We know about Clown World’s Zero History campaign. We can see signs of it everywhere from Fructidor to the Khmer Rouge. But it was also accompanied by a Zero Literature campaign. This is not just our imagination at work. You can still see it in action. But the campaign to disappear traditional literature with historical Western values began at least a century before the ALA was cancelling Laura Ingalls Wilder.
A division of the American Library Association has voted to remove Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from a major children’s book award over concerns with how the early-to-mid 20th century author portrayed blacks and Native Americans.
The Association for Library Service to Children’s board made the unanimous decision Saturday at a meeting in New Orleans. The name has been changed to the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.
The association says the work of Wilder — best known for her Little House on the Prairie novels — “includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC’s core values.”
The first award was given to Wilder in 1954
I have no doubt that if Laura Ingalls Wilder had published a century before she did in a language other than English, we would never have heard of her. Both Benito Perez Galdos and Zenaide Fleuriot were much more significant in their native languages than Wilder was in English, and yet somehow, the English publishing world never saw fit to translate them despite producing dozens of editions of far less popular, far less marketable, and far less significant works.
This is why it is absolutely vital to stop blindly supporting those things that the mainstream feeds you, and go out of your way to find those things and support those things that are in line with your values, and not the “core values” of things like the ALSC.
