Education of Little Tree Pulled from Oprah Winfrey's Site

[educatedindian]

The better news is that millions of people will hear that Carter's book is a fraud. The only downside is that Winfrey made a very naive partial defense of the book as "wonderful." She's promoted exploiters before, like Miguel Ruiz and his four agreements.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071107/ap_on_en_ot/winfrey_book_pulled;_ylt=ArUuuIRnnK4qTZ2VtEvVYwMEtbAF

Disputed book pulled from Oprah Web site By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
Tue Nov 6, 7:19 PM ET

NEW YORK - Oprah Winfrey has pulled a discredited children's book, Forrest Carter's "The Education of Little Tree," from a list of recommended titles on her Web site, blaming an archival "error" for including a work considered the literary hoax of a white supremacist.
 
"The archived listing was posted in error and has been removed," Winfrey spokeswoman Angela DePaul told The Associated Press on Tuesday, adding that she did not know long "Little Tree" had been on the site.

The AP had inquired last week about "The Education of Little Tree," which was featured on http://www.oprah.com with "The Color Purple," "The Grapes of Wrath" and other "guaranteed page-turners from Oprah's personal collection." The list can also be linked to in-store computer searches at Barnes & Noble.

First published in 1976, "The Education of Little Tree" was supposedly the real-life story of an orphaned boy raised by his Cherokee grandparents; the book became a million seller and sentimental favorite. In 1991, the American Booksellers Association gave "Little Tree" its first ever ABBY award, established "to honor the `hidden treasures' that ABA bookstore members most enjoyed recommending."

But suspicions about Carter, who died in 1979, began in his lifetime, and were raised significantly in the early 1990s, not long after the book won the ABBY. Carter was identified as Asa Earl Carter, a member of the Ku Klux Klan and speechwriter for former Alabama governor George Wallace who wrote Wallace's infamous vow: "Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!"

"`Little Tree' is a lovely little book, and I sometimes wonder if it is an act of romantic atonement by a guilt-ridden white supremacist, but ultimately I think it is the racial hypocrisy of a white supremacist," says author Sherman Alexie, whose books include "Ten Little Indians" and the young adult novel "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," a nominee this year for a National Book Award.

"I am surprised, of course, that Winfrey would recommend it," says Lorene Roy, president of the American Library Association. "Besides the questions about the author's identity, the book is known for a simplistic plot that used a lot of stereotypical imagery."

Winfrey had long been aware of the book's background and has acknowledged she once was a fan. She discussed "Little Tree" on her TV show in 1994, recalling a "loving story about a boy growing up with his grandfather and learning about nature and speaking to the trees. And it's very spiritual."

When Winfrey learned the truth about Carter, she felt she "had to take the book off my shelf."

"I no longer — even though I had been moved by the story — felt the same about this book," she said in 1994. "There's a part of me that said, `Well, OK, if a person has two sides of them and can write this wonderful story and also write the segregation forever speech, maybe that's OK.' But I couldn't — I couldn't live with that."

According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales, "Little Tree" has sold about 11,000 copies in 2007. It was originally released by the Delacorte Press, then reissued a decade later by the University of New Mexico Press, which still publishes the book.

[Defend the Sacred]

Today National Public Radio (NPR) did a story on Carter. They interviewed people who knew him as a Klansman, then in his later reinvention as a pretendian. The report said this piece of fiction (Little Tree) is still being sold an an autobiography.  The reporter highlighted how, even after Carter's fraud was exposed, many non-Natives simply did not care. They would rather learn misinformation and pure fiction about NDNs from the Klu Klux Klan than listen to NDNs speak for themselves... especially if the words from the racist make them feel all spirchul and warm and fuzzy inside.

There are still pretendian cherohonkees online, white people, who solemnly intone the fake Cherokee words and liturgy Asa Carter invented. Despite his reinvention, Carter was buried under his birthname, the name by which he gave his racist radio spiels before even the right wing Republicans found him too racist to be associated with.

The report said there will be an upcoming documentary about Carter the Klansman and pretendian. Not sure when it will air, but there will probably be something about it on the NPR or PBS websites.

[educatedindian]

This just aired on our local PBS station.

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http://reconstructionofasacarter.com/
The Reconstruction of Asa Carter is an hour-long documentary exploring the life and legacy of the best-selling author of The Outlaw Josey Wales and The Education of Little Tree. Published in 1976, Little Tree, billed as a "true story," recounts the idyllic life of an orphaned Native American boy learning the Way of the Cherokee from his sage grandparents in the hills of Tennessee. The book was met with great critical acclaim and was lauded for its authentic portrayal of the American Indian experience. It was also credited with being the seminal work of Native American literature.

 In October of 1991, The Education of Little Tree was number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Little Tree was a true word-of-mouth success. The director of marketing for University of New Mexico Press recalls purchasers buying a dozen copies at a time to distribute to friends. Groups of school children had formed Little Tree fan clubs. Steven Spielberg and Robert Redford started a bidding war for the rights to bring Carter’s gentle, New Age-tinged message of multiculturalism and environmentalism to the big screen. For thousands of New York Times readers, then, October 4, 1991 must have brought an unpleasant surprise.
     
 An op-ed piece announced the critically acclaimed Cherokee memoir as a fake. Forrest Carter was really Asa Carter, a professional racist that in 1970 he split with his old boss, Wallace, accusing him of being a "sell out to the Negro." Even his new first name, readers learned, had been taken from Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate Cavalry General who founded the original Ku Klux Klan. Articles on Little Tree’s identity appeared in Newsweek, in Time, in Publishers Weekly. Fans of the book were shocked, as were friends of Forrest’s in his later Texas years, for whom he would, after a couple of drinks, perform Indian war dances and chant in what he said was the Cherokee language. For people across the country, the exposure of Forrest Carter was an occasion for soul-searching.

 Carter’s story illustrates not just American schizophrenia about race—but also the mutability of American identities. The Reconstruction of Asa Carter asks not just how Carter could be two people at once, but also why so many Americans, both Carter’s circle of intimates and the hundreds of thousands of Forrest Carter’s fans, fell in love with his portrayal of his Cherokee self.

[Pono Aloha]

Here's the NPR story http://www.npr.org/2012/04/20/151037079/the-artful-reinvention-of-klansman-asa-earl-carter

At the end the reporter said the book is being sold as an "autobiographical novel" -- whatever that is 

[amorYcohetes]

NPR revisited this issue in a recent segment on "This American Life," in the episode entitled "180 Degrees." I like TAL especially for some of its early Chicago-based stories, and for its investigative reporting.  I was really disappointed that no Native sources were interviewed or quoted for this piece, and I said so in comments on their Facebook page.  Feel free to listen and chime in if you agree.

[educatedindian]

Humor site Cracked did a segment on the book.
http://www.cracked.com/article_21394_the-6-most-ridiculous-lies-ever-published-as-nonfiction_p2.html

Other links in the segment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLLDn7MjbF0

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/04/opinion/the-transformation-of-a-klansman.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/06/AR2007110601431.html

[amorYcohetes]

Thanks for the links, Educated Indian.

For those that aren't able to access it, this is what I posted on the Facebook page of This American Life about the piece:

I am a regular listener of TAL on WBUR in Boston, and online. I was really disappointed that no Native sources were interviewed or quoted for this piece. Miriam's comment that it's not for White (or any non-Native) people to decide whether the book's message is valid is spot-on. That Carter would write a book promoting the racist Magical Native trope (in the same vein as Spike Lee's "Magical Negro" trope) is not at all a departure from his racist "Segregation Forever" days. Sure, we heard that an unnamed Cherokee endorsed the book in a preface (Dr. Rennard Strickland, a distinguished legal historian of Cherokee-Osage descent - but not necessarily an enrolled tribal member that I see). But was an effort made to contact the federally-recognized Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma or Eastern Bank of Cherokee for comment?

They had the audacity to post a Kickstarter donation campaign for the program that produced the segment, so I added in another couple links.

Before I donate to Radio Diaries, they would need to do a lot more reflection on their reporting on race issues. Please see my comment on the post of the TAL episode containing the Carter story. I would hope TAL would at least mitigate the biased coverage by posting on their blog a Native perspective for counterbalance, such as Debbie Reese's (Nambe Pueblo) blog "American Indians In Children's Literature." http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/
For much better reporting on Carter than Radio Diaries did, see: http://www.salon.com/2001/12/20/carter_6/