Laura Ingalls Wilder unapproved!!

[IrmaFayLear]

www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/24/laura-ingalls-wilders-name-removed-from-book-award-over-racial-concerns

I know the books contain "unenlightened" views, but this book was of the time. If all racist views and comments are deleted from literature/history, then how are people supposed to know they ever existed?

The Ingalls family were pioneers - or settlers if you will. They were afraid - for genuine reasons - of "red Indians". Were the Native Americans in the right? 100%.

I don't want half-witted knee-jerk censorship. Frankly just about everything is going to have to be "unapproved" if we go down this road. The past is another country, not a country that didn't exist.

I remember loving the fact that she wasn’t a “girly” girl, there was a lot I could relate to in the books. The portrayal of disability (though that might be more on tv - haven’t read every book) seemed positive too.

Is it worse than fifty shades?

The part of LIW books that seems completely wrong to me is the lack of children dying. Also, her family is simply too small.

My prairie & pioneer ancestors had huge families & large numbers of kids didn't make it to adulthood. 4/9 kids died... 6/10 died... 7/13 died (plus more in early adulthood) One family miraculously only had 1/9 die young (12 yr old girl who died in 1905). Those kind of numbers is what I expect. Not including any stillborn, of course. I feel sure Ma had more kids that weren't included in LIW stories.

There's a girl who gets married about 14 in my family tree, to a 31yo man, approx. 1824.

Obviously some people like the books and some people don’t. Opinions will vary so there’s not much point arguing about that!

Posters complaining about “re-writing history” have surely just seen the word “blacklisted” and misunderstood what has happened here. Please read again - it’s just that an award has changed its name. Must everything stay absolutely the same forever and ever, for fear of “rewriting history”? Things change all the time, for many different reasons. These books remain as readily available as they were before.

Whether or not they're relevant or good is up to the reader. I grew up in the States, my mother loved them and had all of them and bought all the spin-offs when they came out and I read all of them, many repeatedly.

I still don't get the worship of her. They're good tales and nice light comfort reading, but there are plenty of other books that fit that as well. Personally, I prefer the Birchbark House series when it comes to that time in US history and have seen no need to make an effort to pass them on to my kids. If I find them in a charity shop here, I might be tempted to pick them up just for the nostalgia, but there are plenty of ways to show the unsavoury attitudes of the time or that some were sympathetic than one book series.

And yes, some white settlers were killed. It was US policy to arm some American Indigenous nations to kill/drive off ones that that the US thought were a threat or had resources they wanted. The Osages were particularly badly hurt by this policy as they were of particular concern to the US governments and there were raids and massacres on all sides. The Osages were repeatedly forced to shrink and withdraw from their territory to create a 'buffer zone' which people, like the Ingalls, would then move into illegally and the cycle would repeat. I don't get trying to hold up that some white settlers were killed like that wasn't a well known at the time risk of squatting in these territories or that there weren't massacres of Osage people well into the 20th century. Caroline's hatred wasn't entirely based on fear or these attacks (even then, assuming some of a group doing bad meant they all were was still racist) but on her opinion that all Indians - Osage and otherwise - weren't people, weren't using the land properly and that she and her family had more rights to that land than even the US law allowed. That may be covering for her husband's repeated foolish choices but I think it's pretty clear in the books that the adults know that what they're doing is illegal but will be later justified - which it is.

I read all these as a child and reread them recently, and then passed them on to my DD who is 10 now.

The books aren’t racist or sexist, they are simply descriptive of life at that time. History can’t just be erased. My DD is amazed at how different life was for LIW, hardly any toys or books, having to be quiet and obedient. We’ve talked about why she is scared of the Indians and how it’s sad the Indians lost their homelands.

DD understands that “blacking up” is wrong now but back then it was entertainment and not deemed offensive. Life has changed in so many ways but it shouldn’t all be forgotten or erased. How do people learn any different otherwise?

Ma did have another child who's not mentioned - a son. That's why Carrie seems to be a baby for about 6 years.

I don't find it surprising they didn't have more than five, though - remember they were living for months on end either in a covered wagon or a one/two-room house! We have three bedrooms and I still think we've had sex about four times since our 15 month old was born!

Also agree with Branleuse that it's important not to cover up the unsavoury attitudes of the time; it's important that DC today learn from them.

Absolutely agree. But the books aren’t going anywhere, so we can still read and learn from them. An award is just being renamed.

Laura Ingalls had a brother who died lljkk. I loved the books as a child and, as an adult, have enjoyed reading "Pioneer Girl" which is a true life account of the family and their travels and troubles. Much grittier.

Who reads this stuff nowadays? It's nowhere on any GCSE course that I am aware of (please correct if not) and no-one reads this stuff to their DCs - it's irrelevant all round

That is a crazy way to define whether an author is read or relevant TBF

And yeah the GSCE comment is very odd! It’s like saying “who reads Matilda anymore? I’ve never seen it on a GCSE course”

Totally different age groups.

The heartache, death and torture caused by the white settlers against the indigenous people can never be undone.

I cannot believe that people are trying to still make excuses for racists just because they wrote books for children.

Have those same people read bury my heart at wounded knee too?

Blacking up was ALWAYS offensive. It just provided the white racists with a good laugh at someone else’s expense.

Prairie Fires is a brilliant book - absolutely fascinating and very well written. I highly recommend it. Your mind will be blown but the environmental stuff and the explanation of the grasshopper plagues.

1/5 is too low.. sorry to be morbid. 1 is too low, 5 is too low. My North Dakota GG-granny lost 5/9 before adulthood. There are photos of the 5 who died very young... they were healthy looking kids. Another died in early adulthood, eldest girl crippled in early adulthood & may have had some of her own children die in same accident. They all lived in homes they built themselves, barely more than one room, little privacy for sex, big families still the norm.

Similar story repeated in most my family tree, especially the pioneer families. One couple only had one child (b. 1858ish). I still wonder how that happened.

Does LIW ever talk about birth, seeing her siblings born or attending a childbirth? I wonder how pioneer woman managed.

Child numbers vary. I have some ancestors in the 1800s with a lot of children and some not so many . The UK 1911 census gives numbers of childre still living and children born and a few of mine had 4 still living and 6 died. They had 3 girls and a boy who died and one assumes some miscarriages.

Learning that people then would get one sweet once a year and had so little was a hugely important lesson for many of us as children who might otherwise take it for granted. Also she (and her daughter) wrote well about the stricture of corsets and dress and women's freedom in that sense or attempts at freedom and the sexism of the time - that the father just decided we are moving X rather than discussing and agreeing is always interesting to read.

White settlers killed millions of native Americans. It is the other holocaust in a sense, as I think most of us know. There is a lot of awful history out there. The last thing we want is books banned however, not that this is banned. In fact I like the older tales - reading small children stories night after night is boring sometimes so I always liked the particularly dreadful Greek myths or fairy tales of children locked in cages and starved etc

Wilder was the opposite of a racist. She encouraged acceptance of all people are human and equal actually and feminist which is why a lot of teenagers always liked the books of course.

Am I the only one thinking that using the word blacklisted is racist?

Laura lost a son herself and so did her daughter. Neither of her sisters had children. It may be the norm for families to have been large but that doesn’t mean every single one was - you can still have secondary (etc!) infertility

Cholera... there was plenty of cholera around in about 1840. American frontier & in Britain.

The term blacklisting doesn’t originate from anything to do with black people.
If you consider the association of black with bad/negative (eg the baddie dressing in black) then I suppose it could be.

I remember some details so vividly: the leeches in the creek, waking up covered in snow and being warm until it is shovelled away, Laura cutting her hair into bangs and curling them using a slate pencil heated in the fire...

I loved the books as a child, and whilst I would struggle with some of the content now, reading with a postcolonial perspective, I don't think they should be dropped for that content, any more than we should stop reading Austen because Mansfield Park's wealth is based on slavery, or Jane Eyre because of the way Bertha is portrayed. They are a fascinating account of a particular period of history and we need to educate children about the context instead of pretending those texts were never written: when you end up with To Kill a Mockingbird banned in schools because of racist epithets you really have lost all perspective. They aren't 'great literature' ( a value laden term in itself - one culture's canon is another's exotica) but it would be a terrible shame to lose them. It is possible to read and enjoy LIW, whilst also decrying the genocide of the indigenous peoples, and slavery.

lijkk, in Little House on the Prairie, Pa takes Laura and Mary for a long walk one day down to the camp that the Indians have abandoned. They find little coloured beads on the ground and collect them (no doubt people will come on here and condemn them for this). When they return home, they have a new baby sister.

Women neighbours helped each other, mostly, in childbirth.

When the Ingalls family had malaria, a black doctor saved their lives.

I loved those books.

Another recommendation for Prairie Fires, amazing book, very well written. And offers a fascinating insight into US children’s literature.

I read the LHITP series aloud to my daughter, alongside Chief Seattle’s Speech and a wonderful book on Sitting Bull. And we’re about to start the Birchbark House. We had long discussions on why people do the things they do, right and wrong, hardship, feminism, the USA, we’ve linked back to the Wizard of Oz...

This series, read in conjunction with other materials, has opened many doors and I think will continue to open more in the future.

The gap from marriage to Mary's birth is 5 yrs... I bet there were some pregnancy failures then. The gap from Carrie to the lad is large enough for a few unsuccessful pregnancies. Caroline was only about 38 when Grace was born... too young for most women to stop being fertile.

I think of Rh-D problems in that kind of family pattern.