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ruminativerabbi · 4 years ago

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What I Saw on Mulberry Street

At first, I was slightly amused by the whole brouhaha that followed the announcement last week by the estate of Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, that it would stop republishing and selling six of the famous author’s books, including such classics as And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, On Beyond Zebra, and McElligot’s Pool. I know all these books; they were classics of children’s literature so long ago that I remember reading them when I actually was a child and enjoying them immensely. We all did. Dr. Seuss was part of the children’s canon back then: read by all, touted endlessly by librarians and teachers, and considered controversial—as far as I recall—by none. Just the opposite, actually: if there was one children’s author from back then whose whimsy was deemed charming and fully acceptable, it would certainly have been Dr. Seuss.

But times have changed. And there is no question that illustrations in all the books in question feature caricatures of various minority groups, particularly Asians (depicted with slanty lines for eyes, pigtails, and conical coolie-style hats) and Black people (shown shirtless, shoeless, and wearing grass skirts). On the other hand, Dr. Seuss himself was a powerful enemy of fascism who published more than 400 wartime cartoons savaging Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese leadership. And some of his books were thinly veiled anti-fascist parables: it is widely understood, for example, that Yertle the Turtle (1958) was meant as a direct attack on fascism (apparently dictatorial Yertle originally sported a Hitler-style moustache) and that Horton Hears a Who (1954) was meant as a kind of encouraging parable about the American occupation of Japan. More to the point for Jewish readers is that The Sneetches (1961), a book that the estate will continue to publish, is a focused, double-barreled attack on racism and anti-Semitism and was understood that way from the time it was published. Nor was this imputed meaning—the author himself was widely quoted at the time as saying formally, that The Sneetches “was inspired by my opposition to anti-Semitism.”

So we are left with an interesting dilemma. Geisel, a life-long Lutheran who actually suffered a bit of anti-Semitic discrimination in college when he was mistaken by some bigoted classmates for a Jew, was a proud anti-fascist, a virulent opponent of racism and anti-Semitism, and a true American patriot. And he published some books that featured images which feel—at least by today’s standards—racist or at the very least inappropriate for books pitched at impressionable children. The managers of his estate solved their problem the easy way by deciding simply not to republish six of the man’s books, thus ending the controversy by eliminating the problem. An alternate approach, of course, would have been to re-edit the books, eliminate the offensive imagery, and bring out versions that feature the original text with illustrations tailored more precisely to suit modern sensitivity. And speaking specifically as a Jewish American, the fact that there aren’t any Stürmer-style caricatures of hook-nosed Jews holding huge bags of money in these books shouldn’t be a factor in our evaluation of the evidence: if anything, the thought of Black parents cringing when they come across racist caricatures of Africans should be more than resonant with Jewish parents able to imagine being in exactly the same position and feeling exactly the same level of hurt and outrage. And that brings me to the question that feels to me to be at the heart of the matter: should works deemed utterly non-offensive in their day be altered, either slightly or dramatically, to suit evolving standards with respect to race, religion, ethnicity, gender, etc.? It’s an interesting question, one that goes to the heart of the question of what literature actually is and what role it could or should play in society.

There are, of course, lots of examples of books that have been successfully revised to suit modern tastes. Agatha Christie’s book And Then There Were None was originally published in the U.K. as Ten Little Negroes (and the third word on the cover was specifically not “Negroes”). That was deemed offensive here, so the publisher just made up a different title. (The English publishers eventually did the same and brought the book out under the marginally less offensive title Ten Little Indians.) In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a favorite of my own children years ago, Roald Dahl originally depicted the Oompa-Loompas who worked in the factory as African pygmies and the depiction was basically of them as slaves and certainly not as dignified, salaried employees. A century earlier, Dickens himself was prevailed upon to tone down Fagan’s Jewishness in Oliver Twist, which he did by halfheartedly removing some of the references to Fagan’s ethnicity. Of course, when the author himself makes the revisions we are having an entirely different discussion: surely the actual authors of books should feel free make whatever changes they wish to their own work. The question is whether the world should “fix” published works to make them suit issues that were on no one’s radar, or hardly anyone’s radar, when the book was written and published.

Some readers will recall that one of my pandemic coping exercises last spring was embarking on a re-read of Mark Twain, a favorite author of my younger years. I was surprised how well many of his books stood the test of time, but I found myself most engaged of all by my re-read of Huckleberry Finn. Widely and entirely reasonably acclaimed as an American classic, the book is basically about the relationship of Huck and Jim, who is almost invariably referred to as Negro Jim. (Again, that’s not the word that appears in the book.) Of course, Mark Twain was writing about Missouri life in the 1830s and he himself was from Missouri and a child of that era. So he certainly knew how people spoke and I’m entirely sure that that word was in common use to reference Black people. Today, that word is anathema to all and is considered unusable in normal discourse, written or oral. But what about the book itself? Should it be “fixed” by having the dialogue altered specifically to reflect a dialect of English spoken in those days by no one at all? Or should the book itself be dropped from high school or even college reading lists as something too offensive to allow, let alone to require, young people to read? Huckleberry Finn is an interesting book for many different reasons, not least of all because Jim, a slave, is depicted sympathetically as a man of character, virtue, and strong moral values—a fact made all the more poignant by the fact that he is depicted as almost wholly uneducated. Indeed, Jim is a grown man with a wife and family, while Huck is a boy of thirteen or fourteen and the clear implication is that while the white world has failed utterly to make Huck into a decent adolescent, Black Jim, an uneducated slave, is quite able to bring him to the threshold of decency by showing him how to behave in an upright manner. So the book is hardly anti-Black. Just the opposite is far more true: in many ways, Jim, not Huck, is the hero of the book. And yet the constant use of that word is beyond jarring. Editions have been published for use in school that simply omit the word or change it. Is that a rational compromise? Or does that kind of bowdlerization deprive the book of its essential honesty, of its ability to depict a society as it truly was and not as moderns vaguely wish it had been? It’s not that easy to say.

When I was deeply involved in the research that led me to publish my translation of the Psalms, I became aware—slightly to my naïve amazement—of the existence of Christian editions of the Psalms from which all references to internecine strife, violent clashes between opposing groups in old Jerusalem, the corruption that led at least some poets to condemn the Temple priesthood, and the deep alienation from God with which at least some psalmists struggled—that the psalms depicting all of that challenging stuff had been nicely excised from the book so as to create a book of “nice” poems. (This parallels a Christian edition of the Old Testament I once saw from which the entire book of Leviticus had been omitted, presumably lest readers be offended by the notion that animal sacrifice and the safeguarding of ritual purity were essential elements of the covenant between God and Israel.) Those editions of the Psalms struck me as ridiculous and precisely because the resultant book was specifically nothing like the original work and gave a totally incorrect impression of the original work. But would one of the Dr. Seuss books under discussion really have been substantially altered by some of the drawings of black or Asian people replaced with more respectful images?

My feeling is that the Dr. Seuss affair is indicative of a larger issue in society. Obviously, changing a few drawings in a book is not such a big deal and is something that I’m sure happens without fanfare in the world of publishing all the time. But this specific issue seems to have struck such a chord with so many precisely because Dr. Seuss is deemed, not entirely incorrectly, as representative of a simpler world—by which term people generally mean one in which it wasn’t deemed necessary to care what smaller groups in society felt or thought. We’ve come a long way since then, and rightly so. The Seuss estate could certainly have felt justified in commissioning some new drawing to avoid going against modern feelings about ethnic or racial stereotyping. The books themselves would have been substantially the same. Once that line is crossed, however, and the book no longer is the same as it was—“fixing” the language in Huckleberry Finn, for example, or eliminating Shylock’s Jewishness from the play or Othello’s blackness—that is missing almost entirely the reason literature exists in the first place: to stir up emotion, to challenge readers’ preconceptions, and to educate—in the literal sense of the world: to draw the reader forward to a new level of understanding of the world of the author…and of the reader as well.

#Dr. Seuss #Mark Twain #Shylock #Othello #Huckleberry Finn #Negro Jim

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mrtroy · 6 years ago

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Revisiting the Semicolon Revival

Earlier this month I looked back on publishing my book, Little Things in a Big Sky, and since then, I’ve been reading select stories again from the collection. I wrote about one of those here, and today, I’m writing about another one.

In 2013, the tone for the subject of this entry had a completely different one than I’m going to take today, but before we get to that, let’s stroll down memory lane a bit.

The whole premise for the original ‘Semi-Colon Revival’ was how this little-used and often misunderstood punctuation mark, the semicolon, had made its way throughout history mostly unneeded. Most people didn’t know how to use it, and even if they did, using it could be the ultimate sign of pretentiousness.

Until, in the era of the text message, all the sudden, the semicolon got new life in the most unexpected of ways. This scholarly piece of punctuation was being used by teenagers to wink and flirt and construe feelings that academics undoubtedly had no possible way of foreseeing.

As I re-read the piece today, I still love the idea for the story. I think it’s interesting how culture evolves and uses things in ways that suit it. The semicolon looks like a winking eye, and so, culture began to use it as such. Simple as that.

As is the case with a lot of the stories in ‘Little Things,’ I think I could have developed the idea a bit better. But, considering I was writing one short story a day and had a self-imposed schedule to uphold, I wrote out the thought, tinkered with it only a bit, and moved on.

Read the original entry below:

The Semi-Colon Revival - 09/30/13

I don’t especially like the semi-colon. I only partially know how to use them, and get nervous most times that I do. I do know that they are used to connect two independent statements, or as a part of a list. But even Wikipedia had to help me put my understanding of the semi-colon into words that other people could understand. While I was browsing old Why-ki, I discovered that semi-colons are also used quite often in academic writing.

Which probably describes why I don’t see too many of them. Or, for that matter, why a lot of common people don’t see a lot of them - not a lot of common people read academic writing.

I sort of feel pretentious when I use semi-colons. It’s almost as if to say, I know how to use a semi-colon, I bet you don’t! Although to be fair, I don’t always know if I’m using them right, so I’m not sure that counts as pretentious. Or, maybe it’s an even worse form of pretentiousness; the I don’t even know what I’m doing, but I’m doing it anyway usage. See, I used a semi-colon in that sentence. Maybe it was used correctly, maybe it wasn’t? Do you know?

The sheer fact that humans lived without semi-colons until 1494 is probably enough evidence that they really aren’t necessary. 500 years in the lifespan of the written word isn’t really that long… So I guess you could say the semi-colon is kind of like the teenager of the punctuation world. Young, misunderstood, cool in some crowds, totally ignored in others. The period is like an overbearing father. When he says something’s over, it’s over. Period. The comma is like a mother. She has many good traits, but she can also just prolong things, make them go on and on, continuously nag you, repeat herself… You see where I’m headed here. Like the mother, a world without commas leads to total anarchy and complete lack of discipline. But, a good comma knows when to stop and end the sentence before it becomes an atrocious run on.

The colon is like the cool older brother. He’s bold, people always listen when he talks, and he is often followed by groups that will do whatever he commands.

And so that leaves the semi-colon.

Of course there’s plenty of others. The attention-starved exclamation point. The clingy apostrophe. (Ted’s shoes are actually MY shoes) The flip flopping hyphen and the cross dressing dash are a pretty delightful combo in their own right.

But what about the semi-colon?

Luckily for her, there has been a momentous event.

Text messaging!

All the sudden the semi-colon is all over the place.

She’s like the little sister that was biding her time all along, and then all the sudden, BAM, when did she grow up so fast?

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in the midst of a semi-colon revival.

Hey honey, see you tonight ;)

Hey, good work forgetting to bring the tickets ;)

Don’t worry, I’ll never tell mom ;)

It’s pretty ironic that for the world to start using semi-colons - a mark used most often by scholars and academics - it took the condensed format of a text message, and the intellect of flirting thirteen year olds winking at each other!

I do have to say, I prefer the use of this kind of semi-colon. I’ve never once felt pretentious while using one!

The first half of this is really strong, and then, I must have rushed. Reading now, it feels like I was just getting going with the text messaging idea, and then the story was just over.

Oh well. It was my first time writing in such a format. It’s not perfect. Moving on.

Today as I think of the semicolon, it has a completely different meaning for me. Not to mention I realized it is not a hyphenated word!

Sure, the winky face hasn’t completely gone away, but with the widespread use of the emoji in today’s world, a good ;) wink is a little harder to come by. Many platforms even automatically create a winking emoji any time you try to type ; and ) next to each other. I’m good with that. I love a good emoji just as much as the next person…

But, in the last year or so, I’ve become aware of another use of the semicolon – one that is very near and dear to my heart. What I’m referring to is called Project Semicolon.

Project Semicolon is a mental health and suicide prevention non-profit that aims to bring awareness and support resources for people that need it. Put more bluntly, it’s a suicide prevention organization.

Why is it called Project Semicolon?

If you go back to the grammatical use of the semicolon in a sentence, one of the ways a semicolon is used is when a sentence or thought COULD BE complete, but the author decides to continue or add further depth and detail.

For example – from the first result on Google after searching for ‘examples of semicolon use’:

Bring any two items; however, sleeping bags and tents are in short supply.

In this case, preceding the bolded sentence was probably some sort of instruction on what to bring on a group camping trip. Campers were likely shown a longer list of items and then given the instruction to bring any two of those items.

At that point, ‘Bring any two items.’ would have been sufficient. If each camper would have brought two items, everyone would have done their part and the camping trip would likely have been a success.

However, the point made after the semicolon was very helpful.

Sleeping bags and tents are in short supply.

An astute reader of the sentence would pick up on the hint and infer that because sleeping bags and tents are in short supply, it would probably be a good idea to bring one or both of those items if possible.

The author could have stopped the sentence with a period before the semicolon and the instructions would have been sufficient. However, after the semicolon, further detail was added, clarifications were made, and the likelihood of a better campout was ensured.

I believe this is at the heart of what Project Semicolon intends to impart on people.

Your life is a story. If you think that story is coming to an end, you can end it. And when you end it, as the saying goes, it’s period. End of story. However, before you make that decision, know that you have a choice. Instead of a period, you have the option of using a semicolon. You have the option of adding to your story. Of prolonging it. Adding details and clarifications that will make that story better.

In the case of camping trip example, there is a big element of the unknown that comes with the instruction of ‘bring any two items.’

Let’s say the list had 46 items on it. Now, let’s say you know you’re going to be on this trip for 38 days. You’re going to be in a desolate area. Temperatures during the trip are expected to fluctuate between 24 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Oh. Crap.

What do you bring?

The possibilities are vast. The second-guessing is likely to be vaster.

The original clarification said that sleeping bags and tents are in short supply. So, from there, the no-brainer is to cover those bases and bring those two items if you have them.

Now, let’s say the portion of the sentence after the semicolon said, ‘tents and sleeping bags will be provided.’

PHEW.

Good golly, think about how differently you’d approach packing for this camping trip if you knew that little detail?

Without a tent or sleeping bag to worry about, you could go down the list of 46 items and pick the next two most essential items. Or, if you were nervous to use a sleeping bag that was being provided by the organizer of the camp, you could say, ‘yes, I’ll use tent that is provided, but I’ll bring my own sleeping bag, and as my additional item, I’ll bring a battery-powered lantern.’

Either way, the information after the semicolon greatly improved the quality of the sentence. And the camping trip.

In the context of a camping trip – even one with as extreme of conditions of the one I made up in the example above – it seems obvious to any reader that if you had the opportunity to have the information after the semicolon, or have the option to end the sentence after ‘Bring any two items,’ that you’d always want to extend the sentence with the semicolon.

However, sometimes life gets cloudy. It gets heavy. It gets hard. And at certain points in time, we can convince ourselves that no matter what content comes after the semicolon, it’s just easier to end the sentence right now. With a period.

I know, because I’ve considered it.

I got to a point in my life where I felt like I had made so many mistakes. I felt like I had hurt so many people and I felt like no matter what information may come after that semicolon, it was never going to get any better.

I thought I was a failure. I thought I was a fraud. I thought I had been given everything – only to squander it all. And as I looked back on my life, I noticed patterns that seemed to say no matter what I did, I always ended up back in situations where I felt the same way.

Worthless. Stupid. Doomed to fail.

It might seem over dramatic to read those types of things coming from me given some fast facts about who I am.

I have a loving family. I’m physically healthy. I’m able-bodied. I’ve never been persecuted for either who I am, what I believe, or a lifestyle choice that I make. I’ve spent my adult life gainfully employed.

Compared to the majority of the world, I have life so easy, I’ve been given so much and despite the first-world problems I encounter on a daily basis, life really is good.

And yet, there have been times – one time in particular – where I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep living.

I had let a circumstance in my life totally envelop me. I went into a dark state of depression that I couldn’t shake for a long time. And then, something happened that seemed to highlight just how bad things had gotten.

And I lost it.

I lay, feeling paralyzed in my bed, and I could not shake the feelings of not wanting to be alive. I could not see beyond that point in the sentence. I felt like all the choices I had made had led me to a point where I was destined to always be a failure. I didn’t like being a failure. I was sick of it. I was utterly defeated.

In that moment, I never actually got to a point where I began to plan a suicide. My thoughts weren’t coherent enough for that. I felt my heart race. My mind ran in overdrive and I had no idea how to slow it down.

So, I did the next to last thing I could think of.

I called my dad.

I was in tears by the time he answered the phone. He sensed it right away and asked what was going on. I said, ‘Pops, I’m scared.’ Immediately I could hear his voice growing more and more worried. He asked what was wrong. I said, ‘I’m not sure if I want to be alive anymore.’

I don’t know if what he did next is ‘by the book,’ but he asked me if I was at my house. I said that I was. He told me to stay there, and that he was on his way over. He then asked me if I thought I was going to hurt myself.

I sobbed. I took a deep breath and told him that I didn’t think so. I was scared. I was overwhelmed, but I didn’t think I was going to.

He said, ‘Good. Please don’t hurt yourself. I’m on my way.’

Immediately, I felt bad. I know now that I shouldn’t have, but I felt bad that he was leaving work in the middle of day to come tend to his 30-something son who was lying in bed unable to move. For my father to leave work for any reason usually took an act of Congress, and yet in this moment I know he didn’t think twice.

Before he hung up the phone, he told me he loved me.

Looking back on it now, we probably should have stayed on the phone together while he drove from work to my house, but we’re not pros, we didn’t know what to do. My dad and I aren’t big talkers together, I don’t know if we could have filled a 22-minute drive on the phone together…

The moment he hung up the phone though, I knew everything would be okay. I felt like I had gotten over the hump. I had voiced my fear, and once I had, I felt as if it no longer had as much power over me.

Twenty-two minutes later, my dad came bursting through my back door. He yelled my name and I answered him. I came down the stairs and we embraced in my kitchen for an amount of time that I’ll never be able to measure.

I’m taller than my dad, but in that moment, I felt my head hit his shoulder like I was eight years old again. My heart began to slow down. Anyone who knows my old man knows he not exactly a cuddly guy. But I can attest, he delivered the best hug in recorded history just then.

We sat in my living room and talked for a while. I shared some things that had been on my mind. He listened. After about an hour, he went back to work. I took a shower, got dressed and went to my office.

Life continued after the semicolon.

At that time, I had been going to a counselor / therapist person for a while and in the weeks that followed that incident, I upped the frequency of my visits. And I continued them for nearly a year after the fact. I imagine at some point in the future, I will begin them again. I look forward to those sessions.

I’ve been encouraged in the last few years to see more open discussion about mental health make its way into the open. Whether that’s on the internet, or just in the conversations we have amongst friends and acquaintances on a daily basis.

In the past year, I’ve had numerous conversations with friends about the journeys we’re on. I’ve had one ask for a recommendation for someone to go talk to in a similar vein to the type of therapy I sought. It felt good to be able to talk openly about something that was plaguing my friend. It felt good to know that what I had been through helped me to provide counsel to a friend in need.

It is my greatest desire that by sharing these words publicly, it makes it easier for others who may be experiencing similar things to deal with them. For them to know that there are other people out there who may feel similar things – and that’s okay.

For too long, I feel like society has treated mental health as if it’s something that has to do with strength. Either you’re mentally tough, or you’re mentally weak, and if you’re mentally weak, shame on you. I think that’s wrong.

I believe that mental health is similar to physical health. There are varying levels of health that someone may experience, and if you experience something that causes you to be less mentally well, it’s not because you’re weak, it just means you need care.

So, if you need care, get care.

You may not be as lucky as I am to have a dad who loves you. Or, you may not have access to professionals to go talk to when you need to talk to someone. But, there are resources out there that can be very helpful.

Project Semicolon has a lot of great resources on its website as a place to start. There are also lots of free services available in community centers, public health centers, etc. If you need help, seek it and you will find it.

More than anything, let me leave you with this:

Don’t ever feel as though what you’re going through is too big, too hard, or too much to overcome. Begin by bringing your fears or anxieties to light in a way that works for you. That doesn’t have to be in a public forum – it could start in a journal and then transition into a conversation with a friend or loved one. If you’re on the fence as to whether or not to get a professional involved – err on the side of calling them. Any stigma you may feel about addressing your mental health doesn’t need to exist. You are not weak. You are not broken. You are not unfixable. You will not be stronger if you just ‘soldier on’ and keep quiet. Heck, if you know me and you need someone to talk to, call me. Don’t text me. Call me. I’ll do my best to listen as best I can. And then we’ll take it from there.

Project Semicolon claims to have helped over five million people reconsider harming themselves since its founding in 2013. A fantastic number.

A popular sign from those who have benefitted from the program, or just its sentiment, is to get a semicolon tattooed on their body somewhere. A permeant reminder that their story hasn’t ended; that a period could have been written, but it was not. If you see one of these tattoos, don’t judge these people because of what they may have considered doing. Respect them for what they did not do. Respect them for acknowledging that while they may have felt as if they were weakened, that they are not weak.

And enjoy with them the part of life that happens after the semicolon.

The real semicolon revival.

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