Done with Seuss

So Dr. Seuss' birthday is coming up and I am frequently asked to read at schools for this occasion. I have very conflicted feelings about Dr. Seuss. On the one hand, his books were among the first I remember reading, in particular A to Z and Hop on Pop. On the other, his books often contain racist characterizations, the "Chinaman" in And to Think that I Saw It On Mulberry Street, for example, and his art from the WW2 period was extremely racist as well. Seuss himself said that his story Horton Hears a Who was dedicated to a Japanese man, Mitsugi Nakamura, as a way of atoning for his past misdeeds and racism, but I'm not sure that allegorical storytelling is sufficient to make up for the real harm inflicted upon Japanese Americans because of his racist art.  On top of this is the issue of Cat in the Hat and how he, as well as other classic cartoon characters of the period, exhibit all the tropes of minstrelsy. More information on this can be found here.  For this reason I have not decorated my library for Dr. Seuss' birthday or otherwise celebrated it the past two years.

A lot of people push back against this notion of not reading Dr. Seuss or not watching some old movies because they believe that the racism in them was typical of the time and thus should be excused away. There is this notion that things in the past, things one has grown with as a child are somehow sacred and should always be the canon, should always be taught to the next generation. "Oh its just X what's the big deal?" they say with a shrug. Why? Why do people feel the need to defend things that don't need defending? I love sharing Star Wars and Princess Bride with my daughter, but I don't feel the need to read her Little House on the Prairie because how incredibly racist it is to Native and Black people. I don't know if you are aware of this, but more books have been written since you were in school. I hate to break it to you, but your childhood favorites aren't inherently better because they were loved by you when you were children. Why must we prop up Dr. Seuss over any other author, over authors of color, over women, over people whose characters have not be blasted all over lunchboxes for the past 50 years?

When I was asked by a school to read today, I did so but with a caveat: I asked if I could read another book from the library. Instead of reading a Dr. Seuss book, I read Wild About Books by Judy Sierra and Marc Brown about a librarian who opens a library in a zoo. It is a fun rhyming story in the style of Dr. Seuss and even mentions Dr. Seuss among the books the animals at the zoo read. I read to three classes today: 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade. All of them are older than the typical audience for Dr. Seuss anyway which makes me wonder why this holiday is being celebrated in their classes in the first place. With the younger two classes I simply said "I don't have a Dr. Seuss book today, but this is another fun story that has a lot of great rhyming words." Then I came to the 5th grade class. These are 10 and 11 year old kids. A sea of brown faces: the school is about 90% Latinx. I said, "Hey, so I don't have a Dr. Seuss book today. A lot of older Dr. Seuss works are, frankly, kinda racist. I kind of have mixed feelings about Dr. Seuss because I grew up with him but I thought I would share this other fun book instead. If you like silly rhymes I encourage all of you to write! One thing Dr. Seuss was great at was making up a lot of crazy words. Maybe you can try it." It was the first time I think I was that blunt with a group of kids. I wondered why that was.

If we are going to create a new generation of kids who embrace diversity, who understands the role that race plays in our daily lives, who deconstructs old notions of gender, then we have to do some real work. Some of that work requires us to let go of the things we used to love and accept that, yeah, maybe that mammy in those Bugs Bunny cartoons was pretty gross, and maybe the crows in Dumbo were pretty gross, and maybe all those books we read as a kid with monkeys as main characters looked like blackface caricatures. For many white people, it is hard to acknowledge one's own racial biases, especially when you perceive yourself as an otherwise liberal person. So you voted for Obama and you hate Trump and you are against the wall. Great! So why when people of color or Native people are telling you that the old books or movies you like are hurtful to them do you push back? Is it simply that you are willing to be a "good" person when it is easy and not when it requires you to make any kind of substantive changes to your thinking? I am trying to do better. It is hard. It takes work. But if my fellow white educators, parents, and librarians put in the same amount of work what a wonderful world we could live in. A world where an author of color rolls off the tongue as quickly to every school child as Dr. Seuss' does.

Nothing

I've often wondered if part of my problem making friends is that I just can't commit to having a "thing."  People with "things" always seem to have friends, or really they have many acquaintances that might develop into friends, but that's much the same thing isn't it? If you are super into biking you meet cycling friends.  If you are super into music you meet musician friends. If you are super into D&D you meet D&D friends, or at least have the few people you regularly play with at any rate.  If you are into goth you meet goth people, into cosplay you meet cosplay people. Shit people super into furries and stuff could probably meet other furry people more easily than I can make friends.  This is not to say that I don't like things or even that I am not passionate about things.  I think if you took a random sampling of people I know they would all acknowledge that I know about and like Star Wars and Game of Thrones and other sci fi and fantasy stuff.  But I don't write fan fiction, I don't care enough about Marvel movies to make long YouTube videos speculating what will happen next.  I don't care enough about books to even regularly write book reviews just to meet other book people.  When I enjoy something, I enjoy it, and sometimes I will gush on Twitter or Facebook but I just don't have this identity I think that is defined by things I do or like.  Lots of people online talk about their "brand."  I don't really know what mine is. I don't think I ever really have.  The other day I met a dude who has 47K Instagram followers because he has some internet famous cat.  I don't even like my cats enough to devote the time and energy it would take to actually be a "cat" person.  Who am I even?

This isn't a new phenomenon for me.  When I was a kid I was the same way. I liked to act when I was little but never "got into" theater in high school to the point where all my friends were theater friends.  I was in choir but wasn't really a "choir person."  I listened to some alternative music but never committed fully to an alternative or goth aesthetic because it just seemed kind of silly to me. I remember once in 9th grade wearing black to school on the day I was going to be seeing Smashing Pumpkins in concert.  A few people called me a poser.  An attempt was made.  The truth is, I just never got having "things."  How could you limit yourself to only liking one genre of music?  How could you dress yourself to conform to an arbitrary identity defined by others?  I was a poser because I just never really got it, I never really got any of it.  I've never liked something so much that my identity or "brand" is built around it.   Shit even now as an adult, I really love people with cool colors of hair but the time and money taken to maintain just feels like more performative unnecessary bullshit to me.  I am Jewish but I'm not like one of these SUPER involved in the temple or Israeli dancing Jews.  I'm political, but I'm not really an active member in organizations. I'm a librarian but I'm not involved in ALA.  I just don't have it in me.  I just... don't really DO "things."

I think the closest I have come to "branding" myself is the fact that I usually walk around with an R2D2 purse which is basically my minimal effort attempt at nerd social signalling that I, too, like the space wars.  Other than that... I dunno.  I think a lot of my struggle in life has come from this notion that I am supposed to have a "thing."What if not having a "thing" is ok, though?  What if just being kind of interested in a lot of stuff and not really being a stan for any one thing exclusively and not really doing stuff all the time is ok?  What do I really need out of life that I am not currently getting?  Why get jealous of other people's lives when I don't really want what they have?  I get so stuck on what I should be doing that I get down on myself.  I see other people's busyness and question my own slothfulness when the truth is I am much happier not doing than doing the vast majority of the time?

The past few years of my life I have come to know myself better than I did when I was younger.  What I've realized is that the energy I spent trying to fit in was kind of pointless. The difference now is that I have a partner I really and truly enjoy doing "nothing" with.  "Nothing" is sometimes my favorite part of the day! Doing things makes me tired.  That's ok. It is ok to acknowledge that brief interludes of social activity can be followed by periods of inactivity.  It is ok to acknowledge that I work in a public facing job, am surrounded by people all day, talk to people all day, enjoy talking to people in the capacity of my job, or talking to friends, or talking to my kids or my fiance, but that making socially awkward chit chat is unappealing, and in my spare time can spend hours saying nothing to anybody and really enjoy it quite well thank you very much.

I made a goal for myself to be more social this year, to actually reach out to people and attempt to hang out with them.  But I've realized I can do that without a "thing."  Maybe just hanging out is ok.  Maybe I'm alright the way I am. Or maybe I'm not.  That's ok too.  I just need to be honest with myself.