Module 5: Diversity, Censorship, and Movie Adaptation

Diversity – Race and Gender

I. African American

• Late 19th century – There were many racist portrayals in America and Britainand black characters were often portrayed as flat, stereotypes, such as the dutiful, subservient slaves in Martha Finley’s Elsie Dinsmore (1867).
• Some 20th century books as well still had negative ethnic portrayals as with the Bumpo the African prince in Dr. Doolittle or the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who are African pygmies.
• Late 19th and early 20th centuries witness the emergence of ethnic children’s literature. Amelia E. Johnson’s Clarence and Corinne; or, God’s Way (1890) is considered the first children’s novel written by a Black author. The Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century gave us the genius of  W.E.B. DuBois who created a new vision for Black children and is considered the father of the genre of Black children’s literature. DuBois worked in tandem with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which created the journal Crisis and the magazine The Brownies Book, whose intended audience was Black youth.
• In the later 20th century, African American writers were being duly recognized for their contributions. Virginia Hamilton  won the Newberry Medal in 1975 for her novel M. C. Higgins, the Great, and Walter Dean Myers received the same award in 1979 for his novel Scorpions and again in 1993 for the novel Somewhere in the Darkness.

II Jewish

• During and after World War II, children’s literature began to see the inclusion of Jewish authors, characters, and culture. H.A. and Margaret Rey created the Curious George series in 1941. Both authors were German-born Jews who immigrated to Paris. Sydney Taylor launched her series All-of-a-Kind, which brought Jewish children’s literature to a wide audience.
• The Holocaust struggle was depicted in Joanna Reiss’s The Upstairs Room (1972).
• Jewish author/illustrator Ezra Jack Keats won the Caldecott Medal for The Snowy Day (1962), and Jewish author/illustrator Maurice Sendak won the Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are (1963).
• Jewish author/illustrator David Wisniewski won the Caldecott Medal for his paper cut illustration picture book Golem (1996).
• In 2006 John Boyne, an Irish author, published the historical fiction novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which focused on the tragic friendship between a Jewish boy and a young Jewish prisoner in a Nazi death camp. This novel stretches authenticity with the young German boy displaying an alarming lack of awareness of his environment, given that his father is the Commandant of the camp. Nevertheless, this novel attempts to bridge cultural differences and suggest that children display unconditional love.

III. Latinx

• Latinx is a gender-neutral term related to Latin American authors, who have been steadily growing in importance in all realms of literature.
• Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Esperanza Rising, published in 2000 centers on her grandmothers immigration to America. Her novel Echo (2015) incorporates imaginative elements.
• Victor Martinez wrote the YA novel Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida (1996), which won the National book Award.
• Pat Mora, a poet focusing on both child and adult audiences wrote the picture book Doña Flor: A Tall Tale of Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart (2014).

IV. Asian

• Asian American literature geared for children has 19th century origins but has continued to gain in importance. In 1928, The Newberry Medal was awarded to Indian immigrant Dhan Gopal Mukerji for the novel Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon.
• There were Asian stereotypes littering American children’s literature until the middle of the 20th century. The picture book Five Chinese Brothers, written by Claire Huchet Bishop and Kurt Wiese (1938) portrays the Asian characters as yellow and identical in appearance.
• In the 1970s there was a surge of important Asian children’s literature. Chinese author Laurence Yep published Dragonwings in 1975. This novel focused on the lives of Asians in America, and it won a Newberry Honor.
• Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese (2006) won the Printz Award and focuses on the struggle Chinese Americans have with immigration and stereotypes.
• More recently Julie Leung and Hanna Cha’s picture book The Truth About Dragons (2023) was a Caldecott Honor Book.

V. Native American

• Native Americans have suffered seeing themselves marginalized and misrepresented in much of American and British literature in the 19th and early 20th century. Stereotypes occur in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) with the character of Injun Joe, who is a criminal.  J.M. Barrie referred to them as “redskins” in his book Peter and Wendy.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her Little House on the Prairie series, published in the 1930s and 40s. It is set in the American frontier and at times gives unfavorable comments on the Native Americans.
• Broken English is another stereotype seen in depictions of Native Americans, as in Lynne Reid Bank’s The Indian in the Cupboard (1980).
• Combating these stereotypes are authors such as Louise Erdich, whose book series The Birchbark House (1999) set in the 19th century American frontier provides an equitable view of Native Americans and is narrated from the perspective of an Ojibwe girl. Another important writer is Sherman Alexie, whose National Book Award winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian centers on a teenage Spokane Indian living in modern day Washington.
• Kevin Noble Maillard, a member of the Mekusukey band of the Seminole Nation tribe, wrote the picture book Fry Bread (2019), which centers on the cultural importance of food.

VI. Need for Diverse Books

• Concern for the lack of diversity in children’s literature started in the 60s with Nancy Larrick’s 1965 article “The All-White World of Children’s Books” in the Saturday Review of Literature. Larrick pointed out that non-white children were either not represented or were barely mentioned in children’s literature. She stated that this lack of diversity could foster a white bias, which could be very damaging.
• In 2014 a campaign started on Twitter called We Need Diverse Books, which was a response to the lack of representation of people of color, LGBTQIA individuals, people with disabilities, differing ethnicities, and religious minorities.

VII. Important Terms

• Authorship – This is the concern that centers on who has the right to represent people of different races. Can a person outside of a culture or race create accurate, empathetic portrayals?
• Audience – The ways in which races and cultures are portrayed suggest that there will be a certain audience. What knowledge will readers have of the particular race or culture, and how will that affect the meaning and acceptance of the work?
• Perspective – All stories have narrators, but will the point of view of the narrator limit the scope of the group or groups that are portrayed, and will this have a negative impact?
• Reclamation – This concerns the matter of rewriting/editing stories that had portrayals that are now considered very negative, such as racial or ethnic stereotypes. Rewriting The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to exclude negative racial terms is an example.
• Authenticity and Accuracy – This relates to the problem of determining what is an authentic or accurate portrayal of a particular group. Authenticity relates to what might be logically acceptable, whereas accuracy relates to what is factual.
• Artistic Freedom – This is the idea that authors have the ability to alter characterizations of particular races and ethnicities or omit them all together, depending on the needs of the narrative.

VII. Gender Diversity

• Children historically have been viewed as innocent and in need of being shielded from sexual discussions, text, and images. The topic of sex and sexuality has been considered only fit for adults. James Kincaid in a 2004 article stated that “Innocence was that which we have been trained to adore and covet, to preserve and despoil, to speak of in hushed tones and bawdy songs.” The idea is that even though we idealize and eroticize youth, we expect the children to be sexless. By not discussing sexuality with children, it can potentially lead to feelings of alienation, particularly if a child does not conform to a particular societal norm.
• Certain activities and toys have long bee associated with boys or girls: dolls for girls, action figures for boys; blues and earth tones for boys, pink and pastels for girls. (Note: pink used to be associated with masculinity and blue with femininity, thus exemplifying shifting associations over time.)
• The character of a “tomboy,” a girl who displayed typically masculine behavior dates to the 16th century but became more mainstream with the publication of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did. In Little Women, the female character Jo mentions that “It’s bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boys’ games and work and manners.” She expresses her disappointment at not being a boy. In What Katy Did, the titular character is the kind of girl “who tore her dress every day, hated sewing, and didn’t care a button about being called ‘good,'” according to Coolidge.
• The parallel to the tomboy is the “sissy” boy. This is the boy who displays forms typically associated with femininity. An example of this is also in Little Women with the boy Laurie, who is sickly and frail and spends most of this time indoors practicing music.
• 19th century books that targeted either boys or girls were the “boys’ school story,” such as Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays. This was a precursor to the contemporary Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. There was also the “boy’s adventure story“, such as Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Both books were located far from home in exotic, exciting locales.
• For girls there were the “girls’ school story,”such as Sarah Fielding’s The Governess; or, The Little Female Academy (actually published in 1749). In the 19th century, Evelyn Sharp’s novel The Making of a Schoolgirl pokes fun at the boys’ school story by having the main character make fun of her brother’s lack of understanding about girls and girls’ schools. There was “girls’ adventure fiction,” such as Alice in Wonderland, L.T. Meade’s Four on an Island, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books.
• Disney originally kept to very traditional ethnic and gender types, using White, heteronormative characters. This has changed with more diverse characters represented in animated movies, such as Tangled or recent additions to the Star Wars franchise, such as the series The Acolyte, which portray more LGBTQ characters. Debates have arisen as the to appropriateness of this series and whether it is in line with the ethos of the Star Wars tradition.
• In children’s literature there has been growing representation of gender diversity, ranging from picture books to YA novels and nonfiction. Novels with strong female protagonists abound, such as the Divergent. and Hunger Games series, to name just two. Even picture books have moved beyond traditional family structures and heteronormativity. Stern Nijland and Linda De Haan’s King & King tells the story of two princes who fall and love and marry and are then considered king and king. Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell’s And Tango Makes Three portrays two male penguins that nurture a baby penguin.

Censorship

There is always disagreement with censorship.

• Alan Gribben’s revised Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
  • Some critics thought it dishonored the original work
  • Boyce Watkins thought the revised edition would reduce “traumatizing students in order to educate them.”
  • Bill Maxwell thinks original works should be left alone and explained and viewed within their historical contexts.

Literature can have a huge impact on children, or else it would have little value. 

Forms of Censorship

• • Censorship – restriction or legislation of materials, which may include banning books.
  • Challenges – written, oral, or public requests to a librarian or teacher to remove a book from a library or classroom.
  • Selection – choosing to include or exclude a book from classrooms, curricula, or libraries.

Selection is generally viewed as positive, whereas censorship is

• • Librarians and teachers use selection

Prizing and censorship can have the same effect: “greater publicity and symbolic capital” (Kidd).

Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood – He feels that children should be “shielded from adult knowledge.”

Daily Telegraph “Children are pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults…”

Bowlderization – named after Thomas Bowlder, who abridged Shakespeare works of offensive material.

• • His version of Gulliver’s Travels omitted urination, for example.

Julia Mickenberg claims that Communist-leaning authors during the McCarthy era used children’s literature as an outlet, since many avenues of adult literature were banned to them.

• • Perhaps the children’s books were less likely to be censored since they were not as widely appreciate and read.

Specific Reasons for Censorship according to Amy McClure in her 1983 article “Censorship“

1. • Moral – concerned with behavior and that defies religious teaching but can include economic, social, and cultural elements that influence morality.
   • Psychological – concerned with the mental and emotional health of children. An example could be the age-appropriateness of certain books based on child development.
   • Sociological – concerned with the influence that books could have on specific groups and could include racism, sexism, violent acts, or “other socially proscribed behavior.”
   • Publishers influence
     • They can advise authors to delete material if it may harm
     • Authors may self-censor out of concern for acceptance
     • J. K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard
       • Rowling’s character Beatrix Bloxom portrays the overzealous censor who omits all “danger” from ” The Wizard and the Hopping Pot.”