“Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.”
— Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, June 26, 2015
Getting married is not as easy as living alone. When you live alone, no one cares if you leave the dishes in the sink for days or forget to put your shoes away or neglect to maintenance the car. When you live alone, you can come home from teaching and only eat a tortilla with peanut butter for dinner, and then write semi-bad fiction for hours before you binge-watch several episodes of “Orange is the New Black” and then come to bed in a clatter of noise and light. When you live alone, you can let all the negative emotions simmer for days in your body until you develop pneumonia, exhausted.
When you live alone, you can tell yourself, “This is better. This is easier. I don’t have to negotiate with anyone. I’m just fine by myself. This is evidence that I am a strong woman.”
And in the middle of the night, when you wake from a nightmare, and the dark room looms over you, and you turn on all the lights, a lump in your throat, you can comfort yourself, because that is the only other person in the room.
When you live alone, you tell yourself, Don’t accountants say getting married doesn’t make good financial sense? And anyway, haven’t you tried marriage already? You failed, remember? Yes, he was a man, and you realized you were gay, but still, you failed.
When you live alone, you tell yourself, Don’t accountants say getting married doesn’t make good financial sense? And anyway, haven’t you tried marriage already? You failed, remember? Yes, he was a man, and you realized you were gay, but still, you failed.
And when you finally meet a woman, and your body and your soul pulls you toward making a life with her, you shrink, afraid. Why do it? Why get married? Why stand in front of your family and friends and look this woman in her brown-ringed-with-gold eyes and say, “I promise,” and “I do”, and “I will love you the best I can for my life”?
It doesn’t make logical sense, right? Sometimes, it will be very hard. Sometimes, it will be unpredictable. Sometimes, you’ll stand in your kitchen and look at her and feel infuriated by something she’s said or not done. Sometimes, she’ll look at you with disappointment or with irritation. Your life together will be unpredictable. You might lose her. Actually, you will lose her. Someday in the future, one of you will have to look at the other one fading away, her white hair spread like rays on a pillow.
Why leap into such pain?
This morning, I woke to Meredith’s soft cheek against mine, her arms around me. I still floated in my dream, but when I murmured something incomprehensible, she pulled me closer and said she loved me. In one week, we get to marry each other, she murmured into my hair, and smiling, I opened my eyes and kissed her.
I used to insist I preferred living alone. Even for months after I met Meredith, after we began to spend hours together, and never ran out of words to say, and found that no amount of time was enough, I insisted — to her — that I didn’t want marriage. Better to have good friends. It’s so much less of a risk. Anyway, why were LGBT people fighting to get into the institutions of marriage and the military? Isn’t it better to create our own ways of being, to live happily alone and then sometimes come together to kiss and spend some hours?
Meredith was patient. She held me carefully then as she does now. She never articulated arguments for marriage (though she thought them), but instead cooked beside me, camped with me and Mitike, watched movies with me, talked with me into the small hours. And then all of a sudden, I understood that I wanted to share all my days with her. I don’t know when this happened, but I think it was probably an ordinary moment (Emerson: “The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common”). I think maybe Meredith was slicing red cabbage for coleslaw or she was scratching our dog behind his ears or she was laughing about something I had just said or she was listening carefully to Mitike or she was gazing off into space with her fingertips resting on her eyebrow as she does when she’s thinking. It wasn’t a moment of angel trumpets and bright neon lights. It was just a moment in what had already become our shared lives together, though we still lived at different addresses. And it hurt because I understood, in a flash: even when it’s hard, I want to live beside this woman. Even when she’s sick. Even when we’re irritated with each other. Even when I’m exhausted and I can’t be soft and kind. Even when we don’t know what the next day will hold. Because this hard work of companionship is richer and more what life intends for us than being alone.
If I’d read those words when I was single, I would have felt angry resentment. How dare anyone talk about how the universe intends us to live and learn in relationship, when it’s not an option for some of us, or when some of us tried and then lost it? And I would have been right, just as I am right to say: here in my current life is you, and I choose you to be my wife, to be no other than yourself, to love what I know of you and to trust what I do not yet know, to support you in becoming the person you want to be, to nurture my faith in your abiding love through all our years, and in all that life may bring us.
Marriage is serious, and though it doesn’t make people’s lives easier, it does make them richer.
Last June, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.” Marriage is serious, and though it doesn’t make people’s lives easier, it does make them richer. This June, Meredith and I will choose to become more than two individual women, but a couple, committed to struggle with and rejoice in this life together. Because it’s harder. Because it’s ultimately lovelier to walk through this life hand in hand with someone you cherish and who cherishes you.
When I started my column this month, I intended to write about the one-year anniversary of that Supreme Court decision. I wrote several drafts in which I discussed the dissenters’ opinions, and then lauded Kennedy’s statements. In one draft, I wrote my own experience against the backdrop of those conflicting opinions, explaining that it’s still difficult to be a lesbian even in a nation that allows me to legally marry my wife. But none of those drafts felt right, and I didn’t understand why, until Meredith — my best editor — said quietly, “Why don’t you write about how we’re just like any other couple, gay or straight? We’re a regular couple getting married. Write about that.”
Meredith and I are now like every other couple who walks into a county office in the United States and says, “We’d like to apply for a marriage license.” We are like every other couple who takes a deep breath and — though it will be difficult, and though it’s a crazy risk — dives into marriage together.
And that is what last year’s Supreme Court decision was all about, anyway. Legally, Meredith and I are now like every other couple who walks into a county office in the United States and says, “We’d like to apply for a marriage license.” We are like every other couple who takes a deep breath and — though it will be difficult, and though it’s a crazy risk — dives into marriage together.
Last year, Justice Kennedy had to argue to the nation that Meredith and I deserve “equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” that we deserve to be included in “one of civilization’s oldest institutions”.
This year, we just get to hold hands with each other and, while our nine-year-old daughter and our family and friends look on, we get to say “yes” to each other, to a life greater than any we would have led alone.
It is so much better to live as a lesbian now, in 2016, than it was in 1952.
That’s what I’ve been thinking ever since I immersed myself in the beautiful new lesbian film Carol last month. Carol (2015), that gorgeous film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, portrays the blossoming love between two women in 1952. To live honestly as a woman who loves women, Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) must risk the custody of her beloved little daughter and the status of her moral reputation in society. When Carol and Thereze Belivet (Rooney Mara) walk in public or sit at a restaurant, they cannot touch or gaze at each other too long. They can only express their love in the stolen privacy of rented motel rooms.
As I watched Carol, I felt an immense gratitude that I live and love in this time, in this region of this country. I sat in a Denver movie theater with my fiancee Meredith’s fingers securely intertwined with mine, and all around us sat other lesbian couples openly expressing affection. Because we live in Colorado, a state with a workplace nondiscrimination law that covers sexual orientation, both Meredith and I are confidently out as lesbians in our jobs. Because the culture of Denver is generally supportive of same-sex families, we are also out at our daughter’s school, where the third graders chanted, “Hello, Mitike’s moms!” when we walked into the room to help celebrate Mitike’s birthday in January. We feel safe here. In our neighborhood, we sit on the front step of our house on summer evenings with our arms intimately around each other’s waists, watching our daughter jump rope on the driveway.
In 1952, in Carol’s time, we couldn’t have hoped to live so openly or to marry each other legally, or to adopt a child together legally. We couldn’t have dreamed it.
In 1952, in Carol’s time, we couldn’t have hoped to live so openly or to marry each other legally, or to adopt a child together legally. We couldn’t have dreamed it.
And yet. In 2016, now, I watch the high school students in my classroom. They live post-DOMA, in a state that supported gay marriage before the Supreme Court did, in a nation with high-profile gay celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper. And yet. Their classmates use “That’s so gay!” as an insult; the media shows them primarily heterosexual love; their parents (and in many cases, their religions and their cultures) expect them to enter traditional marriages.
It’s only a little better than it was in 1952.
Outside the United States, the situation for us is often literally dangerous. Over seventy-five countries in the world still criminalize homosexuality, and in many of them the punishment is death.
It’s true that I can hold Meredith’s hand in a movie theater and tell our daughter’s teacher that Mitike has two moms, and it’s true that I can brave being out at the high school where I teach. It’s true that the Supreme Court supports our right to marry each other legally. But it’s still not easy to be out, and often, it’s not even safe. According to the ACLU, only twenty-two states protect GLBTQ+ people from discrimination in the workplace. Almost half of U.S. states fail to include gender and sexual orientation in their hate crime statutes. In Mississippi, gay and lesbian couples are still barred from adopting children. Conservative politicians like Republican candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) still speak about us as if we are diseased or criminal, against God and morality; in August, Cruz called the fight for gay rights a “jihad” that GLBT people are waging against Christians. Another Republican candidate, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), said at the beginning of January, “I do not believe there is a U.S. Constitutional right to same-sex marriage,” and added that he believes children should only be raised by heterosexual parents: a father and a mother. Politics aside, many families still refuse to demonstrate acceptance. On America’s streets, over 40 percent of homeless youth identify as GLBTQ+.
Outside the United States, the situation for us is often literally dangerous. Over seventy-five countries in the world still criminalize homosexuality, and in many of them the punishment is death. That means that lesbian Americans like us have to carefully vet where we travel. Lesbians who live in those countries have to either hide who they are or risk death. Both options are unconscionable.
We will have to contemplate, alongside our love, the fragility of last June’s Supreme Court decision when candidates like Cruz or Rubio move nearer the White House.
On this Valentine’s Day in 2016, Meredith and I will go out for a date at a restaurant in Denver, as thousands of other couples in the city will do. But unlike what Senator Cruz terms “traditional couples,” we will have to be cautious about when and how we show each other affection. We might kiss across the table, but only quickly, painfully aware that someone could yell an ugly epithet at us, or threaten worse. We will hold hands, our matching silver engagement rings glimmering in the candlelight, but, unlike those “traditional couples,” we will have to contemplate, alongside our love, the fragility of last June’s Supreme Court decision when candidates like Cruz or Rubio move nearer the White House. We will discuss our lovely daughter, but in the shadows, we will shudder to remember that some would tell us we hurt our daughter by giving her two mothers. And we will talk about our planned honeymoon to Costa Rica, which we have chosen because it’s beautiful and warm, but primarily because it’s known to be one of the safest and most open countries for gay and lesbian couples to visit. They’ll accept us there.
It is better for us today than it was for lesbians in 1952. And so on this Valentine’s Day in 2016, I will step outside that restaurant with Meredith, my legal fiancee, and I will kiss her full on the lips.
It is better for us today than it was for lesbians in 1952. And so on this Valentine’s Day in 2016, I will step outside that restaurant with Meredith, my legal fiancee, and I will kiss her full on the lips. And maybe someone who sees that kiss will change his mind about gay rights, or maybe someone will realize her God is love, and love is what she sees between us. Or maybe, horribly, some bigoted person will yell across the street that we are sick, wrong, against God, that we are the problem with America. But I will kiss Meredith anyway. And then we’ll drive home to our cozy little house, pay the babysitter, kiss our sleeping daughter, and crawl into our bed. Our bed. We may not yet live in a completely safe and accepting world, but right here, in each other’s arms, our fears fall away.
Right here, we just love each other. And that is exactly right.
This is a letter to those of you who have stayed. Please: listen to me, before it’s too late.
I’m writing from the city of Vancouver, BC. The Canadians have been welcoming to the thousands of us who have fled across the border in the past seven years: immigrants, Muslims, dissenters, and those of us who are GLBT. The Canadians have accepted all of us, as far as I know. Do not believe President Trump’s incendiary anti-Canadian rhetoric. On this continent gone mad, Canada has become the last refuge of democracy.
At first, I intended to stay. Like so many other Americans, I intended to commit civil disobedience and fight the racist policies of Trump—and of his chosen vice president, Ted Cruz. When Trump and Cruz were sworn into office in 2017, I was an English teacher at a large high school in Denver, where many of my students were Muslim. Within weeks of the inauguration, Trump had ordered the National Guard to shutter all American mosques and to enforce “anti-terrorism codes” against praying to Allah, wearing identifying clothing, and quoting the Koran in public. To this day, Trump claims he has not banned Islam; people continue to be free to practice their religion in the privacy of their own homes, he has said, “just as they are free to engage in all manner of adult activities in their own homes, if you know what I mean.” But the new codes sanctioned harassment and intimidation. In many instances, Muslim people were beaten, fired from their jobs without cause, and ostracized from their communities. I joined several teachers at my school in creating secret safe spaces for our Muslim students to pray in private, and for Muslim families to meet to discuss their options. It felt right to disobey the injustice of Trump’s policies, and to act.
At first, I intended to stay. Like so many other Americans, I intended to commit civil disobedience and fight the racist policies of Trump.
But then, in early 2018, Trump and Cruz unveiled their plan for mass deportations of immigrants. Most of the students in our high school were immigrants or the children of immigrants. Suddenly, our classes began to shrink: immigrant families were forced to slip away into hiding or risk becoming “disappeared.” Stories abounded of children who woke in the morning to empty houses, their parents deported in the night. Our small group who had been supporting Muslims now risked greater civil disobedience: we offered entire immigrant families refuge in the basement of our school, in our houses, and in our churches. We used Facebook to set up an underground railroad, but Trump blasted through it all, creating the Foreigner Watch in the fall of 2018 and ordering the arrest of anyone who aided or abetted the millions of immigrants he intended to deport. People kept disappearing, including three of my teaching colleagues who served in the underground railroad with me. A fourth teacher I knew was arrested and held for months in jail. For some reason, I was never caught, though several of my students lived hidden in our basement laundry room for months. Every day, the deportation buses growled south toward the gates in The Wall at the Mexican border.
Suddenly, our classes began to shrink: immigrant families were forced to slip away into hiding or risk becoming “disappeared.”
Finally, in 2019, Trump and Cruz turned their hatred toward me and all other GLBT Americans. Their Supreme Court overturned the gay marriage decision that year, and the states followed obediently, declaring our union illegal and our child “endangered by an unnatural family situation.” In every speech either of them made, Trump and Cruz railed against our immorality, our “sick” desire to live outside of “normal” relationship, our “sinfulness.” They made no new laws, and yet their vitriolic words fueled their supporters’ loathing for us. By the spring of 2020, countless gay, lesbian, bi- and transgendered Americans had been fired from jobs, barred from entering public places, beaten, and in some cases killed. I lost my job at the high school. The official letter said I had been “released from duty for moral turpitude.” My wife lost her license as a psychologist. Two friends—both women—in San Francisco lost custody of their biological children after a school social worker investigated their “unnatural circumstances.” In a few short years, our government had bullied us back into the closet, slamming the door and locking it behind us. Conservative preachers gleefully praised Trump and Cruz’s “morals.” “America has suffered,” one minister told a crowd at a reelection rally in 2020, “because we have permitted such abominations, but now we are on our way to greatness.” The crowd roared its approval.
Meredith and I knew we had to leave. We were in danger. Every day, we were afraid someone would come and take our daughter from us. And so we fled north. Here, to Vancouver. We had to.
In a few short years, our government had bullied us back into the closet, slamming the door and locking it behind us.
America is no longer America for me. Maybe you don’t care about this. Maybe you don’t care that my family and I will probably stay here in Vancouver, where we are safe: where our marriage is honored as legal, our daughter is protected as our own. In the composition classes I teach at this university, my immigrant students breathe easily, unafraid of deportation or state-sanctioned discrimination. Canada is not perfect, because it is a government by people, who are ever flawed. But here, people still believe progress means moving toward embracing all kinds of people, recognizing the rights of all people to live free of fear.
I know you think none of this applies to you. You think you are safe today in America because you are not Muslim, you are not an immigrant, and you are not gay. You think you are safe in America because you are a white American descended from Europeans, like Trump, a practicing Christian, a proclaimed conservative. You think you are safe in America because you cheer at the mandated Trump rallies in your town and dutifully pledge allegiance to him. When a majority of you Americans reelected Trump and Cruz in 2020, you showed the world you actually like his “moral” policies against people like me and my wife, his “pro-American” policies against immigrants, his “keep it here” trade restrictions, his unsympathetic crackdown on all forms of crime. But these are not political issues. They never have been. They are human rights issues. And now that you have begun to vote against the rights of certain groups of people, a day will inevitably come when someone will vote against you. And who will speak for you, when you have been so silent?
But these are not political issues. They never have been. They are human rights issues.
Trump and Cruz and their followers will tell you America never wanted people like me and my students, anyway. Good riddance. But listen in the darkness, Americans: do not burn every good intention of those people who wrote “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and “we the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Trump and Cruz have cranked open a rusty valve in America and let the ugliness that has long simmered beneath the country’s surface surge forth. That ugliness is fueling a new regime that only mirrors Adolf Hitler’s: certain groups banished, the triumphant tide of exclusion rising. Stand in the present darkness of your country, Americans, and remember history’s grave errors. The “great” America Trump and Cruz have made is openly xenophobic, homophobic, and racist. Its current actions—including the unapologetically brutal war America has begun waging in the Middle East—only echoes American “accomplishments” like slavery, the Indian Removal Act, segregation, and lynchings. How Christian you all are, you Americans, to exclude and deny and hate! Jesus would have done the same, I’m sure.
America doesn’t have to continue down this path. Once, we lumbered toward light: toward a more representative government, greater income equality, increased acceptance of every human, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, or ethnic origins.
Up here in Vancouver, my family and I have begun to make a new life. Some days, I don’t even care that America doesn’t want us. I feel relieved that we left. But then I think of everything I love—the Rocky Mountains, the open road through the high desert, the little towns in the Iowa farmland where I was raised; all the proud ideas of freedom and justice for all; all the hard work of progress American activists have achieved over the last two centuries—and I feel overcome with sorrow for my country again. America doesn’t have to continue down this path. Once, we lumbered toward light: toward a more representative government, greater income equality, increased acceptance of every human, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion, or ethnic origins. Did you know the founders of America even imagined their created democracy would lead to peace? America could strive to be good and whole again. You could.
Close your eyes and remember 2016, seven years ago: you could have voted against Trump and Cruz. You could have chosen a different America.
You could have. And now—all the people forced to hide or flee, disappeared, deported, beaten, killed—all because of their origin or their religion or their sexual orientation or their unwillingness to praise Trump and Cruz—now it may be too late.
To be a black woman online is to realize that any minute, your safe space can be compromised.
The anonymity of the internet enables Red Pill fanatics and basement-dwelling trolls to spew hatred without serious repercussions. When the general public talks about the need to combat online bullying and harassment, the discussion rarely includes women of color. Black women should not have to accept racist, misogynistic violence from faceless cowards lurking behind egg icons. The threshold of harassment that black women face online, especially within the context of social media, is beyond tolerable. It is toxic and menacing, abuse ranging from doxxing (exposing a person’s personal information, including home address, telephone number, etc.) to death threats.
Take for example the abuse from racist Twitter users aimed at Ghostbusters actress and SNL cast member Leslie Jones. The Ghostbusters movie recently premiered, and angry fanboys were feeling extra vicious. Jones faced a seemingly endless barrage of racist attacks. She retweeted the insults in hopes that Twitter support would ban the users. Unfortunately, support turned a blind eye to the mounting abuse. One user compared her to a gorilla, to which Jones responded, “I don’t understand.” Another troll with an icon of a stick figure in an SS uniform said, “She’s extremely ugly.” The collection of usernames and accompanying icons were just what one would expect from an army of human garbage.
Black women should not have to accept racist, misogynistic violence from faceless cowards lurking behind egg icons.
Understandably, Jones quickly lost the motivation to expose her attackers. Fans, costars, and Ghostbusters director Paul Feig expressed support for Jones. Twitter user @MarissaRei1 started the hashtag #LoveforLeslieJ in order to combat the cruel, crude, and ruthless abuse. Although it was comforting to see people stick up for Jones, it’s disappointing and disheartening that such hatred could go unmonitored and unpunished. Do we really want to condone and encourage an online culture that permits the daily dehumanization of black women?
When dissecting pop culture, the obvious racial bias is magnified. There’s no shortage of white knights for white women. Writing for The Guardian, Ijeoma Oluo noted, “Many other women of color – especially black women – on the internet face the same abuse that Jones is now facing, and we will tell you that this isn’t a harmless prank, this isn’t about hurt feelings or even the sting of a racist comment.” She added, “This is a deliberate campaign of abuse perpetrated on us to keep us off of the internet, and it needs to be taken seriously.”
Although it was comforting to see people stick up for Jones, it’s disappointing and disheartening that such hatred could go unmonitored and unpunished. Do we really want to condone and encourage an online culture that permits the daily dehumanization of black women?
In a 2014 study conducted by Women, Action, and the Media, the group gathered 811 reports of harassment on Twitter. Out of the 161 serious cases cited and reported to Twitter staff, “Twitter wound up taking action on only 55 percent of those cases—most frequently, they suspended accounts temporarily.”
Earlier this year, Twitter announced that it would be implementing a new protocol to deal with online harassment. Nick Pickles, Twitter UK’s Head of Policy, said, “This comes from the top of the company – safety is never finished.” Unlike the US, the UK has laws that “offer users some protection against more extreme harassment and several people have been jailed.” Twitter’s publicly documented efforts to deal with online toxicity almost seem hollow. Considering the fact that online abuse of women has become the expectation, rather than the exception, such a promise feels like an empty-hearted effort to placate those who demand stricter and swifter retribution.
Ijeoma Oluo noted, “Many other women of color – especially black women – on the internet face the same abuse that Jones is now facing. … This is a deliberate campaign of abuse perpetrated on us to keep us off of the internet, and it needs to be taken seriously.”
Although I obviously do not have the same global platform as Jones, I’ve faced online misogynoir. Whenever I write about race, I’m met with instant backlash. Not all of the responses I receive are cruel, but it’s too easy to remember the negative. No matter the type of essay or article, from personal essay to pop culture commentary, the racists are angry that I dare even to speak up. In real life and online, I’ve been told that I’m “too sensitive” or that I’m the “true racist” for rightly naming my enemy. In the eyes of the racists, white supremacy is a nonexistent institution, just as the American Dream is possible for anyone willing to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
When Jones experienced racism, some Twitter users recommended that she take the high road and simply ignore the abuse. Why must black women be expected to turn the other cheek? Perhaps it has to do with the stereotype of the Strong Black Woman. But if studies have proven that racism can have a dire impact on a black person’s mental and physical health, why aren’t these rampant incidents of abuse take much more seriously?
Out of the 161 serious cases cited and reported to Twitter staff, “Twitter wound up taking action on only 55 percent of those cases—most frequently, they suspended accounts temporarily.”
In an interview with Alternet, an African-American woman with more than 116,000 Twitter followers said that she switches her avatars in order to get some relief from the trolls. With the icon of a white man, Sydette noticed a drastic difference in user interaction. She observed, “As a white man, that was the most fun I had online in terms of actually getting to talk to people and not be insulted by them.” Sydette added, “People thought I was wrong, people thought I was ridiculous but nobody thought I was stupid. I received fewer slurs and people were a lot more interested in my thought process than when I was anything else.”
As a black woman writer, my work is never separated from my gender and/or racial identity. On the other hand, my racial background is a vital part of my personal identity. I would not be the person I am today without the acknowledgment of my roots. I fiercely protect and defend my ethnic heritage because for too long, I was made to believe it made me worthless and ugly.
Before taking a break from Twitter, Jones said: “WTF!! These people hate themselves. You have to hate yourself to put out that type of hate. I mean, on my worst day I can’t think of this type of hate to put out. I don’t know how to feel. I’m numb. Actually numb. I see the words and pics and videos. Videos, y’all. Meaning people took time to spew hate.…Like no shame or compassion for human life. It scares the fuck out of me!”
Social media can be an inspirational tool when in the hands of the benevolent, and an extension of our culture’s legacy of racism when under the control of the malicious and malevolent. Until Twitter makes good on their word to take drastic disciplinary action against these vile attackers, black women are forced to make the choice between staying on social media and not backing down against very real, very disturbing threats or retreating for the sake of sanity and self-care.
As a child, I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books.
I began them when I started third grade. When people ask about formative books, I think first of this series: of these books that I read when I walked around the house, that I carried to the dinner table, that I pored over during recess, and that I bugged my teacher to put on her curriculum even as the school year was ending. But I put off writing about them for a long time as it seems that I can’t bring myself to re-read them.
I still can’t.
I’m sorry.
Wilder’s semi-autobiographical children’s novels follow the pioneering Ingalls family as they move from Wisconsin (Little House in the Big Woods) to territory that was in reality an Osage Indian reservation in Kansas (Little House on the Prairie). The family then departs for Walnut Grove, Minnesota (On the Banks of Plum Creek), where they live in a house made of sod, then to De Smet, South Dakota, the setting of By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, Little Town on the Prairie, and These Happy Golden Years. One book, Farmer Boy, follows the childhood adventures of Almanzo, Wilder’s husband, as he tends to livestock, does chores, eats cake, and tries to get along with siblings in upstate New York. The Ingalls family (and the Wilders) sew their own clothes, endure blizzards, illness, and locusts, and still manage to find love, and joy, and adventure with family.
I say that the books are semi-autobiographical because despite the fact that the main character has Wilder’s name and the family travels roughly along the same paths that Wilder’s family did, the novels are very much fiction. Liberties were taken with Wilder’s real life story. And to a certain extent, this is acknowledged. Little House in the Big Woods, after all, opens like this:
Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs.
The book has the opening for a fairy tale, with one solid fact thrown in—sixty years. Reception of the series—and certainly my feelings about it when I was young—concentrated on the harsh pioneer life, on details about playing ball with a pig’s bladder or making a doll out of a corn cob. I know I also identified with the setting of the story because I lived in the flat, cold middle of Canada (albeit in a city, in a house with indoor plumbing and heating). I know I also wanted to be resourceful and plucky, like the Ingalls family. I wanted to make my own bread, sew my own clothes, churn butter, and plant things.
(Basically, I wanted to do crafts and ride in horse-drawn buggies—but to have other modern conveniences.)
More recently, however, writers and scholars have turned their attention to the fictive-ness of the books—and to the mythmaking. Some memorable characters, the handsome Cap Garland, for example, are made up. More important, Pa Ingalls’s reasons for dragging his family across large swathes of Kansas and the Dakotas are elided. Pa Ingalls and his family weren’t benign settlers pitting their ingenuity against the dangerous wild; they were invading Native American territories. They had to do it on their own because they weren’t supposed to be there.
Indeed, Caroline’s Fraser’s 2017 book, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, looks at the ways that Wilder’s books not only diverged from the realities of her life but made that life into one of the shaping narratives of American identity. The book also examines how Wilder’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, a follower of Ayn Rand, extensively rewrote her mother’s books, often twisting facts to reflect Obectivist values.
But Fraser’s is only the latest in a series of sources that made me re-examine my feelings about the series. Among those:
Louis Erdrich’s books Birchbark House books, written from the perspective of Native Americans and set at around the same time as Wilder’s books;
Scholar Debbie Reese’s blog, “American Indians in Children’s Literature,” in which she talks about the depiction of Native Americans in the Little House series and in other books. This is just one example.
It was a conversation about Wilder’s books that Dr. Reese shared on Twitter that initially made me question what kinds of books from my childhood I wanted to give to my own child (which I talked about here) and, more important, why exactly I wanted to share them.
Does reading the Little House books lead to a greater understanding of history? Not on their own. Would it lead to my daughter understanding me or my life better?
Would it bring us closer?
If that were true, would this I want this particular story connecting us?
I am at a loss. I don’t know how to reconcile my memories, my newer knowledge, and my feelings about what is best to do right now. I have been told I should talk these issues out with kids, but so far I haven’t mentioned Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series to my daughter. I’m not actively hiding them. But I’ve chosen to put different books in front of her and to have her explore what she likes on her own. In any case, it’s likely that she’ll encounter them without my interference. She’ll be older.
By then, I hope I’ll be better prepared to talk about them.
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