The Story of Little Black Sambo was a story that an English woman told her two daughters in India. This story is about a young boy who is given nice clothes, but loses them to tigers that are trying to eat him. He ends up getting his clothes back when the tigers begin to fight over who the “grandest” tiger is. As the tigers fight they melt into butter. Black Jumbo (his father) brings Black Mumbo (his mother) the butter to use to make pancakes, which they all eat and enjoy. The illustrations in this story initially caught my eye. The characters in this story actually looked like human beings instead of the creature-like and monster looking characters in The Coon Alphabet. I am not arguing that these characters were drawn in the most beautiful way or to look the most attractive, but they were clearly human beings. The ending of the story was also a positive ending for the young boy. Even though he goes through a tough journey and almost loses everything he is given, he ends up getting everything back and is safe at home enjoying the pancakes. This is very different from The Coon Alphabet where almost every character has something disastrous happen to them. While I do not believe these characters were shown in the best light, it was a much less disturbing and racist story than some of the others we have read throughout the semester.
The Story of the Little Black Sambo
The Story of the Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman told a story of this little black boy who gotten all of his nice clothes taken by some tigers he met in the woods, however he was able to get them back after the tigers had an argument over which one of them was the grandest. Overall, I felt like the story itself had no sort of significance in terms of racism or race relations. However, I do think that the illustrations of the characters are rather too similar to the white people in black face that played in minstrel shows. The Little Brown and Little Black Sambo article does try to defend Bannerman, stating that the characters can be taken in differently by whoever read the story, but I don’t entirely agree with that. Little Black Sambo is claimed to be an South Asian Indian story, however I didn’t see anything that resembled the way Indian people look to my knowledge at all. As far as the illustrations, if the story were indeed about Indians I feel as if the people who drew these pictures didn’t have to make the Sambo family as dark as they did. I have never saw any one person whether they are Indian, African or African American who looks a monstrous as the characters in this book; but I do know that black people were looked upon as these ugly less attractive figures that are demonstrated in this text during the times of slaver. Also the fact that Little Sambo and his family has bright pink lips also leads me to believe that this text was solely meant to portray the way whites saw blacks during this time period.
Little Black Sambo
From the beginning of the book, black people are dehumanized. In the preface it states that “black children abound and tigers are every day affairs,” speaking about black children as if they are animals or something unhuman. The story commences with the protagonist standing in his underwear, then moving onto an illustration of his barefoot mother and lastly his well dressed yet barefoot father. Eventually Sambo ends up with the clothing that his parents gave him, oddly enough he gets shoes from his barefoot father. Apparently, the outfit he was given made him feel very important and this appealed to the talking tigers. Four different tigers tried to intimidate Sambo but he convinced each of them to spare his life by offering to give them a piece of his beautiful ensemble. After acquiring their new item, each tiger believed that they were now the grandest tiger of in the jungle conveying the message that the outfit carried power. I am curious as to why Sambo would choose to go parading through a jungle with a new beautiful outfit if he knew that there were tigers who want to eat him. It seems like self-sabotage, either that or he was utterly foolish. This story reminds me a bit of Hans Christian Anderson’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” because both have protagonists who believe that their clothing make them important but end up exposed and vulnerable after giving their power away to wretched creatures. I think that Bannerman, treated Sambo like a mindless dress-up doll and played into the fact that children like to dress up dolls. This also allowed the reader to treat Sambo as inferior and a source of amusement just like the Coon Alphabet did.
A Coon Alphabet
There were a lot of things about “A Coon Alphabet” that were very striking. The language, the title. What really shocked me was the illustrations. The illustrations in the Coon Alphabet are pretty horrifying. To me, they dehumanized black people and almost made them seem animal-like. I found it so disturbing. It was seemingly meant to be a comedy, however I did some background research on this book. It was written after the Civil War, and during this time there were many books backing up the decision to free the slaves and show how horribly they were treated. However, according to digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu, this book was written to prove that blacks were
“deserving of their ill-treatment.”
Also, during this time, racial stereotypes were commonly used in writing and illustrations in children’s books. This was also during a time where white actors would put on “blackface”. The author, Edward Windsor Kemble, was a well-known “artist” for his cartoon of soldiers, Indians and blacks.
A Coon Alphabet
Just like my fellow peers, the first thing that also caught my attention reading the alphabet was the use of language and how things are misspelled and the funny looking drawings. I feel as if this is obviously making fun of slavery in a way for kids to understand, and also to portray how slavery was back then. Like some have noticed already that the word “coon” is a derogatory term so I also find it hard to determine whether or not the author is supporting slavery by showing us how things were back then and how it should be remembered or if the author wants us to be against it in some way. I Just find the whole thing as mockery towards slavery, and it reminds me of modern day comedy that we see nowadays in newspapers and such of those little sketch cartoons that are made to make us laugh or find a social situation as a joke. Although this is made for children, we have to always keep in mind that their is always something morally off when it comes to children’s stories and their is always some kind of hidden bigger picture behind it, and in this case I automatically get the impression that this is made to make fun of slavery and nothing more.
A Coon Alphabet
As most others who read this alphabet, what struck me the most were both the language used, and the crude drawings portrayed. Particularly for the letter A, the donkey bucks Amos into ‘Gramer Schole’ or, when someone is suffering some sort of punishment, their faces get screwed up into a somewhat humorous position. I do think that these things make the story easier for children to understand but, I’m kinda uncertain as to whether the author is trying to entertain or make a statement and to that point I’m not really sure as to what that statement is. It seems to be that according to a few different dictionaries, “coon” is a derogatory term. I’m not really sure then, linked with everything else, if this is all meant to be a mockery of slavery or to support it. In most of the letters the characters tend to be doing something fundamentally wrong and are therefore punished for it in some way or another: the children take too many grapes and are then sick or, Hiram tries to open the door with his foot and the whole soup spills on him. I think what I’m trying to show is that it seems that when these “coons” are doing some sort of activity that was normal for a slave at that time, they mess it up but when they are left to themselves, they get in all kinds of mischief and seem to hurt someone or another. In that I am unsure as to what the author is trying to get at…
I also found it really interesting to think more about some of the names used: Didimus, Ezra, Amos, Hiram, Xerxy [back to the Xerxes post from before]…etc. These all seem to be biblical names of a sort. This could be stressing the importance of the bible at that time? The other thing that was really interesting was the use of the word mendicant. I actually had to look it up because I was unsure as to what it meant. It Means one who relies chiefly on donations to survive, which I wonder whether children would know or not.
I feel like perhaps this could really be compared to slapstick comedy of today. Today, the three stooges would knock each other around but, before a child would cause mischief and have a soup dumped on him. Perhaps enjoyable to children but a kinda mixed up message.
A Coon Alphabet
When I first started reading A Coon Alphabet by E.W Kemble, the illustrations and spelling of the words were what first caught my attention. A lot of the words spelled in the story are different from how we would spell them correctly. I think that Kemble had the words misspelled on purpose in order to convey some humor and wit to the audience reading the story. The way the words are mispelled and the illustrations make the story more entertaining and humorous for children.
Kemble’s illustrations provide the story with substance, because it makes it easier to picture what is happening in each letter. For example, the letter ‘D’ says “D is for Didimus what blew down a gun; now he and his sister ain’t havin’ much fun.” If there was not a picture depicting what was happening, we would not know what Kemble meant by “ain’t havin’ much fun.” However, because there is a picture it shows us that the gun exploded and that Didimus and his sister are extremely shocked and it looks like Didimus is flying up in the air from the impact. Most of the people in the story and the animals are drawn to resemble cartoons, which makes the story more fun and easier to understand for children.
I also noticed that almost all of the letters are the first letter in the people’s names. Kemble uses the letters to introduce the people he talks about. The story is humorous and full of wit, because it seems that all the characters start off doing something not that special, only to find themselves encountering a funny situation or accident. For example, “L is fo Lulu what was coasting so fine till she hit a board fence and got mixed wid de swine,” shows us that Lulu is minding her own business and riding her bike and then all of a sudden she runs into a fence and falls into some pigs.
Kemble’s combination of using funny cartoon drawings and misspelled words, make this story more fun for children and easier for them to understand, since they can have a visual in their mind of what is actually occurring.
Why Americans are Afraid of Dragons
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
— Terry Pratchett
While reading “Why Americans are Afraid of Dragons”, by Ursula K. Le Guin, I was haunted by a quote I read by fantasy author Terry Pratchett. Imagination is something adults struggle with everyday. To have a wild and vivid imagination is childish; and anything childish is considered to be derogatory. Le Guin writes: “I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child, and that is these faculties are encouraged in youth they will act well and wisely in the adult, but if they are repressed and denied in the child they will stunt and crupple the adult personality” (Page 44). This intrigues me because she then goes on to claim that there is a gender segregation in imagination. Young boys are taught that imagination is not apart of “maleness”; while girls are allowed to run wild with their imagination. This truly saddens me because growing up around young children I have witnessed this first hand. Young boys are encouraged to abandon their imaginations at young ages, while girls are encouraged to live in a sort of fantasy world for pretty much their entire life. Society cripples imagination by putting a huge emphasis on children to grow up; and part of growing up is forsaking their creativity and imagination.
Now, to change gears of thinking, I do agree with this aspect of Le Guin’s argument regarding gender restrictions, but to say that there is little imagination in the American people today is false. In fact, Americans are not afraid of dragons (Game of Thrones, anyone?) Imagination in the sense of fantasy and alternate universes may not be as popular in American culture but in no way is it not encouraged or loathed. I am curious as to what Le Guin would think of “Fifty Shades Of Grey”? Would sexual fantasy be considered a mindless indulgence to her? Does fantasy HAVE TO be a hobbit, a unicorn, or a dragon. Americans do not discourage imagination, they just would rather read about something that triggers their imagination and desires in other ways. Le Guin labels fantasy in a very narrow sense. To me, fantasy is anything that is not every day life. Fantasy could be getting an A on that paper, to Christian Grey, to even vampires (Americans love vampires). Perhaps Le Guin hasn’t seen the American sales for “Harry Potter”, “The Hunger Games”, and “Twilight”. Log onto Tumblr, or any other blog site and see that imagination is in fact still very much alive. What needs to be fixed is American gender segregation; not American taste in what Americans prefer to read about.
The Wizard of Oz
Since its first debut in 1900, The Wizard of Oz has become a well known classic in American literature. While most people today opt in for just watching the movie, the book holds so much more culture and information. Comparing the novel to the movie, I think that the movie does a great job of interpreting the way use author describes Kansas to the way he describes the Land of Oz. To depict this, the movie shows Kansas in black and white and when Dorothy enters Oz, the movie switches to color, which was a total coincidence at the time because that’s when color television first came out and they thought it would just make a great edition to the movie. In The Wizard of Oz, the interpretation of the imagery described my the author plays a big part in how we understand the story being told. Again, comparing it to the original movie, by using both black and white, and color imaging, there is an emphasis on the wonders and magical-ness of Oz. Also, it is interesting to know that throughout the many republications of The Wizard of Oz, there have been countless illustrations drawn for the novel. I think that’s really interesting considering that other novels such as Alice in Wonderland and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer still use their original illustrations. The original illustrations for the Wizard of Oz were drawn by W.W. Denslow, now you seldom see the original illustrations. The original illustrations were also printed in green and red because at that time It was very expensive to print in full color. Each different illustration or image that we see impacts our own perspective and interpretation of the novel itself, so it would be interesting to do more research as to why there are so many different versions of the illustrations.
My Thoughts on “Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?”
In Ursula K. Le Guin’s chapter, “Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” in her book, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, I felt that I could see some of what she was saying contrary to what the author of the previous post before my post believes. Le Guin said that the people who reject fantasy books are usually those who are over 30, working, and male. I kind of see this with the older men in the country or just the more serious people. I have a friend who only reads books that benefits him. He’s serious in character and is always trying to improve himself and become successful in his career. He’s what some may call a workaholic. He does try to be sociable sometimes but I find that I have a hard time talking to him because he’s usually only talking about work and school. Another person I once met also seemed kind of rigid and only focused on work. He was my interviewer and when he asked if I read any books, I told him I was currently reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. It’s a fantasy series and at the time I was so interested in it that I was glad when he asked me what it was about but as I continued to talk about it, I felt he lost interest in our conversation and he quickly changed the topic. I feel that people who don’t like fantasy are hard to connect with.
However, although I kind of see what Le Guin was getting at when she talked about males over 30 and working, I also see that our people are slowly changing. I think her statement of males over 30 was probably just to encompass those who were working, trying to provide for a family, and with little free time to relax as they probably had to worry about bills and life. It was an attempt to make a label for the group of people she was talking about but it wasn’t a label that should be set in stone. Today, I have many friends who are male that also love to read fantasy or write/produce videos based solely on their imagination or inspiration gained from other fantastic things. So as the males in my generation grows and later on becomes the males over 30 that Le Guin was talking about, I think more of her labelled people will start to separate themselves from her label.
Also, as a side thing, I think it’s kind of questionable that she claimed males would watch things that they assured themselves were realistic such as cowboys, in order to not be caught watching or reading fantasy books with dragons and such. Because maybe they just really do have a different taste in fantasy. My dad likes to watch stuff with wars. Maybe they like it because it’s easier for them to understand or they don’t like the more farfetched fantasy with magic. Everyone has different tastes in fantasy.