Re: bad historical fiction

[Robert Eiffert <beiffert@HOME.COM>]

"One of our primary responsibilities as librarians is to encourage our
readers/students to check for authority and validity; and as important,
we must check for even-handedness."

I'd pretty much agree with that. However, learning to recognize bias is
also part of our teaching job. Except in egregious instances and
somewhat based on age of patrons there is room in our libraries for
resources with an alternate POV. Life is more complicated than 'black
hat vs. white hat'. I'd imagine most of us have van Daniken or similar
on our shelves. It is pretty difficult to find any history book without
a point-of-view, which usually looks like bias from some perspective or
another.

The Oyate site is looking from a non-Eurocentric POV. That does ask for
the reader to step back a bit and try to examine the biases from both
sides. One reason I pointed to the site was to open discussion about
recognizing perspective, bias, and POV as part of defining 'bad
historical fiction'.

". . .there is no room, and no time, for
>such a story. I would give a child no book, rather than this nasty
little
thing - and I'm damn sure I don't want my kids
>reading it."

I cringed seeing that on the site. I can understand the feelings, and we
probably have heard it from parents and groups; but we all know better
ways to help kids learn about the world.

"Please remember, do not put all Indians in the same canoe.  Just as you
would not put all Europeans in the same boat.  Each tribe has their own
distinct language and cultural beliefs.  Meaning:  what one tribe might
find offensive, another tribe might enourage."

Definitely agree to that. Oversimplification and generalizing leads to
error.

We could also be discussing the quality of writing purely from a
literary perspective. For the direction this thread is heading, their
catalog (http://www.oyate.org/catalog/index.html) is worth viewing also.

Robert Eiffert, MAE&HD
Librarian at Image Elementary
http://www.ima.egreen.wednet.edu/library.html
Elementary Librarian BLog
www.crypticmachinery.com

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