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Political Correctness and Children's Historical Literature
When my son Max was in high school a few years ago, I got a call from his English teacher. "Mrs. Knight," my heart
sank. The teacher then proceeded to tell me this story. In Max's class they had been reading Beowulf. Now, you have to realize that we live in Cambridge, Mass—sometimes
called "The People's Republic of Cambridge." Our kids went to the public high school. We are in super politically correct territory here. Apparently, the girls in this class had
been complaining bitterly about how sexist Beowulf was. And finally after a week of this, Max could take no more, piped up, and said: "Face it—it was the Middle Ages. That's
life. I would have been out doing rape and pillage and you would have been back at the castle in your chastity belts making a tapestry about me."
Well, the reason the teacher called me was to say that Max had said what all the teachers in the English department had been dying to say for the last several years but never dared. But the moral of the story is "face it."
So okay, what does "facing it" mean today in terms of children's historical literature? First of all, it means that your job as
a writer is not to be a mouthpiece for current political social trends, even if they are of the highest moral value. We cannot use fiction to serve as a scrim through which to filter what is
politically correct. We cannot subvert characters to function as agents for these trends. Example: We cannot have youngsters who lived more than fifty years ago getting all weepy over the
environment. You cannot take a kid from, say, the nineteenth century, living in a rural setting getting emotionally exercised over shooting a deer or slaughtering a pig (except for Charlotte's Web).
Neither should a character be permitted to become overwrought about cutting down trees. The word environment, the concept of contemplating an environment as an entity that might provoke
political social feelings simply did not exist then.
And what about those writers or readers who feel that in one novel all the wrongs done to females must be corrected? Several years
ago when I wrote a novel about the Gold Rush, Beyond The Divide, one of my characters was raped, "off screen" so to speak. The rest of the wagon train subsequently ostracized her; in
other words, as we know not just from long ago history but recent history as well, rape victims are often criminalized or at the very least blamed for provoking the violence. I had two mothers
write me that they felt I had presented a "negative example." One said that she felt I should have shown women rallying to this girl in a show of support. She actually used the words
"support group." I was simply stunned. This displayed a cultural illiteracy that I found absolutely appalling. I had to write her back reminding her that this was an historical novel set
in 1849, pre-rape crisis centers and rape counseling.
More recently I received a letter scolding me for the use of the term "shabbos goy" in my book Dreams In The Golden Country,
a Dear America book about a Jewish immigrant girl on the Lower East Side of New York in 1904. "Shabbos goy" is the term that orthodox Jews used in reference to the non-Jewish young boys they
hired to light their fires for them once the Sabbath had begun. It was against Jewish Law to make fire or turn on lights after sunset. It was a term of conventional use during that era
and still is used.
There are many terms today that we in our newly enlightened state of political correctness find ourselves uncomfortable with, but
that does not mean that we should not use them in works of historical fiction. It is my duty as writer of historical fiction to remain as faithful to the period as possible.
I write to present a truth. I do not write to indoctrinate, to lie about the past and the way people lived or spoke in the
past. When one does this it is writing with an agenda, and agendas have a nasty way of distorting the truth.
George Steiner, a distinguished literary critic, once said in his book Language and Silence that to read well is to take great risks. It is to make vulnerable our identity and our self- possession. Unfortunately, sometimes this involves moments of feeling uncomfortable. But to be able to read as a total human being I think is a great gift. To write as a total human being is an obligation.
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About the Author:
Kathy lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband Christopher Knight and children Max,
who is a student at Dartmouth College, and Meribah, who dances ballet.
Recent Books
First Painter (DK Ink)
Star Split (Hyperion)
Vision of Beauty (Candlewick)
Visit Kathryn Lasky's website.
To contact this author or illustrator, please use the information for his or her publisher provided on our list of CBC member publishers.
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