, and that I was slandering you. 

In that long thread, I eventually named the book but you said I was wrong in what I'd said. So, here's a review. I hope it helps you see what I meant, but based on all that I've seen thus far, I'm doubtful. 

Here's a description of the book:

In the blink of an eye, everyone disappears. Gone. Except for the young. There are teens, but not one single adult. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened. Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents—unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers—that grow stronger by the day. It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: on your birthday, you disappear just like everyone else. . . .

Chapter one is set at a school in California. It opens with a character named Sam, who is listening to his teacher talk about the Civil War. Suddenly the teacher is gone. It seems funny at first but then they realize that other teachers are gone, and so is everyone who is 15 years old, or older. In chapter two, Sam, his friend Quinn, and Astrid (she's introduced in chapter one as a smart girl) head home, sure they'll find their parents. They don't. 

Partway through chapter two, you introduce us to Lana Arwen Lazar, who is riding in a truck that is being driven by her, grandfather, Grandpa Luke, who is described as follows (p. 19-20):

He was old, Grandpa Luke. Lots of kids had kind of young grandparents. In fact, Lana’s other grandparents, her Las Vegas grandparents, were much younger. But Grandpa Luke was old in that wrinkled-up-leather kind of way. His face and hands were dark brown, partly from the sun, partly because he was Chumash Indian.

At first, I thought, "cool." You were bringing a tribally specific character into the story! If he's Chumash, then, Lana is, too! There's whole chapters about her. She's a main character. But, you didn't remember her. Or maybe, in your responses at SLJ, you were too irate to remember her?

Anyway, I wasn't keen on the "wrinkled-up-leather" and "dark brown" skin because you're replicating stereotypical ideas about what Native people look like.

As I continued reading, however, it was clear to me that you were just using the Chumash as decoration. You clearly did some research, though. You've got Grandpa Luke, for example, pointing with his chin. Thing is: I've been seeing that a lot. It makes me wonder if white people have a checklist for a Native character that says "make sure the character points with the chin rather than fingers."

Back to chapter two... Grandpa Luke pointed (with his chin) to a hill. Lana tells him she saw a coyote there and he tells her not to worry (p. 20):

“Coyote’s harmless. Mostly. Old brother coyote’s too smart to go messing with humans.” He pronounced coyote “kie-oat.”

Hmmm... Grandpa Luke... teaching Lana about coyote? That sounds a bit... like the chin thing. I'm seeing lot of stories where writers drop in coyote. Is that on a check list, too?

Next, we learn that Lana is with her grandpa because her dad caught her sneaking vodka out of their house to give it to another kid named Tony. Lana defends what she did, saying that Tony would have used a fake ID and that he might have gotten into trouble. Her grandpa says (p. 21):

“No maybe about it. Fifteen-year-old boy drinking booze, he’s going to find trouble. I started drinking when I was your age, fourteen. Thirty years of my life I wasted on the bottle. Sober now for thirty-one years, six months, five days, thank God above and your grandmother, rest her soul.”

Oh-oh. Alcohol? That must be on the checklist, too. I've seen a lot of books wherein a Native character is alcoholic.

Lana teases her grandpa, he laughs, and then the truck veers off the road and crashes. Grandpa Luke is gone. Just like the other adults. Lana lies in the truck, injured. Her dog, Patrick, is with her. The chapter ends and you spend time with the other characters.

His being gone is what I was referring to when I said that you erased him. At SLJ, you strongly objected to me saying that. You interpreted that as me saying you're anti-Native. You said that "every adult is disappeared." That you did that to "African-Americans, Polish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Norwegian-Americans, French-Americans, Italian-Americans..." Yes. They all go away in your story, and because they do, you think it is wrong for me to object. That's when I said to you that you're clearly not reading any of the many writings about depictions of Native people. It just isn't ok to create Native characters and then get rid of them like that. Later in the SLJ thread, you said:

"I threw the reference to the Chumash in as an effort to at least acknowledge that there are still Native Americans in SoCal. That was it. It's a throwaway character we see for three pages out of a 1500 page series." 

Really, Michael? That's pretty awful. I hope someone amongst your writing friends can help you see why that doesn't work!

Lana is back in chapter seven. A mountain lion appears. Patrick fights it and it takes off, but Patrick has a bad wound. Lana drifts off to sleep again, holding Patrick's wound to stop the blood. She wakes, part way through chapter ten. Patrick isn't with her but comes bounding over, all healed! Lana wonders if she had healed him. She glances at her mangled arm, which is now getting infected. She touches it, drifts off, and when she wakes it, too is healed. Next she heals her broken leg. All better, she stands up.

So---Lana is a healer, Michael? That, too, is over in checklist land (Native characters who heal others).

In chapter fifteen, Lana and Patrick set out to find food and water and hopefully, her grandfather's ranch. After several hours of walking in the heat, they find the wall that is an important feature of the story, and then, a patch of green grass. There's a water hose and a small cabin. They drink, and she washes the dried blood off her face and hair.

In chapter eighteen, Lana wakes in the cabin, and remembers the last few weeks. She remembers putting the bottle of vodka in a bag with "the beadwork she liked" (p. 203). My guess, given that her grandfather is Chumash, is that the bag we're meant to imagine is one with Native beadwork designs on it.

Lana hears scratching at the door, like the way a dog scratches at a door, and she hears a whispered "Come out." Oh-oh (again), Michael! Native people who can communicate with animals! That on the checklist, too? Patrick's hackles are raised, his fur bristles. They finally open the door and go out out but don't see anyone. She uses the bathroom in an outhouse. When Lana and Patrick head back to the cabin, a coyote is standing there, between the outhouse and the cabin. This coyote, however, is the size of a wolf. She thinks back on what she learned about coyotes, from Grandpa Luke (p. 207):

“Shoo,” Lana yelled, and waved her hands as her grandfather had taught her to do if she ever came too close to a coyote.

It didn't move, though. Behind it were a few more. Patrick wouldn't attack them, so, Lana yelled and charged right at them. The coyote recoiled in surprise. Lana was a flash of something dark, and the coyote yelped in pain. She made it to the cabin. She heard the coyotes crying in pain and rage. The next day, she found the one who she'd charged at (p. 207):

Still attached to its muzzle was half a snake with a broad, diamond-shaped head. Its body had been chewed in half but not before the venom had flowed into the coyote’s bloodstream.

What does that mean? Does Lana's healing power mean snakes will defend her? Or, that she can summon them to help her? Or is the appearance of these snakes just coincidental and has nothing to do, really, with Lana?

In chapter twenty-five, two days have passed since Lana's encounter with the coyotes. Lana and Patrick eat the food they find in the cabin, and learn that it belonged to a guy named Jim Brown. He has 38 books in the cabin. Lana passes time reading them. At one point, she realizes there's a space underneath the cabin. In it, she finds gold bricks. She remembers the picks and shovels she saw outside, and the tire tracks leading to a ridge and thinks that, perhaps, Jim and his truck are there. She fills a water jug, and the two set off, following the tire tracks.

In chapter twenty-seven, Lana and Patrick reach an abandoned mining town. She look for keys to the truck they find, and, they peek into the mine shaft. Suddenly they hear coyotes. It seems Lana can hear them saying "food." Lana and Patrick enter the mine, but the coyotes don't follow them. Then, one of them talks to her, telling her to leave the mine. They rush in and attack her but then stop, clearly afraid themselves. She's now their prisoner. They nudge her down, deeper into the mine. She senses something there, hears a loud voice, passes out, and wakes, outside.

In chapter twenty nine, the coyotes push her on through the desert. She thinks of the lead coyote as "Pack Leader." He's the one who speaks to her. She asks him why they don't kill her. He says (p. 326):

“The Darkness says no kill,” Pack Leader said in his tortured, high-pitched, inhuman voice.

That "Darkness" is the voice she heard in the mine. It wants her to teach Pack Leader...  She asks Pack Leader to take her back to the cabin so she can get human food there. Later on, Darkness speaks through Lara.

Ok--Michael--I've spelled out how your depictions of Lana fail. There's so much stereotyping in there. I gotta take off on a road trip now. I may be back, later, to clarify this letter. I think it is clear but may be missing something in my re-read of it. If you care to respond, please do!

Sincerely,
Debbie Reese
American Indians in Children's Literature

__________

November 18th (Michael Grant's response to Debbie Reese):

Hi, it's Michael Grant.  But feel free to call me Satan.

I'm writing this at Ms. Reese's kind invitation because we've had a . . . well, a bit of a thing.  Which I think we both find distressing because we are on the same side.  So, anyway, I apologize for this being so long.  (Bear in mind I write 500-page books, so you're getting off easy.)

You know the running gag on The Simpsons where Marge will look at Homer and ask him what he's thinking?  And then we get a cutaway to a cross-section of Homer's head and see that inside is a toy monkey banging a tin drum?  That's sort of the level of disconnect we have here. 

Basically, what you believe I thought or knew is not even close.  Partly it may be the way I write.  If you had a number line from seat-of-the-pants writers (pantsers) to planners I would be so far over on the pantser side there'd be no one to my left.  It's almost all improvised. 

So, things you (and probably most people) see as a plan, I know to be improvised.  I write big, densely-plotted books with big casts and multiple concurrent plot lines.  I also write series, and in my approach to a series, the whole thing is essentially one long book.  I like doing this because (among other reasons)  I like plenty of space to play out character arcs.   My series are 'built' like a TV mini-series.  I know that's not indicated in any way on the book, but I don't design the covers.

So the little toy monkey in my head is worrying from Page 1 about the plot primarily.  Not that it's the only thing, it's just the hardest thing, so most of my thinking is on that.  Second comes character.

As I always tell aspiring writers, there's no 'right' way to do this job.  There's only your way, which is whatever it takes to get you from Page 1 to the little hash marks at the end.  But civilians - people who are not writers - are told a lot of nonsense by writers trying, usually unsuccessfully, to explain how we do what we do.  The true answer is:  we don't know. But that's unsatisfying, so we make up a bunch of reasonable-sounding nonsense, and civilians come away with all these notions of inspiration and falling in love with your characters and tearing your soul open (which sounds painful) and they think it's real.  It's mostly not.  Writing is not inspiration so much as problem-solving.  (And typing.) A series of if-then propositions.  Constant reliance on imagination, over which I, at least, have very little conscious control. 

You need to understand that whatever image we put out there, we are scared little children trying to cajole the mute beast in the back of our heads into giving us the ideas we then type up.  I'm not complaining - it's the best gig in the world.  I have a ridiculously great life.  (Now.) I've done real work, I've been poor, I know and remember and thank the universe daily for giving me this, instead of what I started out with.  So, not complaining; explaining.  But an overwhelming amount of our mental resources is spent convincing ourselves that we are doing something real.  That we aren't just delusional.  Yes, I should be over that.  But I'm not.  I don't know a writer who is.

So, with that aside, I'm going to respond with some specifics re: Gone. Here's your review and my notes.  Not sure how the layout will work...let's see [note from Debbie: Grant copied portions of my review and followed the copied parts with his comments, in bold. For everyone's convenience, I'm inserting my initials in front of the copied portions.]:

DR: Chapter one is set at a school in California. It opens with a character named Sam, who is listening to his teacher talk about the Civil War. Suddenly the teacher is gone. It seems funny at first but then they realize that other teachers are gone, and so is everyone who is 15 years old, or older. In chapter two, Sam, his friend Quinn, and Astrid (she's introduced in chapter one as a smart girl) head home, sure they'll find their parents. They don't.

Partway through chapter two, you introduce us to Lana Arwen Lazar, who is riding in a truck that is being driven by her, grandfather, Grandpa Luke, who is described as follows (p. 19-20):

He was old, Grandpa Luke. Lots of kids had kind of young grandparents. In fact, Lana’s other grandparents, her Las Vegas grandparents, were much younger. But Grandpa Luke was old in that wrinkled-up-leather kind of way. His face and hands were dark brown, partly from the sun, partly because he was Chumash Indian.

At first, I thought, "cool." You were bringing a tribally specific character into the story! If he's Chumash, then, Lana is, too! There's whole chapters about her. She's a main character. But, you didn't remember her. Or maybe, in your responses at SLJ, you were too irate to remember her?

MG:  I'm author or co-author of, give-or-take, 150 books, 13 series, over 27 years.  Ballpark, that's, say, 30,000 pages.  Probably, what, 1000 named characters?  Probably more, I have no way to add it up. Deb, I have forgotten entire series, let alone characters.  I could not name the main characters in Everworld, for example, or Remnants.  You know why I always say something vague like "it's around 150 books?"  Because every time I count it comes out different. I have frequently forgotten that I am the author of the Barf-O-Rama series.  Okay, maybe forgetting that is deliberate, but I actually loved Magnificent 12, and with a gun to my head I couldn't tell you a third of the characters.

I'd be concerned it's old age, but my memory has never been good for those kinds of things.  Don't take my word for it, ask anyone who knows me in kidlit.  Quick story:  I used to wait tables and was damn good at it, too, but only because I was organized.  People skills?  Well, I waited on this couple, chatted, got to be friendly, they paid and left.  I went to the front to seat a couple I saw there.  Same people.  I did not recognize them.

So, TL;DR: forgetting the background of one out of at least 1000 characters?  Not only possible, inevitable.

DR: Anyway, I wasn't keen on the "wrinkled-up-leather" and "dark brown" skin because you're replicating stereotypical ideas about what Native people look like.

MG:  Actually, I was thinking Native Americans are darker-skinned on average than white folks, but mostly I was thinking: old dude who lives in the desert.

DR: As I continued reading, however, it was clear to me that you were just using the Chumash as decoration. You clearly did some research, though. You've got Grandpa Luke, for example, pointing with his chin. Thing is: I've been seeing that a lot. It makes me wonder if white people have a checklist for a Native character that says "make sure the character points with the chin rather than fingers."

MG: You know when I first learned about the pointing thing?  Just now, reading your note.  I had literally no idea.  He points with his chin because he's driving.

DR: Back to chapter two... Grandpa Luke pointed (with his chin) to a hill. Lana tells him she saw a coyote there and he tells her not to worry (p. 20):

“Coyote’s harmless. Mostly. Old brother coyote’s too smart to go messing with humans.” He pronounced coyote “kie-oat.”

Hmmm... Grandpa Luke... teaching Lana about coyote? That sounds a bit... like the chin thing. I'm seeing lot of stories where writers drop in coyote. Is that on a check list, too?

MG:  Sorry, nope.  Everyone hears the coyotes because they've mutated.  (Incidentally, not my best choice for the book, but, live and learn.)  The coyotes are there because they are typical large fauna in the SoCal desert.  (And sometimes here in Tiburon at night.)  Basically I had to decide whether the mutagenic effect of the FAYZ worked on animals as well as humans, and I thought this might be fun.

DR: Next, we learn that Lana is with her grandpa because her dad caught her sneaking vodka out of their house to give it to another kid named Tony. Lana defends what she did, saying that Tony would have used a fake ID and that he might have gotten into trouble. Her grandpa says (p. 21):

“No maybe about it. Fifteen-year-old boy drinking booze, he’s going to find trouble. I started drinking when I was your age, fourteen. Thirty years of my life I wasted on the bottle. Sober now for thirty-one years, six months, five days, thank God above and your grandmother, rest her soul.”

Oh-oh. Alcohol? That must be on the checklist, too. I've seen a lot of books wherein a Native character is alcoholic.

MG: My best friend at the time (that's over) is a recovering alcoholic.  My father-in-law is a recovering alcoholic.  (Loooong time sober.)  It was in my head.   Luke is an alcoholic to signal that maybe Lana has a genetic predisposition, and to explain why Luke is upset with Lana.  Am I aware that alcoholism rates are high on Native American reservations?  Of course.  Can I see where you'd think that's where I was going?  Yes, I do.  Here's the thing: had I consciously thought Indian=Alcoholic, the scene would have been different.  Why?  Because it would be a trope, and I don't like writing clichés.In effect he's only an alcoholic because I need him to bitch at Lana.

DR: Lana teases her grandpa, he laughs, and then the truck veers off the road and crashes. Grandpa Luke is gone. Just like the other adults. Lana lies in the truck, injured. Her dog, Patrick, is with her. The chapter ends and you spend time with the other characters.

His being gone is what I was referring to when I said that you erased him. At SLJ, you strongly objected to me saying that. You interpreted that as me saying you're anti-Native. You said that "every adult is disappeared." That you did that to "African-Americans, Polish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Norwegian-Americans, French-Americans, Italian-Americans..." Yes. They all go away in your story, and because they do, you think it is wrong for me to object. That's when I said to you that you're clearly not reading any of the many writings about depictions of Native people. It just isn't ok to create Native characters and then get rid of them like that. Later in the SLJ thread, you said:

"I threw the reference to the Chumash in as an effort to at least acknowledge that there are still Native Americans in SoCal. That was it. It's a throwaway character we see for three pages out of a 1500 page series."

Really, Michael? That's pretty awful. I hope someone amongst your writing friends can help you see why that doesn't work!

MG:  My characters are my employees.  They aren't my pals, they work for me.  Anyone who comes to work for me has to be ready for the fact that I do have rather a tendency to kill characters: to 'fire' them.  With extreme prejudice.  (It's worse than a 'you're fired!' from Trump.  But not as bad as having him grab you by the. . .)  So, the way this works is if you go to work for Michael Grant (me), you're quite likely to end up dead.  Now, if I can only kill white people, I think the EEOC is going to have a beef with me.  Put another way, if I can't kill a diverse character, I can't hire a diverse character.  It's a basic part of the job description:  Michael's a good boss. . . except if he kills you. That's the nature of the gig.

DR: Lana is back in chapter seven. A mountain lion appears. Patrick fights it and it takes off, but Patrick has a bad wound. Lana drifts off to sleep again, holding Patrick's wound to stop the blood. She wakes, part way through chapter ten. Patrick isn't with her but comes bounding over, all healed! Lana wonders if she had healed him. She glances at her mangled arm, which is now getting infected. She touches it, drifts off, and when she wakes it, too is healed. Next she heals her broken leg. All better, she stands up.

So---Lana is a healer, Michael? That, too, is over in checklist land (Native characters who heal others).

MG:  Lana was never a Native-American in my head.  In my head, she's basically Latina. (The 2 Vegas grandparents)  When I came up with the name "Lazar" it was meant to be a riff on Lazarus that would still sound Hispanic.  Her middle name is Elvish. (Arwen Evenstar, LOTR)  Both together were meant to sort of point to 'healing.'

She's a healer because I needed a healer.  I couldn't have all this violence going on without some method of repairing people and getting them back in the action.  It had literally nothing to do with her ethnicity, at least in my head.  And again, had I thought I was doing that, I'd have done something different because it would have been a hoary cliché.  Again, back to my employer/employee relationship:   Basically the job description was, "Troubled tough chick who becomes Healer and will totally still shoot you."  That's what Lana was. I don't think at any point after that I thought about or referenced her ethnicity.  She was not her race, she was her function, and her specific personality.

DR: In chapter fifteen, Lana and Patrick set out to find food and water and hopefully, her grandfather's ranch. After several hours of walking in the heat, they find the wall that is an important feature of the story, and then, a patch of green grass. There's a water hose and a small cabin. They drink, and she washes the dried blood off her face and hair.

In chapter eighteen, Lana wakes in the cabin, and remembers the last few weeks. She remembers putting the bottle of vodka in a bag with "the beadwork she liked" (p. 203). My guess, given that her grandfather is Chumash, is that the bag we're meant to imagine is one with Native beadwork designs on it.

Lana hears scratching at the door, like the way a dog scratches at a door, and she hears a whispered "Come out." Oh-oh (again), Michael! Native people who can communicate with animals! That on the checklist, too? Patrick's hackles are raised, his fur bristles. They finally open the door and go out out but don't see anyone. She uses the bathroom in an outhouse. When Lana and Patrick head back to the cabin, a coyote is standing there, between the outhouse and the cabin. This coyote, however, is the size of a wolf. She thinks back on what she learned about coyotes, from Grandpa Luke (p. 207):

“Shoo,” Lana yelled, and waved her hands as her grandfather had taught her to do if she ever came too close to a coyote.

It didn't move, though. Behind it were a few more. Patrick wouldn't attack them, so, Lana yelled and charged right at them. The coyote recoiled in surprise. Lana was a flash of something dark, and the coyote yelped in pain. She made it to the cabin. She heard the coyotes crying in pain and rage. The next day, she found the one who she'd charged at (p. 207):

Still attached to its muzzle was half a snake with a broad, diamond-shaped head. Its body had been chewed in half but not before the venom had flowed into the coyote’s bloodstream.

What does that mean? Does Lana's healing power mean snakes will defend her? Or, that she can summon them to help her? Or is the appearance of these snakes just coincidental and has nothing to do, really, with Lana?

In chapter twenty-five, two days have passed since Lana's encounter with the coyotes. Lana and Patrick eat the food they find in the cabin, and learn that it belonged to a guy named Jim Brown. He has 38 books in the cabin. Lana passes time reading them. At one point, she realizes there's a space underneath the cabin. In it, she finds gold bricks. She remembers the picks and shovels she saw outside, and the tire tracks leading to a ridge and thinks that, perhaps, Jim and his truck are there. She fills a water jug, and the two set off, following the tire tracks.

In chapter twenty-seven, Lana and Patrick reach an abandoned mining town. She look for keys to the truck they find, and, they peek into the mine shaft. Suddenly they hear coyotes. It seems Lana can hear them saying "food." Lana and Patrick enter the mine, but the coyotes don't follow them. Then, one of them talks to her, telling her to leave the mine. They rush in and attack her but then stop, clearly afraid themselves. She's now their prisoner. They nudge her down, deeper into the mine. She senses something there, hears a loud voice, passes out, and wakes, outside.

In chapter twenty nine, the coyotes push her on through the desert. She thinks of the lead coyote as "Pack Leader." He's the one who speaks to her. She asks him why they don't kill her. He says (p. 326):

“The Darkness says no kill,” Pack Leader said in his tortured, high-pitched, inhuman voice.

That "Darkness" is the voice she heard in the mine. It wants her to teach Pack Leader...  She asks Pack Leader to take her back to the cabin so she can get human food there. Later on, Darkness speaks through Lara.

Ok--Michael--I've spelled out how your depictions of Lana fail. There's so much stereotyping in there. I gotta take off on a road trip now. I may be back, later, to clarify this letter. I think it is clear but may be missing something in my re-read of it. If you care to respond, please do!

MG: The problem again is that we have a disconnect.  In Luke, you're seeing a Native American.  I'm seeing a temp employee who is there to deliver some character background on Lana and then conveniently die.  Nothing about Lana was ever Native American in my head; she's a character, there for a reason that has nothing to do with her background.  But you were seeing something different.  It's a frequent issue in books - what's in your head defines your read, as what's in my head defines my writing.

So, when I said I didn't recall writing a Native American character, that's just the truth.  Luke is a throwaway.  Like hiring a temp for a day's work.  He's there to deliver a few lines and poof.  Lana's there for a much bigger role, but one that has nothing to do with her ethnicity.  I'm not dismissing ethnicity, but essentially, we had 332 kids starving and murdering each other, and my focus was on making it work.  The characters had other stuff on their minds.  They were eating pet cats and being threatened by psychopaths.  And I was sweating bullets hoping somehow it would all come together.

But can I understand how you'd read it and think, "Oh, cool, a Native American character?  Maybe this will go somewhere?"  Sure.  Of course, now.  But the thought never entered my head then.  I mean, I've hired hundreds, probably thousands, of throwaway characters, and they've been of all races and genders, and when they've delivered their lines, they go away.  Again: if you can't be killed off, you can't be hired. 

So, let me explain how this looks to me.  First, yes, I will claim my diversity 'points,' and proudly.  Because however much it irritates people, the fact is I was pushing diverse casts long before anyone was scolding me into doing it.  I'm proud of the work I've done.  I believe in the cause, and I'm not going to pretend I didn't write what I wrote.  No one was nagging us to be inclusive in 1993 when we were writing Ocean City.  We (I was writing with Katherine in those days) did it because we want to have access to any and all interesting characters.  And yes, in part because we thought it was the 'right thing' to do.  I've continued to keep diverse characters front and center.  I didn't have to be pushed into it, it's who I am.  It may be the one thing my mother got right with me.

But now, let me broaden this out.  I am not fundamentally a literary type (he says, handing a snarky line to future reviewers); I am, deep down in my soul, political.  As you see the world through various prisms, my prism tends to be politics, philosophy, ethics, all that stuff that doesn't earn any money.  That's my jam:  politics.  I get politics at a sort of intuitive level.  I feel the flow.  You don't have to believe me, you can think I'm crazy, but politics runs deep with me.  I quit writing for a year to do political ads for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and won a Pollie Award - 3rd class - for some piece of whatever.  As much as I've written fiction, I've probably written more on politics.  Used to have a politics blog.

The atrocity that is Trumpy the Pig was a knife to the guts.  I felt it coming.  Did everything I could to stop it.  Obviously that didn't work.  (Duh.)  But, as an armchair pol, I sensed, intuited, whatever, that something like this was coming.  Before my eldest went off to college we were talking and I said dude, this is swinging back.  You could feel the pendulum had reached its limit and was just about to come swinging back.  My first instinct is political:  you defend what is defensible.  In fact, my guide on this is Field Marshall Montgomery (what?) who was a big believer in 'tidying' the battlefield. In other words, giving up what can't be held, and strengthening what can be.

What I see is that the Good Guys (us) were not in any way prepared for what had happened.  Instinctively, I wanted a tidy battlefield.  There are things we can defend and win, there are things we have to defend regardless, and there are things where we should take a step back, the better to prevail in the end.  That was my initial (intemperate) comment on the SLJ thread.  I wasn't taking a shot at Jason, who my wife tells me (with some force) is a good dude.  And again, bear in mind, I don't spend my days talking about books or libraries, I spend my days arguing politics with people who all fall into a sort of brutalist 'shop talk' jargon. 

Now, here's the thing.  I want more diverse characters and more diverse writers.  I think it's a good in itself, and it's more fun for me as a writer.  But if I write a Native American character and have to worry I'll be beaten up and called names, I'm not going to do it.  No non-Native American writer will.  That is the opposite of what we both want. 

At the same time, I understand that it is galling to see Native Americans reduced to sideline roles in the country that was stolen from them.  Lovely country, sorry about the smallpox and the massacres, now go stand in the corner, look solemn and say, "how."  A bit like having a prop Jew in a Holocaust play directed by Germans.  Just as I understand how galling it is when that kind of treatment goes to African-American, gay, Latino, etc... characters.  But given the situation that exists - mostly white writers - the only way for large numbers of  PoC characters to come into existence is for them to be written by white writers.  Yes, that sucks.  Hopefully that will change.  If I had a magic wand and could make it happen, I'd do it.  (Might cure cancer first.)  My tiny contribution today was to give an African-American starting writer my email and my lawyer.  (And no one gets my email.)  But no one can just snap their fingers and redress the balance tonight. It's going to be a long war of attrition.  So for the short term, it's largely going to be white writers.  The question I have is:  how do we get white writers to write diverse characters? 

 

Not by attacking them when they do.  Criticize?  Of course.  Comes with the territory.  Teach?  Of course.  Review?  Yep.  Where I part company is the destruction of books.  Mein Kampf is still on the market, and, as a Jew?  I would never support banning it. I flatly reject the banning or withdrawing of books. 

I think we need to find a way forward that squares that circle.  We need a way to do the work of diversity without the attacks on writers.  And they are attacks. That doesn't mean I think we should be having writers produce new L'il Black Sambo books, nor does it mean I don't think you and others should hold our feet to the fire.  But not every infraction is a firing offense.

Writers don't want to be told what to write.  Activists don't want us randomly grabbing stereotypes and plugging them in.  This doesn't feel insoluble to me, if we can start by working working together toward a goal we share, a goal I've put an awful lot of work into, as have you. 

Damned if I know how we do that, but we all have our skills, and mine is making stuff up, not bringing people together.  Or punctuation. Or driving at the speed limit.  Or not eating an entire pie.  So many things I'm not good at. But if someone has an idea how to bring peace between activists and writers, I'm open.

Michael Grant

__________

Saturday, November 19: Debbie Reese's response to Michael Grant's email, written as an observation rather than a point-by-point rebuttal:

Grant says that he "improvised" when creating the Native characters and what they do, and that he relied on his imagination. Improvisation and imagination, however, don't come from nowhere. They are infused with ideas about the world that come from ones existence in the world. Grant is able, from his point of view, to wave away all that I pointed out in my review. His unwillingness to acknowledge the ways that he stereotypes Native people is a problem. Obviously, his editors and fans are in that same space.  They are not able to see these problems and, subsequently, unable to recognize the harm they do. Collectively, they are perpetuating these stereotypes. Grant does this with other groups, too. See the review of the way he depicted autism, here: Review: the Gone series by Michael Grant and his comment to that review. As I read GONE, I highlighted passages about Petey. I highlighted passages about Edilio, who is called a wetback. And I highlighted the first death in the book (p. 43): "She was black, black by race and from the coating of soot." 


Grant thinks I and Corinne Duyvis are wrong to point out these problematic representations in his books. We have a larger challenge, he argues, ahead of us (the president-elect). It seems he wants us to set aside our work as people who speak up to misrepresentations in children's and young adult books. The thing is, Grant's views--and the president-elect's views--were shaped by stories in books, in the media, and by stories told to them by parents, friends and colleagues... That is why Grant's depictions matter. 

__________

Sunday, Nov 20, 2016: Michael Grant's response to Debbie Reese (submitted on Nov 19): 

MG: And now, continuing the dialog, my response to Ms. Reese's response to my response to. . . wherever we are at this point.  (I'll keep this under the character limit. I hope.)

DR: "Grant says that he "improvised" when creating the Native characters and what they do, and that he relied on his imagination. Improvisation and imagination, however, don't come from nowhere. They are infused with ideas about the world that come from ones existence in the world. Grant is able, from his point of view, to wave away all that I pointed out in my review. 

MG: No, I responded honestly and at some length.  Yes, of course improvisation comes from imagination and background.  I'm well aware of the likelihood that much of what I think is correct is not, to one degree or another.  I'm telling you where I was at, 10 years ago, when I was writing GONE, as best I can remember.  All I can do is tell the truth.

DR: His unwillingness to acknowledge the ways that he stereotypes Native people is a problem. 

Obviously, his editors and fans are in that same space.  They are not able to see these problems and, subsequently, unable to recognize the harm they do. Collectively, they are perpetuating these stereotypes. Grant does this with other groups, too. See the review of the way he depicted autism, here: Review: the Gone series by Michael Grant and his comment to that review. As I read GONE, I highlighted passages about Petey. I highlighted passages about Edilio, who is called a wetback. And I highlighted the first death in the book (p. 43): "She was black, black by race and from the coating of soot." 

The GONE series runs about 3000 pages.  Yes, Edilio is called a 'wetback' and other slurs as well.  By people we hate.  Let me tell you about Edilio, and why that remark, Ms. Reese, is a perfect example of the kind of drive-by book assassination I and 90% of writers find so chilling.

Edilio is an undocumented Honduran.  He is introduced at the start as an almost throw-away character.  But I knew he wasn't.  Over the course of the series he becomes - despite not possessing powers - the most trusted, relied-upon, steady and mature person in the FAYZ, the leader of the FAYZ.  I've received probably thousands of notes, tweets, emails, and in-person testimonials from Hispanic and gay kids (Edilio comes out in the series) about the importance to them of Edilio. 

Here's very late in the series, in LIGHT, in the aftermath.  A couple of characters in the hospital chatting.  

"Edilio is in hiding," Astrid snapped.  "Edilio has to be worried about being kicked out of the country.  Our Edilio."
"He's got a volunteer lawyer --"
But Astrid wasn't done.  "They should be putting up statues to Edilio.  They should be naming schools after that boy -- no, no, I'm not going to call him a boy.  If he's not a man I'll never meet one."

Does that sound to you as if my purpose was to trash Edilio by calling him a wetback? Or do you think maybe I spent a good part of 3000 pages slowly bringing Edilio along as a character, bringing the readers with me, as I moved him from 'nobody' to 'they should name schools after him?'

You are being unjust to me, Ms. Reese.  You were unjust to accuse me of erasure, you were unjust to accuse me of lying, you are being unjust now to act as though 'wetback' is how I think of Hispanics when it is patently obvious that I'm doing just the opposite.  You are unjust to toss in the description of a black kid as black with what implication?  That's another cheap shot, and if you actually read my books you'd know that.  But you don't read the book, you cherry-pick scenes out-of-context and wave them around like a bloody shirt and call that a review.  That is unfair and it is unjust. 

DR: Grant thinks I and Corinne Duyvis are wrong to point out these problematic representations in his books. 

MG: That is flatly false.  On the contrary, I wrote:

Criticize?  Of course.  Comes with the territory. Teach?  Of course.  Review?  Yep.  Where I part company is the destruction of books.  Mein Kampf is still on the market, and, as a Jew?  I would never support banning it. I flatly reject the banning or withdrawing of books.

The issue here is not criticism, I'm a big boy and if criticism scared me, why am I here?  The issue to me is book-banning and book-destruction.  The issue is freedom of speech and the First Amendment.  The issue is the political knock-on effects.  The issue is making the perfect the enemy of the good and in the process harming the very cause we both support. 

Of course my depictions matter.  And had you said to me, "You know dude, maybe this sounds crazy to you, but when a Native American kid sees a Native American character in a book, and then it turns out to be a bunch of nothing, that's disappointing to Native kids," I'd have said, "Huh, I hadn't thought of that.  Interesting.  I'll keep that in mind and see if I can't look at hiring more Native American characters in bigger roles."  

I would like to start having those conversations.  I like dialog.  But dialog goes both ways.  There is no dialog if each time I defend myself the mere fact of defending myself is taken as proof of thought-crime.  Let's have a conversation - activists and writers.  I'm up for it, I think plenty of writers are. 

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Sunday, November 20: Debbie Reese's response to Michael Grant about erasure

Dear Michael,

We have way too many points of disagreement to continue in this same way. How about we focus on single points, working our way through others, later. Let's start with the beginning of our exchange, over at School Library Journal.

I said that you erased Native Americans in one of your books. I asked you to look over your books and see if you could find the one I was referring to. I was pushing you to look critically at your work, but you said there was too much of it for you to do that. You were sure that you hadn't erased Native Americans.

My guess is that you read my remark and thought that I was saying you'd written a story where Native Americans were erased on a large scale and that the erasure was celebrated. Because you haven't written a book like that, you called me a liar. You said I was slandering you and that I owed you an apology. 

When I specified the book (Gone), and the character (Grandpa Luke) you dismissed what I'd said because he isn't the only character who disappears. I think it matters, though, because in the larger context of Native and characters of color, these are the ones that are, to use that phrase, 'the first to die.' That's how I read Grandpa Luke's disappearance. He's gone. Erased. Removed from your story. That's similar to what happened to the Native characters in two best selling books: Sign of the Beaver and Little House on the Prairie. 

You've been writing books for a long time. I've been studying the ways that writers write Native characters for a long time. I hope this conversation will help you see what I see. 

Debbie

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Monday, November 21, 2016: Debbie Reese's Response to Michael Grant about Lana's identity

Michael,

I don't know if I'll hear from you anymore, but if you do, I'll insert your replies in the appropriate place. This morning, I'm back with this reply to talk with you or anyone who is interested in understanding the problems with your decisions with respect to Lana's identity.

You introduced her on page 19, partway through chapter two. She's riding in a truck with her grandfather, Grandpa Luke. You tell us he is Chumash. In my review (up top of this post), I wrote that I thought that was cool because you didn't say he was "part Chumash." When someone is a citizen of a nation, they're a full citizen of that nation. In the U.S., the tribal nations have sovereign nation status because they were nations of people long before Europeans came here. Each one has its own criteria for determining its citizenship. So, it seemed to me you knew about tribal nations and citizenship.

In its interview series with Native leaders, the National Museum of the American Indian has one with the chairman of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. It has lot of good information, including this:

The federal government created Indian reservations even before many western states were established. To remedy the poverty of the Indians in California who were previously part of the Spanish missions, Congress passed the Mission Indian Relief Act of 1891. 

I'm sharing that passage in particular because of the reference to the missions (which Raina Telgemeier misrepresented in Ghosts). 

But let's get back to Lana. I'm guessing that Grandpa Luke would be a citizen of the Santa Ynez Band. I'm also guessing that Lana would be, too. My expectation--at that early point in the book--was that I'd be pleased as I read on. I thought you'd done some research on Chumash people and would be bringing that into the story. From there, though, what I found was stereotypical.

In your reply on November 18th, you asserted that those items were about something else. They were not, in your mind, related to any effort on your part to signify that Luke and Lana are Chumash. (A note about alcoholism: you said that alcoholism rates are high, but that's not accurate. Research studies show that rates of alcoholism are similar across Native and non-Native populations. See a Washington Post article, or the research study the Post references).

Specific to their identity, you wrote that Luke was a "throw away character." I get it, but am not okay with it. Though this entire conversation has been intense, I think you will make different decisions in creating Native characters, and I think your editors will be more aware of how they're brought into stories, too. That is a plus, for all of us.

Debbie


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Tuesday, November 22, 2016: Debbie Reese to Michael Grant on dialog

Michael?

You still there? Maybe busy with family on this holiday week?

In my head, I'm thinking you're still open to dialog. So... I'll be hearing from you sometime, maybe next week? I hope so!

I hope that your editor didn't tell you to stop. I hear that happens to some writers, so I suppose it is possible in your case, too. Others might have told you to quit, that you're wasting your time with me, but that's a bit of a cop out, I think. You and I aren't the only ones reading this conversation. Your fans are reading, too. And a lot of writers are reading it, too.

So, I hope I'll have another email from you soon.

Debbie