I am not surprised at this, and I do think the guy would have approved of pulling the works. People do feel ashamed of past insensitivities.
I am for example reminded of interviews Jim Henson gave, where he regretted having so many explosions in his early Muppet Show episodes. He did state that if he could go back in time, he would cut them out.
I think that America has long been “perturbed” by China, so anti-Chinese propaganda has been in the media for well over a century.
Right. They’re not worth reposting here, but remembering Mickey Rooney’s racist bit in Breakfast at Tiffany’s gives a pretty close idea of what they look like.
In 1882? I believe he was born at the beginning of the 20th century… The racist depictions predate the Cold War era tensions by nearly a century.
What about the reaction to the Boxer rebellion or anti-Chinese legislation? Not political on his part, of course, but the roots of racist depictions often do have deeper political currents.
If not for the fact that right-wingers totally love authoritarian Russian leaders now, perhaps they could be convinced to settle down after seeing a few of the old pro-Stalin political cartoons he drew.
(ETA: not that I’m really critical of him supporting an ally in the war against Nazis. Of course the really offensive stuff he did was the deeply racist and damaging depiction of Japanese Americans as sinister saboteurs.)
We have a compilation of some Suess books and that page in Mulberry Street really bothers me. Kid hasn’t wanted it read to her- she only likes the grinch, the lorax, hornton, and the turtles. But when she does, we’ll have to have a conversation.
I didn’t realize the zoo one was that bad! Suess should have stayed far far away from depicting any people at all.
I think he had people in the zoo in the book, because that was a practice (at least in Europe) in the late 19th/ early 20th century, having “exotic” people in zoos.
People in the 30s and 40s would have still been familiar with that practice.
I apologize. The bulk of his controversial work involving Asians was Anti-Japanese propaganda for WWII. I was mistaken in believing that his editorial work continued through the Korean War.
A good point, but what I meant was he should have stuck to illustrations of animals and objects, full-stop. His kind of exaggerated illustrations led him to some really awful and insulting choices when it came to humans.
I knew If I Ran the Circus had depictions of people in cages, that’s why I never bought it for my kid. There are other books we share that spur our bite-sized-convos on race that don’t normalize something so awful. And all her interjections while talking current events with her dad. We had to explain white supremacy to a 4 yr old.
ETA: Seuss’s exagerated style and racism led him to those choices.
Yeah, but I’m unaware of any Seuss pieces focused on the Chinese people.
I meant the concern about Communist China specifically.
Well, but if the book came out in the 30s, that’s before the end of the civil war… the communist party did not secure power until 49.
my parents bought me Seuss books when i was a kid to teach me to read, and i’m sure they were well aware of his anti-Japanese work during the war. they probably shielded me from those. i am sure if Seuss were alive he’d be in favor of removing the racial insensitivities. people can change.
This is the post with which I entered the conversation, in reference to someone referring to anti-Chinese “pieces.” That seemed to mean or imply a work focused on China or Chinese people. I doubted such works existed from Seuss, however while I know some about him I am not an expert, so I asked.
Okay. I think in general anti-Chinese sentiment would have been high from the 19th century already and so the casual racist depictions of Chinese people would have been common?
He dropped casual racist depictions of Chinese people in other works. For example, in And to think I saw it on Mulberry Street! the narrator describes seeing an ever-more-fantastical procession of wondrous and exotic sights passing through his town, and then just drops this right in the middle:
JFC.
As I’ve said three times now, I simply asked if there were works focused on China (while implying I thought there weren’t.) I did not deny there was casual racism.
Friendly request to all that we return to the topic.
I get the the Mulberry street depiction of a Chinese person is done full mid-century stereotype. I am a little more puzzled by On Beyond Zebra. The best I can figure out is the depiction of the Nazzim of Bazzim, which is vaguely middle eastern/Indian “exotic”-looking, although he’s wearing more of a hoodie than a turban.
