I recently completed a
middle-grade historical novel about a Japanese American girl who lived in
California at the start of World War II. Now that Desert Jewels is circulating to publishers, I am working on my
second middle-grade historical. Creating
Esther is about a Native American girl who leaves the reservation in 1895
to attend an Indian boarding school.
This year I’m going to depart
from the legal theme and write about lessons I’ve learned from writing outside
my culture. But I’m going to use this first post to answer the most basic
question: Why bother?
It would be easier to stick with
what I know, and there are dangers in writing about races and cultures I don’t
belong to. These days “political correctness” trumps intent, and many well-meaning
authors have been condemned for their perceived insensitivity and bias.
Earlier this month, Scholastic
pulled a picture book called A Birthday
Cake for George Washington after receiving numerous complaints that it
presented a false picture of slavery. The problem wasn’t that the story and the
illustrations were incorrect. In fact, the author had done extensive research about
George Washington’s slave cook and his relationship with the family, and the illustrator’s
work was consistent with the author’s research. The main reason for the complaints
was that the illustrations showed smiling slaves. (Although I wasn't able to get a copy of the book, it appears that they were smiling because they took pride in their work, not because they were happy in their lot. In fact, as far as I can tell, the book tries to point out that there is nothing sweet about living in slavery.) To learn more about
this controversy and get the author’s side of the story, read her thoughtful blog
post at this link: http://www.cbcdiversity.com/post/137284630773/the-first-bite-slicing-through-a-birthday-cake-to.
This isn’t the first time Scholastic
has faced a similar controversy. Its Dear America series included a book called
My Heart is on the Ground: The Diary of
Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, which
takes place at the Carlisle Indian School in 1880. That book covers the same
subject as Creating Esther, although
my story takes place at a fictional—but realistic—boarding school. While My Heart is on the Ground did show some
of the negatives of boarding school life and the efforts to Europeanize the
Native Americans, the complaint was that the book didn’t go far enough and that
the protagonist ended up embracing the white lifestyle.
I’ve read My Heart is on the Ground and done extensive research on the Native
American boarding schools. I agree that the book paints too humane a
picture of the experience, but I’m not willing
to assume—as some of the commenters do—that the white author was attempting to
cover up the truth. And it is well documented that some of the graduates of the
Carlisle Indian School did embrace the white lifestyle.
I am half German, one-quarter
English, and one-quarter French-Canadian (therefore French) in ancestry, so I
am the quintessential European American. I’ve never been subjected to any real
discrimination, not even when I was a woman working in a male-dominated
industry. So why would I step outside my own experience and risk the criticism
that can come from writing about other races?
It’s because European Americans
like me need to understand our role in marginalizing people from cultures that
are different than ours. This gap can be as wide as the one between Native Americans
and European Americans or as narrow as the 19th Century divide
between upper-class English Americans and working-class Irish Americans. But if
we want to be part of the solution rather than the problem, we must understand how
those events affect the subjects of our prejudice.
While I’m making every effort to
avoid the controversy that surrounds A
Birthday Cake for George Washington and My
Heart is on the Ground, there is no guarantee that I’ll succeed. I have
done my best to ensure that Desert Jewels
presents a realistic picture of the loss of freedom and the terrible
conditions in the incarceration camps. Creating
Esther shows the horrors of the boarding school life and the loss of
identity resulting from the schools’ mostly unsuccessful attempts to Europeanize the
Native American students. But life in the camps wasn’t all misery, and a number
of teachers at the Indian boarding schools truly thought they were doing what
was best for the students. Those facts are part of the reality, too, and they
must be included to paint an accurate picture. But including them may open me up to criticism.
It’s a risk I’m willing to take.
__________
The photograph at the
head of this post was taken at the Raphael Weill Public School in San
Francisco, California in April 1942, shortly before the Japanese American children
in the picture were sent to incarceration camps. Dorothea Lange took the
picture as part of her official duties as an employee of the United States
government. Because it is a government document, the photo is in the public
domain.
__________
Kathryn Page Camp is a
licensed attorney and full-time writer. Writers
in Wonderland: Keeping Your Words Legal was a Kirkus’ Indie Books of the Month Selection for April 2014. The
second edition of Kathryn’s first book, In
God We Trust: How the Supreme Court’s First Amendment Decisions Affect
Organized Religion, was released
on September 30, 2015. You can learn more about Kathryn at
www.kathrynpagecamp.com.
