Where is your copy of THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE?
That isn't a trick question, but it is an important one. Where does
your library shelve its copy of Forrest (Asa) Carter's The Education
of Little Tree?
Published in the 1970s, and passed off as autobiography, it was
exposed as a work of fiction in 1991. It's author, "Forrest" Carter
was not Cherokee. He was Asa Carter, member of the KKK, and the person
who wrote George Wallace's "segregation today, segregation tomorrow,
segregation forever" speech.
The Education of Little Tree was in the news last week. Around 6:00 AM
on Sunday, November 11^th, I did a Google search using [Oprah
+"Education of Little Tree"] and got 572,000 hits that include news
outlets in Canada, Ireland, the UK, and China. Obviously, Oprah is a
person with international fame.
Oprah pulled The Education of Little Tree from her list of recommended
books. She was a fan of the book, but decided, given its author, she
could no longer keep it on her list. I wish that she knew there are
additional problems with the book. It isn't only a hoax, it's deeply
flawed in its presentation of Cherokee people and their ways.
As a person who studies children's and young adult books about
American Indians, I've known for a long time that the book is a hoax.
A best-selling hoax. Curious about its reception, I logged on to
Amazon to read some reader reviews there.
When I clicked on the link to customer reviews, the page that came up
had a different format than what I'm used to seeing on Amazon. On the
left side of the page is "The most helpful favorable review" and on
the right side of the page is "The most helpful critical review." The
critical review is titled "Should not be shelved as Non-Fiction." I
like this dual presentation, and hope to see it more often.
I wanted to read more reviews, so clicked on the "Newest First"
button. Scrolling down, I saw one titled "The WORST book I've ever
recorded..." posted on June 6, 2006, by J. Woodman. The person named
J. Woodman, apparently, recorded the audio book version: In his
review, Woodman says
Reading the book to myself in order to prepare to record it, I found
it annoying in the extreme -- the so-called prose is precious and
poorly written, and the allegedly authentic colloquialisms are
grating. When it came time to say it all aloud, for the first time
ever (and I've narrated upwards of 200 audiobooks) I found it
impossible to invest this piece of literary flotsam with any emotional
content whatsoever. As declining the job was no longer an option, I
merely tried to stay out of the way and give it as simple and logical
a performance as I could, but I was unable to compensate for the God
awful writing, and unable to disguise my contempt for the entire
enterprise. It remains the worst recording I have ever done, and I
was, for a time, quite ashamed of it. Now that I discover more about
its hate mongering author, I'm actually quite pleased that the
recording stinks. I now believe I gave this garbage exactly the
reading it deserved.
Woodman's remarks aside, review after review describes the story as
"heartwarming" or "well-written, compelling" or "entertaining and
thoughtful." Many say they'll pass it along to their children and
grandchildren.
The thrust of the mainstream criticism of the book is about the
author, about the hoax. Many say we should not discard a book because
of its author, that it should be considered on its own merits. To
many, it is a well-written book, and therefore, much-loved.
But...
There are a lot of well-loved children's books that miss the mark when
viewed for the accuracy of presentation of Native content. These books
are, in my view, bogus. A good example of this is Brother Eagle,
Sister Sky, illustrated by Susan Jeffers. It is an award-winning,
best-selling book that purports to be a speech given by Chief Seattle,
who was the leader of a west-coast tribe, but Jeffers illustrations
are the usual (stereotypical) Plains Indian-like items (fringed
buckskin, tipis). Books like this do nothing to interrupt the cycles
of misinformation circulating throughout mainstream America---and
indeed---the world, about who American Indians actually are. Instead,
they affirm stereotypes, of savage, heroic but always tragic Indians.
While those with little or no factually based knowledge of the
Cherokee people think The Education of Little Tree is a wonderful
story, those who are Cherokee find it deeply flawed. In his article "A
Lingering Miseducation: Confronting the Legacy of Little Tree," Daniel
Heath Justice writes:
...Carter's Indians live apart from their tribal community as much in
spirit and philosophy as in geographic proximity. Grandpa, Granma,
Little Tree, and Willow John are the only Indians around; reference to
"the Nation" in Oklahoma is always with scorn or sadness. No mention
is made of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in North Carolina. Carter's
Indians claim to carry the memory and "Way" of their people, but only
as a vanished or vanishing memory. The tribal community is dead in
Little Tree, and none of the so-called Cherokees seem interested in
reclaiming it.
On the authenticity in the book, Justice says:
Granpa is the Noble Trickster, Grandma the dignified Indian Princess
(and a Cherokee Princess, no less!), and Little Tree is just what so
many generations of Boy Scouts have dreamed themselves to be: the
Little Brave roaming wild in the forest, with few rules and all sorts
of generic "Indian" woodlore to consume and exploit. In most ways they
are generic Indians, with few if any attributes that are distinctly
Cherokee. None of them have any connection to the Cherokee clan
system, which would have been quite unusual for Cherokees like Granma
and Granpa during that time period....
And,
This fictionalization of Native lives and histories poses a very real
threat to Native America, for it creates powerful stereotypes of
Indians (what Anishinaabe writer and critic Gerald Vizenor calls
"interimage simulations") that take on a white cultural reality that
is seen as a more "authentic" than the realities of living, sovereign
American Indians.
Justice opens his article by speaking of reading it himself, as a
young boy, and how it affected him. He is Cherokee, or as he prefers,
Tsalagi. He closes his article with this:
Many generations have suffered from the stereotypes that Little Tree
draws upon, stereotypes that find their deepest grasp in the minds and
spirits of the children. We have spent many years resisting
colonialist intrusions into our lives, histories, and identities, to
varying degrees of success, sometimes with strategies that would make
true understanding more difficult for the children and grandchildren
who would follow. Until 1996, my parents and I didn't know that The
Education of Little Tree was a fraud; three generations of removal
kept us ignorant of who we are among our people. But we know now.
We've reclaimed the story from Asa Carter and others like him who
would define Indians out of existence and take their places as the
indigenes of the Americas. We're reestablishing connections with our
kin in the Nation and beyond, and we're reading authors like
Cook-Lynn, Vizenor, Owens, Wendy Rose, Diane Glancy, Marilou Awiakta,
Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Sherman Alexie, D'Arcy McNickle, and other
Indians hwo tell their own stories. The time of Little Tree is at an
end; the voices have escaped. We know the truth: the stories are ours,
and we will be the ones to tell them. That's where the real education
begins.
Justice's article came out in a journal published by the Association
for the Study of American Indian Literatures. Published since the
1970s, it is among the handful of academic journals created by
American Indians for the purpose of publishing research articles that
provide American Indian perspectives on, in this case, literature.
Older issues of the journal are on line at
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/faculty/ASAIL/.
Other journals like it include American Indian Quarterly, Wicazo-Sa
Review, the Journal of American Indian Education, and American Indian
Culture and Research Journal.
The Library of Congress classifies The Education of Little Tree as
fiction but at least 20 libraries in Illinois have it shelved as
non-fiction. Opening the book and looking at the CIP information, it
is clear that---at one time---LOC had it categorized as biography.
When did they change its category from biography to fiction? Does LOC
have a mechanism for letting libraries know when they make such a
change?
The case of The Education of Little Tree illustrates the many problems
in children's books about American Indians. From writers who claim a
Native identity, to the differences in reviews by mainstream and
Native critics, to the problems involved in shelving books.
Things can be better, but only if teachers and librarians have time to
do some professional reading in journals that aren't necessarily among
their regular readings. This blog is an attempt to help you find those
articles. When they're available on-line, I link to them (see column
at right called ARTICLES.)
So.... I close this blog post with the question I started with: Where
is your copy of The Education of Little Tree shelved?
No comments:
Post a Comment