The name of Laura Ingalls Wilder has been stripped from a library award.
They say that Laura Ingalls Wilder included intolerable “stereotypical attitudes.” Don’t believe it. The real problem is her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, a pro-America, anti-government, intellectual pioneer of the early Libertarian movement probably helped her mother write the series and affected the portrayal of American life. The Left doesn’t want a legacy of America as a culture of independence.
I’ve never read this biography of RWL, but this video synopsis is valuable.
The Association of Library Service to Children’s (ALSC) board voted unanimously on Saturday to rename the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Award” as the “Children’s Literature Legacy Award.”[…]
The first award was given to Wilder in 1954. The ALSC, which is based in Chicago, says her […] “legacy is complex” and “not universally embraced.”
Of course, the full establishment supports this savage act and publishes long sleepy articles to try to lull us to sleep. Thus, The Washington Post reports, “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name stripped from children’s book award over ‘Little House’ depictions of Native Americans.”
The decision makes Wilder the latest target of efforts to purge from the cultural landscape symbols that honor historical figures who owned slaves, espoused racist views or engaged in racist practices. Statues and flags have been removed and highways renamed across the country. Coats of arms and building names have been changed or are the object of protests to get them changed. Columbus Day is now Indigenous Peoples’ Day in some places.
In its decision to remove Wilder’s name from the award, the library association had cited “anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work” when it announced the review of Wilder’s award in February. The award, reserved for authors or illustrators who have made “significant and lasting contribution to children’s literature,” will no longer be called the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. It’s now the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.
“This decision was made in consideration of the fact that Wilder’s legacy, as represented by her body of work, includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC’s core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness,” the association said in a statement on its website.
Wilder was the first to win the award in 1954, when she was in her late 80s and nearing the end of her life.
Until her death in 1957, she was beloved for the semi-autobiographical “Little House” children’s books, fictionalized versions of her family’s adventures traveling the Western frontier in their covered wagon and their encounters with Native Americans.
Born just after the Civil War in 1867 and having lived through both the Panic of 1893 and the Great Depression in the 1930s, Wilder once acknowledged “in my own life I represented a whole period of American history.”
Yes. And now that period must be purged from having a voice. Children need to be encouraged to read modern authors condemning those years, not someone who lived through them.
Just so you get a sense of the boastful, self-righteous joy on the part of the ALSC at marginalizing this woman, here’s part of their announcement:
In summary, the ALSC Board unanimously voted that the ALSC Board accept the ALSC Awards Program Review Task Force’s Recommendation about the Wilder Award,, renaming the award as the Children’s Literature Legacy Award.
This vote was greeted by a standing ovation by the audience in attendance.
Woo-Hoo!!!! It made me so proud to be an ALSC member and a Board Member!
Basically, we live under the thumb of a philistine elite that magnifies the virtues of “outsiders” (if it doesn’t just make them up) and magnifies the sins of “white history.” Since these virtues are actually White Liberal values, they are arguably whitewashing these cultures.
Even the list of sins in the WaPo story are half-truths. Caroline Ingalls was never represented as right in her view of Indians. Her husband was always pushing back against her. And United States Federal troops FORCED the family to leave the forbidden Indian territory.
Far from being a simple story, the situation was quite complex. The illegal homesteading operation was incredibly risky, essentially putting a family with small children in a box in the wilderness. And it’s ironic to see liberals suddenly demand closed border for Indians. The family was constantly deferential to the Indians there, who took what they wanted when they visited the house. Charles Ingalls told the family to give them what they want.
As Ingalls moved on it was obvious he was trying to “make it big” and never succeeded–leaving the impression that he might have been better off if he’d stayed in “the big woods.” It is a complex story and it made me think about the issues of work, ambition, and risk, among other things.
Marginalizing this series is a SAVAGE act. The people who do this are an anti-American occupying regime.
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