Laura Ingalls Wilder's name stripped from children's literary award

[hermetic]

In the opening chapter of Little House on the Prairie she wrote, "...a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no people. Only Indians lived there." In 1952 "people" was changed to "settlers."

The award will now be known as the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.

“The ALSC Board recognizes that Wilder’s legacy is complex and that her work is not universally embraced,” the association said in February when it announced a task force to examine the naming of the award. “It continues to be a focus of scholarship and literary analysis, which often brings to light anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work. The ALSC Board recognizes that legacy may no longer be consistent with the intention of the award named for her.”

https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2018/06/laura-ingalls-wilders-name-stripped-from-childrens-literary-award/

Interesting. I've not read any of her books but know that a few other people who post here have.

[Shrike47]

1. The books reflect the attitudes of the white settlers of the day, including some of the warts.

Last edited Tue Jun 26, 2018, 03:30 PM - Edit history (1)

I loved the books as a child and would still give them to my granddaughter, perhaps discussing some of the contents.

[Little Star]

2. That was a different time.....

As a child she survived a cloud of 3.5 trillion locusts. In the mid-1870s, Laura witnessed one of the most devastating natural disasters the country had ever known—a locust plague that caused an estimated $116 billion worth of damage from the Dakotas to Texas, pushing thousands of settlers to the brink of starvation and ruin, including her own family.

So for me, anyone who survived a cloud of 3.5 trillion locusts gets a break. lol

[TlalocW]

3. I read the books back in 8th grade or so

All of them in two weeks while I had chickenpox during the winter when we had wonderful snowfall, and I couldn't play outside. They were always on the headboard of my sister's bed growing up. I remember three times Native Americans were mentioned though there might have been more (like the one above).

Pa went out to hunt a bear that had been spotted on the farm (Ma had actually mistaken it for a cow in the dark when she went out to the pen and shoved it to get it away from the fence). Pa ran into a Native American, and they were able to communicate enough that the Native American told him that he had killed it a few days ago.

In Kansas, a large tribe of Native Americans walked past their cabin heading west, I believe, and Laura fell in love with a baby Native American swaddled in a papoose and wanted Pa to get him/her for her. Likely she looked upon it as a doll.

When she was recently married to Alonzo, and they had a farm, some Native Americans wandered by and were looking at their barn out of curiosity. She went out to confront them, and one of them supposedly said, "Squaw?" and Laura took it to mean he wanted her as a wife so she slapped him (his friends laughed). I always thought he could have been asking, "Are you the lady of the house?"

TlalocW