/mlpol/ - >Laura Ingalls Wilder was on the brink of ha

>Laura Ingalls Wilder was on the brink of having an award named in her honor, from the Association for Library Service to Children, when in 1952 a reader complained to the publisher of “Little House on the Prairie” about what the reader found to be a deeply offensive statement about Native Americans.
>The reader pointed specifically to the book’s opening chapter, “Going West.” The 1935 tale of a pioneering family seeking unvarnished, unoccupied land opens with a character named Pa, modeled after Wilder’s own father, who tells of his desire to go “where the wild animals lived without being afraid.” Where “the land was level, and there were no trees.”
>And where “there were no people. Only Indians lived there.”
>The editor at Harper’s who received the reader’s complaint wrote back saying it was “unbelievable” to her that not a single person at Harper’s ever noticed, for nearly 20 years, that the sentence appeared to imply that Native Americans were not people, according to a 2007 biography of Wilder by Pamela Smith Hill.
>Yet Harper’s decision in 1953 to change “people” to “settlers” in the offending sentence did little to quell the critics in later decades, who began describing Wilder’s depictions of Native Americans and some African Americans — and her story lines evoking white settlers’ Manifest Destiny beliefs — as racist.
>Now, after years of complaints, the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, says it voted Saturday to strip Wilder’s name from the award.
http://archive.is/xGsfO

>Welcome to the Children's Literature Legacy Award home page!
>At its meeting on Saturday, June 23, 2018, the Association for Library Service to Children Board voted to change the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award to the Children's Literature Legacy Award.
>This decision was made in consideration of the fact that Wilder’s legacy, as represented by her body of work, includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC’s core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness. Please read the background document that informs this decision (PDF). Additional background information is found in the 2018 Midwinter Board Action Request form (PDF).
>In the weeks following the ALA Annual Conference, these award webpages will be revised to reflect the new award name.
http://archive.is/TS4yJ
http://archive.is/oq0YW (old page)

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/mlpol/ - My Little Politics

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