Comments | dymphna79: a Newbery discussion...

dymphna79

a Newbery discussion...

Dec 08, 2008 11:15

(This is the continuation of a discussion from the Heavy Medal blog about the Newbery winner/honors from 1953. The site wouldn't accept my whole comment for some reason, but I thought some of the readers might still want to read this response. Apologies to those who are coming in the middle of the conversation and/or are not at all interested.)

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anonymous January 6 2009, 15:22:53 UTC

I don't agree that " The theme of "Indian way of life is over, white settlers are here to stay" is in-and-of-itself racist." If I write a story about a Jewish Intellectual with an academic post in a German University who looked around in 1937 and decided that she couldn't stop the rising tide of Nazism and it was time to get out, that doesn't make me an Anti-Semite and it doesn't mean I am condoning Fascism. When KM Peyton wrote Flambards-about the end of the era of Manor House Privilege and the beginning of World War I, she wasn't "pro-war." She also wasn't glorifying the British Class system. McGraw isn't romanticizing the white settlers. Jim sees them with about as much affection as we have for an invasive species. Oh look, it's an overbite clam. In the very moment that McGraw presents their persistence, she also notes their incivility. They'll get a wagon down an impossible slope, but will they move their detritus out of the way for the next person? No. These aren't "supermen" come to take their enact their Manifest ( ... )

and more! anonymous January 6 2009, 15:23:40 UTC

We've all read about nutjob Christians who want Harry Potter out of the library because it glorifies witches. But my stories are set in a world with a pantheon of gods and goddesses and I've never, not even from my most fundamentalist readers, had a complaint about heresy. Can an author not say within the context of her story that a religion is real? There really are gods and goddesses in my stories. Couldn't someone raised in the Indian School in Carlisle chuck the faith they were forced to learn and go back to the faith of their family and have that represented as True? In Rosemary Sutcliff's Blood and Sand, the Scottish soldier converts to Islam. Can't my main character decide that Judaism is the right choice and Cathlicism wrong? Why not ( ... )

Re: and more! dymphna79 January 6 2009, 15:42:59 UTC

Can I ask who I'm talking with ( ... )

Re: and more! anonymous January 6 2009, 17:34:43 UTC

What do you think of Pullman?

Re: and more! dymphna79 January 6 2009, 17:40:50 UTC

I haven't read any.

Re: and more! anonymous January 6 2009, 18:35:43 UTC

He's very disrespectful of organized religion, especially Catholic. But he has his reasons. I wouldn't say that what he does is unacceptable or (looking for an accurate word here and not finding it) "immoral." . I had an "aesthetic" problem with it. As far as I was concerned, the ax grinding spoiled his story. I see your points, but I still come down on the side of chucking the rosary, if that's where the story is going. . . but given that. . . I then think it's perfectly reasonable for a whole group of readers to go "ick. not for me." I think it's a matter of what upsets me, and Secret of the Andes upsets me.

This was written in haste and I'm sorry if it's not clear. I'll come back later. I am the writer of the two part monologue as well. I'm sorry I didn't at first see your request for identification.

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