As author of two children’s short story collections, namely Young Minds, and Through the Eyes of Innocence, two poetry collections, an adult comedy series, and two romantic fiction drama novels for which my name in the field of writing is best known, I find not only the content of this article appalling, but the reasoning behind it. To understand my disgust, as well as my solid stand against what has taken place, please read the two articles and then return here to my post.
I fully understand what racism is and the need to stamp it out, however, a writer has the given right to create, project, and write not only what they imagine, but what they have experienced and or witnessed first hand. They may depict what they are writing about in any manner they so choose. This is called creative license:
The freedom to create an artwork, musical work, or piece of writing based on the artist’s interpretation and mainly for effect; also called poetic license, etc. Artistic license often provokes controversy by offending those who resent the reinterpretation of cherished beliefs or previous works.
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her life; the way it was growing up in the late 1800’s before modern times, modern laws, and liberal minded people who have taken it upon themselves to be judge, jury, and executioner. As all writers do, Mrs. Wilder chose to embellish her stories, making them not only historically accurate for the times, but entertaining for the reader. No reader continues to turn the pages of an uninteresting work, they either lay it down never to be picked up again, or donated to a second hand bookshop, or simply discarded into the trash bin. A children’s book is one of the most difficult to undertake, for in order to hold a child’s attention and interest, the author must project images through words that allows the child’s eyes to visualize what they are reading, or if being read to, what their ears are hearing. This is often why illustrations accompany a children’s book.
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The Ingalls family traveled the unsettled United States’ prairies in search of a new life in areas that the government of the time had opened up to settlers wishing to carry out their dreams. Land was given to settlers in return for clearing the land themselves. Not an easy task when there was no electricity, modern tools or labor to help. Often times it was the husband and wife who felled trees together, built their home, often nothing more than raw cut logs wedged together, piled atop each other until they could reach no higher. A makeshift roof kept out the weather, and for cooking, a stone fireplace which doubled as their only source of heat. No modern conveniences in the least that everyone of today’s world takes for granted.
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I have often said that Native Americans in the States, and First Nations here in Canada were dealt an unkind and raw deal by the governments of the time. However, mistakes are not corrected when they continue to be made in the name of progress. What has been happening by trying to erase history through tearing down and disfiguring statues and monuments, does not change or erase history. History must be remembered in order for the perils of it not to be repeated. Laura Ingalls Wilder did not write her stories with a racist view, she wrote what she saw and experienced in order for those who might one day read her work to know the way it once was. As I’ve stated, by trying to erase history only tends to have it repeated. Children must be taught the way it once was in order for them to realize what is not acceptable, incorrect, and wrong, but this is not done by removing public statues, defacing monuments that someone takes offense to, and it is certainly not done by stripping a most talented and honest author of the honor they rightly deserved.
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What is next on the chopping block? In literature, will it be the classics, To Kill a Mockingbird, Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Grapes of Wrath, or possibly Gone with the Wind? In children’s work, will it be Black Beauty, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, even Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby? Yet Laura Ingalls Wilder is stripped of her honor because she dared to write history the way it was. Think about this the next time you hear of more nonsense taking place in the name of ‘righteousness’ for what those, many of whose ancestors founded what those today find so appalling, and ask yourself if by allowing this, what are you really allowing?
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I applaud her work, I have always enjoyed it, and found it to be one of the best children’s series ever written. I still believe this, and to those who have carried through with this ridiculous and unnecessary move, I say shame on you.
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