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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There have been a couple recent and we'll publicized biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder depicting her as an awful person as well as a politically active racist, and showing that almost nothing in the Little House series was true. I suspect that had some influence on the decision, even if they aren't saying it. "Author depicts lived experience in a way we now dislike" is different from "Manipulative, racist crank wrote fiction that is racist." The current view is the latter. [/quote]

Sorry, writing to correct myself because the two biographies blurred in my head. Laura Wilder's daughter, Rose, was the politically active one. She's believed (by many not all) to have ghostwritten the books for Laura.

I think if it were a true story written by Laura I might feel differently about the racism in it, but the fact it is a fabrication heavily influenced by Rose really affects the context. The series' vision of westward expansion is so popular (I loved it too) and [b]colors how we think about personal independence and can-do spirit[/b], and then you read the family were constantly running from creditors and stealing from native peoples... Ick. [/quote]

It's funny, because I do think that was at least Rose's goal with the books, but I don't think the books really achieve that.  (The TV show was much more successful in making it seem like they had this wonderful, self-made life.)  When I read the books as a kid, I mostly focused on the fact that they got to run around a lot in the grass and milk cows, which seemed cool to a suburban kid--I don't think I took any great life lessons from it, other than that it would be cool to know how to build your own house and make your own dolls.  But reading them as an adult, I'm really struck by how shitty it all was, and how it appears that her father had a terrible case of ADHD (or maybe bipolar?).  The part where he's gone for months looking for work but doesn't send any money and no one knows where he is or if he'll come back?  Or the part about where they borrow money to put glass windows into their house, and then the locusts eat all the crops so they lost the entire house to the bank and have to move again?  Yikes, yikes, yikes.

When I read the online biographies on LIW ,[b] I was surprised that she had almost no contact with her parents in the later years of their lives.  I think when they died, she had not seen them in many years, maybe decades.  I know people were poor and travel was tough, but that still struck me -- this was a family with some issues.[/b]  I mostly feel bad for her, and happy that there were at least some nice moments in her childhood that she could look back on and appreciate, despite all the horrible things.  As I'm writing this, maybe that's sort of a life lesson.[/quote]

OMG, like why didn't she just text her parents or uber there?!?

I keep reading your post and wonder how does one get through the education system and remain this ignorant about history, including hardships and communication from the past.[/quote]

Probably most immigrants in the 1800s and early 1900s never again saw their parents and the  families they left behind. It is hard to comprehend that an adult today does not understand how expensive and difficult travel and even written communication was at that time. 
[/quote]

It made me giggle a little to read this criticism of my original post.  I’m actually an American a history major from a top SLAC and I still do a little bit of historical research on the side as a hobby.  I know life sucked for most people in the 19th century—one of the things I like about historical research is that it reminds us of the challenges that ordinary people faced, which we tend to forget about when we focus on the history of the rich and powerful.  And I’m well aware that many people immigrated or migrated and never saw family again.  But adult Laura did not move that far from her family and it was in an era after the US rail system was fairly well developed.  The fact is she did not travel to see them for many years and rarely wrote (even though mails were reliable and she and her mom were both very literate.). Of course we can’t know for sure, but I do think a reasonable conclusion is that she and her parents were not that emotionally close as she aged. [/quote]

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