Children's author sorry for 'racial insensitivity' in picture book showing smiling slaves

[umbertino]

Emily Jenkins, whose book A Fine Dessert has drawn criticism for ‘misleading depiction of slavery’, now plans to donate her fee to diversity campaign

 

 

Alison Flood

 

Wednesday 4 November 2015 16.23 GMT

 

 

 

The author of a glowingly reviewed picture book says that she has “come to understand that my book, while intended to be inclusive and truthful and hopeful, is racially insensitive”, following criticism over its images of smiling slaves.

 

A Fine Dessert, published in January, tells how “four families, in four different cities, over four centuries”, make blackberry fool. Starting in Lyme, England, in 1710, Emily Jenkins’s story, and Sophie Blackall’s pictures, go on to depict a slave girl and her mother in 1810 Charleston, preparing and serving a fool for a white family, before licking the bowl themselves, hidden in a cupboard.

 

It was picked last month as one of the New York Times’s best illustrated books of 2015, with Blackall’s “warm, finely detailed illustrations” praised for how they “capture the sweep of history and the constancy of family love”. Reviewer John Lithgow had previously given the book a positive write-up, highlighting the “bold and somewhat unsettling choice” to “portray a smiling slave woman and her daughter”.

 

But in the months since the book has been published, objections to its depiction of the slave characters have emerged. In August, one librarian pointed to its “misleading depiction of slavery”.

 

“It’s clear that the creators had noble goals, and a criticism of their work is just that – a criticism of the book (not them),” wrote Elisa Gall, an elementary school librarian from Illinois. “But despite the best of intentions, the result is a narrative in which readers see slavery as unpleasant, but not horrendous.”

 

The criticism has since swelled, prompting Jenkins to issue an apology on the Reading While White blog, a site run by white librarians with the intention of confronting racism in children’s literature. The site had said that “no matter how thoughtful the intent was in depicting this mother and child, the end result is that it can be seen as perpetuating painful imagery of ‘happy’ slaves”.

 

In a note in the book, Jenkins says that she included slaves “even though there is by no means space to explore the topic of slavery fully” because “I wanted to represent American life in 1810 without ignoring that part of our history”. But she wrote on the Reading While White blog this weekend that she had read the discussions about her book “with care and attention”, and that “I have come to understand that my book, while intended to be inclusive and truthful and hopeful, is racially insensitive”.

 

“I own that and am very sorry,” wrote the author. “For lack of a better way to make reparations, I donated the fee I earned for writing the book to We Need Diverse Books.”

 

In the endnote to A Fine Dessert, Jenkins had said that she “wrote about people finding joy in craftsmanship and dessert even within lives of great hardship and injustice because finding that joy shows something powerful about the human spirit”.

 

“Slavery is a difficult truth,” the endnote adds, and “at the end of the book, children can see a hopeful, inclusive community.”

 

Illustrator Blackall had previously addressed the situation on her own blog late last month, saying that she “thought long and hard about these smiles”.

 

“In the first scene, the mother and girl are picking blackberries. I imagined this as a rare moment where they were engaged in a task together, out of doors, away from the house and supervision, where the mother is talking to her child. It is a tender moment, but the mother is not smiling,” she wrote. “The girl has a gentle smile. She is, in this moment, not unhappy. I believe oppressed people throughout history have found solace and even joy in small moments.”

 

Serving at the dinner table, meanwhile, the scene is “set up to show the deep injustice of the situation”, and the mother and child are “sombre and downcast”, while children have responded “most viscerally” to the image in which the mother and daughter hide in the cupboard to lick the bowl.

 

“They are horrified at how unfair it is. There is nothing whimsical about hiding in the cupboard. It conveys a complete lack of freedom,” she writes. “I have shown isolated moments of their day which may appear pleasurable, but I don’t think I have made slavery out to seem pleasurable or fun.”

 

Urging critics to read the whole title, Blackall writes on her blog that A Fine Dessert is a book for young children, which introduces the issue of slavery “in the context of a wider history”.

 

“It is not intended to be the only story children will read. It does not fully depict the horrors of slavery, but I don’t think such a depiction would be appropriate for this particular age group,” she writes.

 

 

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‘Difficult truth’ ... detail from one of the illustrations to A Fine Dessert by Emily Jenkins and Sophie Blackall.

Illustration: Sophie Blackall/PR

 

 

 

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Two sides of the story …

 

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/nov/04/childrens-author-sorry-racial-insensitivity-smiling-slaves-emily-jenkins-a-fine-dessert

 

[FlintNPebbles]

Hmmm so slave families never experienced joy within their family? If the drawing is showing a mother and her child, should they not have joy in each other or does the fact that they are slaves completely envelope them and they are never allowed to show any joy?

 

Yes, it was a horrible time in history but for a children's book, it is not inappropriate to show family love.

 

People have just gone crazy.

[SgtFuryUSCZ]

***///

 

There is no value in scrubbing historical fact.

 

PC war on truth of history doesn't accomplish a damned thing.

 

Write on, Emily... write on...

[pattyangel]

Unfortunately evil is working his plan of hate and division. 

 

Slavery was a hardship in the lives of blacks, but they had their love for God, to help them endure.  They not only suffer the hardship from man, but I'm sure they had happy and enjoyable, and laughable times every chance they could.   

 

History is history and should be told at all angels, not just the bad angels. 

 

Sad that some feel that this author is being insensitive,  Emily Jenkins don't bite the dust, tell your stories of truth. 

[bohica]

Guess what, not all slaves were mistreated.  Some slaves were considered as family and taken cared for as family.  Do not give me this garbage of every slave was beaten and sobbing.  It simply was not true.