Me Oh Maya // You Wouldn't Want to Be an Aztec Sacrifice!

It's no secret that I’m a fierce advocate for literary dignity and equity in publishing. I want to see many more books by writers from underrepresented groups (BIPOC, disabled, queer) published each year for kids and adults alike. However, some folks misinterpret that mission as an implied disavowal of any book written by someone outside the culture depicted in its pages. But I actually do think it’s possible (and for secondary characters, outright desirable) for an author to write about characters and communities that don’t perfectly align with their own lived experiences. 

The catch? It’s hard work. You have to put in the time. Research. Advocate. Uplift. Live alongside and be a friend and ally to people from the group in question. Then write with respect and pay a cultural expert from that community to review your manuscript and give you feedback (then incorporate their suggestions or corrections).

“Why, David?” I imagine someone asking. “What’s the worst that can happen?” 

The short answer? People can be insulted, deeply hurt, or perhaps even permanently scarred by mistakes you make.  

I want to take a look at two examples of authors writing “outside of their lane” and getting things horribly wrong. Mind you, anyone can screw up when writing. We’re human. But these are books from major publishers whose entire teams really dropped the ball in terms of literary dignity.

First up is Me Oh Maya, book 13 of Jon Scieska’s The Time Warp Trio. (It’s the volume that made my son Angelo abandon the series, by the way.) The three protagonists—friends Joe, Sam, and Fred—are yanked from their basketball game back in time to a Maya ballcourt. 

Let’s get something straight right away. Maya people still exist. Seven million of them, in fact, in southern Mexico and Central America, with tens of thousands more living in the US. So if you decide to write about pre-invasion Maya, you’re depicting living people’s ancestors, folks who still speak that language and preserve many of those customs. 

Which is why it’s so disappointing that Me Oh Maya jumps immediately to bloodshed and human sacrifice on the first page: “Explain yourselves or your blood will be spilled in sacrifice,” says a “short brown-skinned guy in a wild feathered headdress.” Two pages later, Sam explains “their habit of sacrificing humans,” adding that the high priest is “not kidding about that rip-your-hearts-out.”

By way of explanation, all of this is wrong. Strangers would not have been immediately sacrificed. The intermittent offering of human blood to the gods was a solemn religious ritual at particular times of the year that ensured the wheels of cyclical time kept turning. Those sacrificed were prepared and treated with dignity for many months. Their families were typically compensated after their death. A better analogy for Maya sacrifice would be soldiers who are sent on missions from which they know it’s unlikely they’ll return. That kind of sacrifice, not horror-movie, death-at-the-hand-of-a-slasher kind of death. To call that sort of patriotic, pious laying down of one’s life a “habit of sacrificing humans” by “short brown-skinned” people is problematic, to say the least. 

All that aside, for that to be the IMMEDIATE go-to image for the writer of children’s books when he thinks of the Maya? Gross. Indicative of some deep-seated privilege and ignorance. Imagine if every children’s book written about the US by people not living here featured gun violence. Yes, it’s a part of US life, but hardly the defining aspect of our existence.

But, of course, human sacrifice is the main plot contrivance of Me Oh Maya. The boys use basketball moves to wow the people of Chichén Itzá and win the game (the book mistakenly asserts that losers get sacrificed—imagine how impossible it would be to keep a game going for a year, much less centuries, if that were the case). However, the high priest, who they think looks like their Latino teacher Mr. Ramírez on a bad day, decides to sacrifice them anyway.

That’s when he reveals his name: “Kakapupahed.” The kids have a field day with this, and I’m sure the author and editor found it hilarious.

But making up a name that sounds like foolish words in English to mock a people’s language? That’s straight-up racist. (The invented word is also meaningless in the Itza Mayan language, which furthermore lacks the consonant “d.”)

The book makes some attempt at presenting life at Chichén Itzá as otherwise pleasant and fascinating (though frankly generic Mesoamerican in the details of cuisine, etc.). The boys find an ally in the high priest’s nephew, named “Jun,” or “One,” which is one half of a normal Maya name at the time—they consisted of a number from 1-13 and one of 20 day signs, so it would have been more realistic if the kid’s name was Jun Balam (One Jaguar) or something along those lines. 

It’s nice that Jun and his mother are key to the Brooklynites’ victory and return to the future, but all those moments are marred by the cultural insensitivity, obsession with the lurid or “exotic” aspects of Maya communities, and racist humor. A Maya or Mestizo (part-Indigenous) child reading this book will find their people stereotyped and mocked. How is that pain justifiable? 

A duo of British creatives (author: Fiona Macdonald, illustrator: David Antram) are the guilty parties responsible for the even more reprehensible book You Wouldn’t Want to Be an Aztec Sacrifice! Gruesome Things You'd Rather Not Know. (Scholastic, 2001). The reader is cast as a random Mesoamerican (presumably Nahua) from some far-flung conquered town who gets captured by “Aztecs” in a flower war and taken back to Tenochtitlan to be sacrificed. Now, flower wars certainly happened. The Triple Alliance—the Mexica, Texcoca and Tlacopaneca peoples now referred to as Aztecs—did require tribute and take warriors prisoner for sacrifice.

But the author has first of all decided to linger on all the lurid aspects of that interchange without noting that the OTHER side also took “Aztec” prisoners for sacrifice.

In fact, the book treats the unnamed protagonist as shocked again and again at “Aztec” beliefs and practices, even though the Triple Alliance was culturally Nahua just like most of the rest of Central Mexico, multiple nation states worshipping the same gods in essentially the same ways. 

The book also abounds with exotification and inaccuracy. Because of religious symbols on shields, they are referred to as magical: “Many soldiers believe the magic will protect them on the battlefield.” I can’t imagine the creators of the book saying the same about a cross on the shield of a British knight. The Aztecs are called “energetic and warlike,” “fearsome,” and “ruthless.” Captives are marched through a stereotypical northern Mexican desert to reach Tenochtitlan rather than the actual pine forests that once surrounded Lake Texcoco in the Central Highlands. 

Literally every page has at least one completely false statement, from the assertion that all priests stank because of putrid blood in their hair (only one sort of priest had this practice) to the baffling comment that some deceased Nahuas “make a long, miserable journey through the underworld before they finally perish in hell,” which completely miscasts the role of Mictlan (not to mention the fact that the Nahuas didn’t believe in hell). Wherever there’s a debate in scholarship, the creators side with the most extreme, titillating interpretation, as with the possibility of cannibalism (for which the evidence is mostly Spanish, post-Invasion, and in dire need of Indigenous religious context). 

As with Me Oh Maya, the inaccuracies and lies are especially harmful because today there are 2.5 million Nahuas (descendants of the “Aztecs” and the related nations they conquered) in Mexico and Central America plus thousands more in the US. In addition, many Mexicans and Mexican Americans of mixed heritage (we often call ourselves “mestizos”) are heirs to a syncretic culture that blends Nahua and Spanish traditions and language. We grow up proud of the accomplishments of the “Aztecs,” Toltecs, and other pre-Invasion Nahua peoples. 

For our children, You Wouldn’t Want to Be an Aztec Sacrifice! is a potentially damaging piece of overwrought nonsense from outsiders who have not done the work of living alongside us and considering the vital cultural heritage of the “Aztecs” that is kept alive in our communities.

Neither of these books promotes the literary dignity of Indigenous or Mestizo people in Mexico and the US. The writers, editors, and publishers should be ashamed of the harm they have done in the name of being clever and cute in that supercilious way that conveys to even the densest reader, “These people were bad and weird. It’s good that they’re gone. Western white culture is so much better, isn’t it?”

Such messages are simply unacceptable and must be fought. 

—David Bowles

(published 6/21/2021)

Gaby, Lost and Found

author: Angela Cervantes 

Scholastic, 2013 

grades 4-6 

Honduran American

Sixth-grader Gaby Ramirez Howard loves cats and storytelling. When an ICE raid breaks out at the factory where her mother works—resulting in her mother’s deportation back to Honduras—Gaby is left in the care of her father, whom she does not know well and who does not seem too interested in parenting.

Despite the bullying she experiences at school, Gabby is convinced that her mother will soon return. But she is distraught when her mother tells her the journey back to Kansas City is too expensive and too dangerous. Young readers will see that Gaby has been bottling up her feelings regarding her mother’s deportation and her father’s inability to take care of her; and, while her burst of emotions is not entirely surprising, it’s heart wrenching to read her outpouring of anger and frustration aimed at her mother:

“No, Mom! I’ve been patient. I’ve been patient for three months! And stop calling me your princesa. If I were your princesa, you’d be here. You said before that I was worth the journey. I’m your daughter and I want you to come back! You promised!”…. The silence that followed sent a sharp pain through Gaby’s whole body. How could she hang up on her mom? She ran out the front. Her father yelled after her, but she wasn’t stopping.

Gaby’s outburst reveals that her mother’s absence—even though it is certainly not her fault—has ruptured the unspoken expectations between parents and their children. Parents are expected to take care of their children and, at this moment, Gaby blames her mother for her inability to do so. I found this particular scene painful to read because it’s the broken immigration system that thrives on separating families and making it extremely difficult for parents to parent. As a result, the children are left feeling abandoned and unworthy. And while Gaby is furious, she is also sensitive to her mother’s difficult situation and feels a sense of responsibility to keep herself together for her mother’s sake.

This separation of mixed status families changes their dynamics and roles: Children are often forced to mature early and parents who have been deported must find new ways to parent. Because of this dynamic, Gaby does not let her mother know how much of a hard time she is actually having; and rather, she becomes a nurturer.

While dealing with her own family situation, Gaby, as part of a class project, volunteers at an animal shelter. She becomes responsible for creating flyers with stories about the shelter animals in hopes that someone will read them and give the animals a home. When Gaby encounters a cat abandoned by her neglectful owners, she steals the cat from the shelter and takes it home with her. Gaby, who feels abandoned herself, vows to nurture her new cat the way she wishes someone would nurture her.

Cervantes's narrative details Gaby’s downward spiral due to her mother's deportation, which has stolen the child’s sense of security and has traumatized her. After the deportation, Gaby sleeps by the door with the phone under her pillow so she doesn't miss her mother's return. She is not eating well, and she begins to push her friends away. But by the end of the novel, Gaby is in a much better state of mind: She has a better understanding of how dangerous it would be for her mother to attempt to cross Guatemala and Mexico to get to Kansas City, and she finds comfort in knowing her mother is safe and in knowing that her mother will love her despite the distance.

As xenophobic immigration laws have negatively impacted many, many mixed status families, Gaby’s story remains painfully relevant. Since 2009, more than 2.5 million people have been deported. Indeed, President Obama has deported more immigrants than has any other US President and the numbers continue to rise. In addition, the Supreme Court’s deadlock on DAPA has left many more families vulnerable.

Cervantes’s novel does not attempt to provide a solution to the fraught immigration system that has taken Gaby’s mom away; nor does the author give Gaby a neat, happy ending. Rather, Gaby, Lost and Found presents a realistic telling of the fear, anger, and pain involved when a child’s parent is deported. While immigration continues to be a prominent theme within Latinx children’s and young adult literature, many books focus solely on Mexican experiences—and even then, most of them involve “legal” immigration. Luis J. Rodriguez’s América is Her Name was the first Latinx picture book I read that has an undocumented protagonist; and Jorge Argueta and Rene Colato Lainez continue to be the leading authors writing Latinx children’s books that center Central American experiences. There’s a clear need for a broader discussion of immigration in Latinx children’s literature in order to capture and represent the multiplicity of migrant, immigrant and refugee experiences.

Gaby’s narrative gives hints to her life with her mother before she was taken away and, clearly, she has other interests. She’s a complex character—a fun, cat loving, regular girl. And it’s also evident that her mom’s deportation will impact the rest of her life just like it does for real Latinx children whose parents have been deported or face deportation.

Gaby, Lost and Found is the first Latinx children’s literature novel I’ve read where a parent is deported and does not return. It’s compelling because it captures the reality impacting many young Latinx living in mixed status homes. And, while providing an ending in which Gaby and her mom are happily reunited might have been satisfying for many young readers, my concern is that such “happy endings”—by resolving everything at the end—might serve to minimize the severity of the issue and to alienate children whose parents have not and cannot return. Here, by staying away from a too-neat and too-happy ending, Cervantes points out the long-term implications for families that have been separated by an immigration system that fails our families.

Cervantes’s novel addresses issues related to mixed status families including deportation, and Gaby is indeed a multi-dimensional character whose story extends beyond her mother’s deportation. Gaby, Lost and Found is a much-needed addition to conversations around Latinx literature and immigration. It’s an extraordinary story, and is highly recommended. 

—Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez, PhD

(published 12/16/16)

  

An earlier version of this review first appeared on Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez’s blog: https://soniaarodriguez.com/2016/07/05/gaby-lost-and-found-expanding-the-conversation-on-latinx-kids-books-immigration/.

Ghosts

author: Raina Telgemeier

illustrators: Raina Telgemeier and Braden Lamb 

Scholastic, 2016 

grades 3-6 

Indigenous, Mexican American

Poorly conceived, abysmally written, and apparently neither well-researched nor fact-checked, Raina Telgemeier’s Ghosts, which saw a six-figure first-print run, garnered record sales even before its official release. Favorably reviewed by all of the major trade journals, a thoughtful reading of Ghosts may well answer the question about the difference between “multicultural celebration” and “multicultural appropriation.”

Presenting a Mexican American family that includes a child with a profound disability, Ghosts would appear to be a celebration of multiculturalism. Sixth-grader Catrina Allende-Delmar and her younger sister Maya and their family are moving from sunny Southern California to a cloudy northern coastal town called Bahía de la Luna. Maya has cystic fibrosis and the family has been told that the cool, salty air that blows in from the sea will be good for her. As the family moves into their new digs, they meet their neighbors, the Calaveras family. Carlos Calaveras tells them that the town is densely populated with ghosts.

Let’s stop here for a moment. It wouldn’t be a stretch to opine that no Latino family in the world would be named “Calaveras,” which means, “skull,” any more than, as Laura Jiménez points out, there would be “a family named Advent Calendar living in a town with a reputation for elves.”[1]

Cat and Maya’s mom, Leona, is an assimilated Mexican woman who has married a white guy and turned away from her people to the extent that she doesn’t speak any Spanish and wishes she could cook Mexican food like her mother used to but can’t. It’s the offer of authentic Mexican food in this story that tempts the girls to accompany Carlos on a tour that includes the local mission, which has been abandoned and is, like the rest of the town, full of ghosts, because ghosts like to hang out in foggy places.

Cultural Appropriation 1:

The California Missions

After a long trek, the three arrive at the ruins of a local mission, where they encounter tombstones and a large crowd of ghost-like creatures, who entrance Maya but totally freak out Cat. Carlos speaks Spanish to the ghosts because “most of the people buried here were from Mexico, so they like it when you speak Spanish to them.” Since these ghosts are “a little shy around people they don’t know,” Carlos hands Maya a bottle of orange soda and a bottle opener, which immediately attracts the ghosts, who happily morph into friendly skeletons who embrace and tickle a giggling Maya, who thinks they’re “awesome.” When Maya has a sudden coughing episode because the ghosts have, according to Cat, “stolen her breath,” the mission tour is done. That’s it. The missions are the homes of shy, Spanish-speaking ghosts from Mexico—not the Indigenous people who really worked at the missions and were forced to speak Spanish, the language of their oppressors—who dance around and will do anything for a bottle of orange soda.

Here’s how the author describes her relationship with the California missions (from her blog):

“I like exploring old abandoned places and mysterious towns. I love skeletons. I love stories with magical realism in them.”[2]

That’s it. All of her research about the California missions seems to have been boiled down to her love of old abandoned places and skeletons. Telgemeier lives in California. In September of last year, Pope Francis journeyed from Rome to Washington, D.C.,  to canonize Fr. Junipero Serra, who created the brutal California mission system. Fewer than ten minutes of research by Telgemeier or anyone else would have uncovered tears and protests from thousands of people descended from the “Mission Indians.” It also would have uncovered this information:

During the period from 1769-1848, some of the most stable societies in human history had to contend with warfare, disease, and colonization—resulting in a population reduced by over 90% in fewer than two generations. It would not be a stretch to compare the Indian Holocaust of the California Mission system with the Nazi Holocaust in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. It would not be a stretch to compare any of the California Missions to any of the European concentration camps. But, since its inception, the teaching in California schools of the California mission system, or worse, of the “Mission Indians,” has always been a political and religious hot potato.

In 1987, in an attempt to derail the impending canonization of Junipero Serra, Rupert Costo (Cahuilla) and Jeannette Henry Costo (Cherokee) edited The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide[3], which was published by the non-profit Indian Historian Press in San Francisco. This book, which contains an excellent chapter called “The Indian Testimony,” remains the cornerstone of educational work about what occurred during the Mission Period. Here is an excerpt from “The Indian Testimony.” It’s called “The Crying Rock—Where They Killed the Children,” told to Rupert Costo by Rosalie Robertson (Kumeyaay), who learned it from her great-great-grandfather:

One way they had was to get to the people through the children. They would take the children up on the cliff and drop them down the cliff and killed them. And that went on. You can get some of the people to show you just where that happened. Where they threw the children down and killed them, they call that place the “Crying Rock” today.

A lady asked me why they did that to the children. And we know it was done to make the parents do what they were told to do. They didn’t want to do what the padres told them to do, so they forced them to do these things; if they knew the children would be killed they would be more likely to mind the padres.

But there’s so much more. Here is part of Wendy Rose’s poem, “Excavation at Santa Barbara Mission”:

They built the missions with dead Indians.

They built the missions with dead Indians.

They built the missions with dead Indians.

They built the missions with dead Indians.[4]

Literally. The bodies of Indians who had died or been killed were cemented into the walls and body parts were mixed into the masonry and dirt used to build and repair the missions. Can you imagine the horror of, not only not being able to bury your beloved dead in your traditional way, but actually using their body parts as building material?

My friend and colleague, Deborah Miranda, wrote about the generational trauma of the California missions in her blog, Bad Ndns[5]:

[All] of my relatives and I live in a secular world that is pocked by the scars of everything that happened in the California missions, including the devastation that Mission Mythology spreads among Natives and non-Natives alike.

Had she chosen to include in her story anything even approximating the real histories of the Indigenous peoples enslaved in the California Missions, Telgemeier could have perused the following books and materials:

Castillo, Elias, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California's Indians by the Spanish Missions. Craven Street Books, 2015.

Costo, Rupert, and Jeannette Henry Costo, eds., The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide. Indian Historian Press, 1987.

Haas, Lisbeth, Saints and Citizens: Indigenous Histories of Colonial Missions and Mexican California. University of California Press, 2014.

Lightfoot, Kent, Indians, Missionaries and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers. University of California Press, 2006.

Miranda, Deborah A., Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir. Heyday Books, 2013.

Sandos, James A., Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the Missions. Yale University Press, 2008.

“Saying Our Share: Surviving the Missions,” special issue of News from Native California, vol. 28 #2, winter 2014-15.

And. A quick Google search would have come up with literally hundreds of news items, articles, and essays, many from a Native perspective. Here are just a few:

“Indian Resistance to the California missions” http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/525

 (5/29/10)

“The dark, terrible secret of California’s missions” / SF Gate http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-dark-terrible-secret-of-California-s-missions-2685666.php (11/8/04)

“Indian Country Diaries. History. California Genocide / PBS”

http://www.pbs.org/indiancountry/history/calif.html

“It’s time to acknowledge the genocide of California’s Indians” / LA Times http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-madley-california-genocide-20160522-snap-story.html (5/22/16)

“Jacque Nunez explains beginning of genocide” / California Missions / California Museum and Cultural Center /https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QOuuPXklGQ (8/7/13)

And, definitely not least, Deborah A. Miranda’s blog, http://badndns.blogspot.com/, has a wealth of information for educators, children, and others who really want to know.

Cultural Appropriation 2: 

Día de los Muertos

Here’s how the author describes her relationship with Día de los Muertos (from her blog):

I’m really interested in holidays (like Halloween and Día de los Muertos) that celebrate spirits in different ways. I attended San Francisco’s Día de los Muertos procession and Festival of Altars while I was working on GHOSTS, and everything I saw and experienced made its way into the book in one way or another. It’s a very respectful, reverent, and beautiful experience, and everyone brings their own story and history to it. Traditionally, it was celebrated in Mexico, and while there are many common themes and motifs, every town and region has their own take on it. I researched multiple traditions and sources, and the town of Bahía de la Luna celebrates it in its own unique and special way. If your town celebrates Día de los Muertos, I encourage you to learn more about it![6]

The purposes of contemporary Día de los Muertos festivities, which involve the whole community, are to remember and honor the ancestors, to entice and welcome them home, to invite them to visit among the living for a while, before they have to return to the land of the dead. Traditionally, the souls of children who have died are welcomed home on November 1, and the souls of adult family members, on November 2. In some places, especially in Mexican towns, the ceremonies are elaborate and religious, involving both Indigenous and Christian traditions.[7] But in both towns and urban areas in Mexico and the US, there are usually parades, celebrations at cemeteries, and elaborate altars set up in homes—with pictures of the ancestors, fragrant and beautiful marigolds, and delicious foods, drinks, candies as well as toys to let the visitors know they are welcomed. It is only after the souls have absorbed the essence of the food and returned to the land of the dead that the families may eat and drink what’s on the altars. The souls may present themselves to families in any of many forms, including hummingbirds or the scent of flowers, or the music of a favorite song. But the souls of the dead are not ghosts. They do not float around and they do not touch people.

In Ghosts, Catrina dresses up as La Catrina for “Halloween / Día de los Muertos.” But. Halloween and Día de los Muertos are not the same, not even similar. And. La Catrina is no ordinary “ghost” and has nothing to do with Día de los Muertos. She’s a creation of José Guadelupe Posada (1852-1913), who became a political cartoonist during the Mexican Revolutionary period. His satirical work mocked the Mexican upper classes, members of whom, even in death, stubbornly refused to surrender their wealth. For a Mexican or Mexican American child to personify “La Catrina” would be the equivalent of someone who is African American dressing up as “Amos” or “Andy,” caricatures of Black people. During contemporary Día de los Muertos parades, children and teens sometimes deck themselves out as skeletons (and may even be carried around in mock open coffins out of which they toss candy), but they don’t costume themselves as specific people.

As Laura Jiménez writes, “In Telgemeier’s graphic novel the ghosts have a bit of an obsession with orange soda in a bottle. The dead basically want to party all night long, drink orange soda, and don’t seem to care if they are with family or just randos on the street.”[8] Ghosts and spirits and souls are not interchangeable, yet Telgemeier has made a mishmash of them. “The end of the book,” Jiménez continues, “is full of music, flying, an inexplicably dead lighthouse attendant, and a black cat who delivers Mexican food. If you are teaching kids about Día de los Muertos, please look elsewhere.”

I imagine that the black cat who delivers Mexican food on the last page—and who makes brief appearances by crossing Maya’s path several times—is supposed to be the children’s departed abuela, demonstrating her love for her family through food. One of the clues is the photo of Abuela, smiling, on the altar nearby. But. This is yet another unnecessary cultural anomaly. The Mexican and Mexican American souls who visit among the living at Día de los Muertos aren’t shape-shifters. They’re just not. And they don’t prepare (or deliver) food for the families—even families who are so thoroughly assimilated that they just can’t figure out how to make decent tamales. The families prepare food for the souls to enjoy. What a mess.

Had Telgemeier wanted to portray an honest interpretation of the cultural facets of Día de los Muertos, she could have perused many excellent books for children. They include, but are not limited to:

Ancona, George, Pablo Remembers: The Fiesta of the Day of the Dead, photographs by the author. HarperCollins, 1993.

García, Richard, My Aunt Otilia’s Spirits / Los espíritus de mi tía Otilia, illustrated by Robin Cherin and Roger I. Reyes, translated by Jesús Guerrero Rey. Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 1986.

Morales, Yuyi, Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Alphabet Book, illustrated by the author. Roaring Brook Press, 2003.

Morales, Yuyi, Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book, illustrated by the author. Roaring Brook Press, 2008.

Salinas, Bobbie, Indo-Hispanic Folk Art Traditions II: The Day of the Dead and other year-round activities, illustrated by the author. Piñata Publications, 1988.

Toledo, Natalia, and Francisco Toledo, Light Foot / Pies Ligeros. Groundwood Books, 2007.

Tonatiuh, Duncan, Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras, illustrated by the author. Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2015.

Weill, Cynthia, Mi Familia Calaca / My Skeleton Family, art by Jesús Canseco Zárate. Cinco Puntos Press, 2013.

Telgemeier’s work is not “celebration of diversity.” It’s not “multicultural.” It’s cultural appropriation at its worst—the denial and diminishing of the real histories and cultural beliefs and practices of the peoples of this area. It’s privilege without responsibility. With all of its engaging art and pretense of fun and wit and humor, and despite all of its laudatory reviews, Ghosts is a contribution to the erasure of the Indigenous peoples and those who are “mixed” with the blood of the conquerors and the blood of the conquered. And it’s a contribution to the exclusion of young Indigenous, Mexican and Mexican American readers who might be sucked into a graphic novel that purportedly shows their own histories and cultures.

Trafficking in stereotypes can never be condoned, no matter how eye-catching the art, no matter how fast-moving the plot, no matter how humorous the dialogue, no matter how pure the writer-artist’s intentions. Contributing to the erasure of a people is not OK. It is never OK. It never will be OK. Ghosts is not recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 9/27/16)

Míl gracias to my friends and colleagues, Maria Cardenas, Judy Zalazar Drummond, Pat Enciso, Laura Jiménez, Deborah A. Miranda, Lyn Miller-Lachmann, and the work of Yuyi Morales, Debbie Reese, Reading While White, and so many others.

---

[1] Laura Jiménez, booktoss.wordpress.com (2016).

[2] http://goraina.com/about/

[3] Costo, Rupert, and Jeanette Henry Costo, The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide. San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1987.

[4] The entire poem can be found at Deborah A. Miranda’s blog, http://whenturtlesfly.blogspot.com/2009/09/wendy-rose-hopimiwok.html

[5] http://badndns.blogspot.com/

[6] http://goraina.com/about/

[7] What became known as “El Día de los Muertos” began about 3,000 years ago as an Aztec celebration, which the Spanish conquistadores forcibly Christianized in order to subjugate the Indigenous peoples of what is now called Mexico.

[8] Laura Jiménez, ibid.

Los Tres Pequeños Jabailíes / The Three Little Javelinas

author: Susan Lowell

illustrator: Jim Harris

Scholastic, 1996

preschool-grade 3

In transporting the “Three Little Pigs” story from Europe to the American Southwest, “where Native American, Mexican, and Anglo cultures blend together,” Lowell morphs the pigs into javelinas and recasts the big bad wolf as Coyote.

Trotting away to seek their fortunes (mama isn’t even around to wave goodbye), the first little porker builds his house out of tumbleweeds and the second relies on somewhat stronger saguaro ribs. The hungry four-legged pursuer, of course, huffs and puffs and easily destroys both domiciles, and the piglets find refuge with their sister, who has resourcefully built her house out of sturdy adobe bricks. No one gets killed, no one even gets seriously hurt, the javelinas live happily ever after and Coyote is left to howl at night.

Harris’s artwork, executed in watercolor, gouache, and colored pencils on bristol board, uses an earth-toned palette that reflects the colors of the desert. As well, you can see practically every stiff, bristly hair on the cowboy-clad piglets, as well as the black-tipped guard hairs and narrow muzzle on skinny Coyote.

But rather than enhancing the story by moving its locale and inserting elements of Southwestern flora, fauna, and material culture, Lowell’s contrived literary treatment, including pronunciation prompts, disrupts the rhythm and confuses the story (italics below mine).

The second little javelina walked for miles among giant cactus plants called saguaros (sa-WA-ros). They held their ripe red fruit high in the sky. But they made almost no shade, and the little javelina grew hot.

Then he came upon a Native American woman who was gathering sticks from inside a dried-up cactus. She planned to use these long sticks, called saguaro ribs, to knock down the sweet cactus fruit.

The second little javelina said, “Please, may I have some sticks to build a house?”

“Ha’u,” (ha-ou) she said, which means “yes” in the language of the Desert People.

I’m baffled by the Spanish translation, which seems neither literal nor idiomatically authentic. The piglets’ refrain, “Not by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin!” for instance, comes out as “¡Ni por las cerdas de mi bar-bar-barilla!” which means nothing. Some of the translations don’t quite connect, either. For example, “(The giant cactus plants) held their red, ripe fruit high in the sky” becomes “los gigantescos cactus saguaros que mostraban orgullosos sus frutas rojas,” which would translate as “the giant saguaros cactuses that proudly displayed their red fruit.” And, there are outright mistakes. When one of the piglets asks a brick-maker for “a few bricks” to construct her house, he responds:

“Si,” answered the man, which means “yes” in Spanish, the brick-maker’s language.

And the translation?

—Yes—le contestó el señor, que como saben, quiere decir “si” en ingles.

Well-told folk tales, even the most outlandish ones, have a “magical realism” that requires a suspension of disbelief. Children know, for instance, that javelinas don’t really dress in human clothes, speak English (or Spanish), leave their mothers and go out to “seek their fortunes.” At the same time, children allow themselves to believe, for the purposes of this story, that a javelina could build a particular kind of house in order to outwit a single-mindedly hungry coyote.

Lowell’s adding elements to the story that reflect the cultures of the Southwest—while leaving intact the story’s essential European underpinning—throws a “cultural blanket” over the European folktale. To try to attach so much specificity about peoples and their material cultures—without the cultural knowledge—makes it even harder for a story to work.

In introducing the three little javelinas’ pursuer, Lowell writes,

Then along came a coyote. He ran through the desert so quickly and so quietly that he was almost invisible. In fact, this was only one of Coyote’s many magical tricks.

So, the big bad pursuer of the three little javelinas is not just a coyote, a predatory animal who can run through the desert quickly and quietly and happens to have a thing for javelina meat, but Coyote, a Being who can run through the desert quickly and quietly because he’s full of tricks and magic as a device to embellish the story with more Southwestern cultural material. Except for the European literary rule of three.

Coyote is not just a trickster. Coyote is a religious/spiritual Being, a cultural icon who demands respect. There is always the knowledge—a cultural backdrop from the teller to the audience and back—of who Coyote is and what Coyote represents. Without this depth of comprehension and cultural understanding, Coyote becomes a buffoon—a big bad wolf turned into a “trickster” who gets his comeuppance from a trio of young pigs. When you take an important part of someone’s spiritual and cultural heritage without acknowledging it, it’s called “cultural appropriation” and it’s never OK.

Los Tres Pequeños Jabailíes / The Three Little Javelinas is not recommended. For an awesome alternative, pick up Bobbi Salinas’ The Three Pigs: Nacho, Tito, and Miguel / Los Tres Cerdos.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 3/14/14)