The Education of Little Tree

The Education of Little Tree was written by Asa Carter, the same man who wrote the segregationist speeches of former governor George Wallace. Carter tried to hide his identity writing under a pseudonym but was discovered by a journalist from the New York Times. And one question comes to my mind: are there prejudices against native Americans? Watch the video below

 

Para saber: literary hoax. En vocabulario: hollow y moonshine

 

In 2007, Oprah Winfrey pulled the book from a list of recommended titles on her website…

 

… the bus driver turned around to the crowd in the bus and lifted his right hand and said, “How!” and laughed, and all the people laughed…

 

The Education of Little Tree is a memoir-style novel written by Asa Earl Carter under the pseudonym Forrest Carter. First published in 1976 by Delacorte Press, it was initially promoted as an authentic autobiography recounting Forrest Carter's youth experiences with his Cherokee grandparents in the Appalachian mountains. However, the book was quickly proven to be a literary hoax orchestrated by Asa Earl Carter, a KKK member from Alabama heavily involved in segregationist causes before he launched his career as a novelist.

In 2007, Oprah Winfrey pulled the book from a list of recommended titles on her website.

 

Summary

The fictional memoirs of Forrest "Little Tree" Carter begin in the late 1920s when, as the protagonist, his parents die and he is given over into the care of his part-Cherokee grandfather and his Cherokee grandmother at the age of five years.

The story centers on a clever child's relationship with his Scottish-Cherokee grandfather, a man named Wales (an overlap with Carter's other fiction).

The boy's Cherokee "Granpa" and Cherokee "Granma" call him "Little Tree" and teach him about nature, farming, whiskey making, mountain life, society, love, and spirit by a combination of gentle guidance and encouragement of independent experience.

The story takes place during the fifth to tenth years of the boy's life, as he comes to know his new home in a remote mountain hollow. Granpa runs a small moonshine operation during Prohibition. The grandparents and visitors to the hollow expose Little Tree to supposed Cherokee ways and "mountain people" values. Encounters with outsiders, including "the law," "politicians," "guv'mint," city "slickers," and "Christians" of various types add to Little Tree's lessons, each phrased and repeated in catchy ways.

The state eventually forces Little Tree into a residential school, where he stays for a few months. At the school, Little Tree suffers from the prejudice and ignorance of the school's caretakers toward Indians and the natural world. Little Tree is rescued when his grandparents' Native American friend Willow John notices his unhappiness and demands Little Tree be withdrawn from the school.

 

Vocabulario

Hollow: A hollow is a small valley or dry stream bed.

 

Moonshine: Moonshine was originally a slang term for high-proof distilled spirits that were and continue to be produced illicitly, without government authorization.

 

Excerpts

… Ma lasted a year after Pa was gone. That´s how I came to live with Granpa and Granma when I was five years old.

The kinfolks have raised some mortal fuss about it, according to Granma, after the funeral.

There in the gullied backyard of our hillside shack, they had stood around in a group and thrashed it out proper as to where I was to go, while they divided up the painted bedstead and the table and chairs.

Granpa had not said anything. He stood back at the edge of the yard, on the fringe of the crowd, and Granma stood behind him. Granpa was half Cherokee and Granma full blood.

He stood above the rest of the folks; tall, six-foot-four with his big, black hat and shiny, black suit that was only worn to church and funerals. Granma had kept her eyes to the ground, but Granpa had looked at me, over the crowd, and so I had edged to him across th yard and held onto his leg and wouldn`t turn loose even when they tried to take me away.

Grandma said I didn`t holler one bit, nor cry, just held on; and after a long time, them tugging and me holding, Grandpa had reached down and placed his big hand on my head.

“Leave him be,” he had said. And so they left me be. Grandpa seldom spoke in a crowd, but when he did, Granma said, folks listened.

We walked down the hillside in the dark winter afternoon and onto the road that led into town. Granpa led the way down the side of the road, my clothes slung over his shoulder in a tow sack. I learned right off that when you walked behind Granpa, you trotted; and Granma, behind me, occasionally lifted her skirts to keep up.

When we reached the sidewalks in town, we walked the same way, Granpa leading, until we came to the back of the bus station. We stood there for a long time; Granma reading the lettering on the front of the buses as they came and went. Granpa said that Granma could read fancy as anybody. She picked out our bus, right on the nose, just as dusk dark was settin´in.

We waited until all the people were on the bus, and it was a good thing, because trouble set up the minute we set foot inside the door. Granpa led the way, me in the middle and Granma was standing on the lower step, just inside the door. Granpa pulled his snap-purse from his forward pants pocket and stood ready to pay.

“Where`s your ticket?” the bus driver said real loud, and everybody in the bus set up to take notice of us. This didn´t bother Granpa one bit. He told the bus driver we stood ready to pay, and Granma whispered from behind me for Granpa to tell where we were going. Granpa told him.

The bus driver told Granpa how much it was and while Granpa counted out the money real careful –for the light wasn´t good to count by- the bus driver turned around to the crowd in the bus and lifted his right hand and said, “How!” and laughed, and all the people laughed. I felt better about it, knowing they was friendly and didn´t take offense because we didn´t have a ticket.

Then we walked to the back of the bus and I noticed a sick lady. She was unnatural black all around he reyes and her mouth was red all over from blood; but as we passed, she put a hand over her mouth and took it off and hollered real loud, “Wa…hoo!” But I figured the pain must have passed right quick, becaused she laughed, and everybody else laughed. The man sitting beside her was laughing too and he slapped his leg. He had a big shiny pin on his tie, so I knew they was rich and could get a doctor if they needed one.

I sat in the middle between Granma and Granpa, and Granma reached across and patted Granpa on the hand, and he held her hand across my lap. It felt good, and so I slept.

It was deep into the night when we got off the bus on the side of a gravel road. Granpa set off walking, me and Granma behind. It was cracking cold. The moon was out, like half of a fat watermelon, and silvering the road ahead until it curved out of sight.

It wasn´t until we turned off the road, onto wagon ruts with grass in the middle, that I noticed the mountains. Dark and shadowed, they were with the half-moon right atop a ridge that lifted so high it bent your head back to look. I shivered at the blankness of the mountains.

Granma spoke from behind me, “Wales, he`s tiring out” Granpa stopped and turned. He looked down at me and the big hat shadowed his face.

“It´s better to wear out when ye´ve lost something,” he said. He turned and set off again, but now it was easier to keep up. Granpa had slowed down, so I figured he was tired too.

After a long time, we turned off the wagon ruts onto the foot trail and headed dead set into the mountains…

 

Para saber

Literary forgery (also known as literary hoax) is writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work, which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or is a purported memoir or other presumably nonfictional writing deceptively presented as true when, in fact, it presents untrue or imaginary information. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was an antisemitic forged document first published in Russia. The abridged version was available to the public in 1903. The document was exposed as plagiarism by English journalist Philip Graves in 1921.

 

Discrimination in America: Native American Experiences

How do Native Americans experience discrimination in daily life? A new poll reveals that more than a third of Native Americans and their family members have experienced slurs and violence, and close to a third have faced discrimination in the workplace and when interacting with police. The poll also reveals that Native Americans who live in majority-Native areas are significantly more likely to experience this kind of discrimination.

 

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… en los 50s, 18 presos negros en una prisión en Georgia rompieron sus piernas con martillos para llamar la atención sobre las condiciones en que vivían… Sobre los derechos civiles

 

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