He has a triangular, conical hat, a long pigtail, and of course, slanted eyes…”. “In And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, published in 1937, we see a man who eats with sticks he is coloured yellow. What exactly was the fuss about? In a piece for Esquire Magazine by Adrienne Westenfeld, expert Seuss deconstructionist Dr Phillip Nel explains: But if you think he did, you have a bigger problem.” On the other hand, US liberals eager to protect children from stereotypes that are “hurtful and wrong” defended the actions of Seuss Enterprises in articles with headlines such as… With some irony, conservative forces in the USA derided this as emblematic of the liberal “cancel culture” and political correctness (even though Dr Seuss was, during his lifetime, regarded as a liberal). The public outcry was not against the decision to stop publishing per se (many better books are out of print, as we at Book Fossils lament) but that the decision was based on an ideological assessment that “These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong”. The discontinued books included his very first, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |