Should we still teach a beautiful novel by a racist author?

Peter Admirand1

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Abstract This article is about a beautiful book by a not so beautiful (racist, in fact)author, Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree (1976). I will first reflect on theusually fraught (and sometimes cosy) relationship of literature and morality. I then willgive a flavor of the moral fiber of Carter’s novel and then turn to some darkerundercurrents, examining whether they intersect with the value of the work, whetherwe need them to intersect, and whether they ultimately submerge any initial judgmentsof the book. The core issue is how and whether to continue to teach such works asworthy and beautiful literature despite deeply disturbing facts about the authors of suchworks. Finally, as we often have personal connections to our favorite books, howshould such connections factor in while choosing whether to teach such works even ifnow aware of their problematic legacies?

Keywords Racism . Native Americans . Education of little tree . Moral responsibility

Morality and/or literature

The controversy about Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree is not new, broughtto national attention, especially through Dan T. Carter’s 1991 opinion piece in The NewYork Times,1 but the moral and aesthetic clash upon reading the novel and facing theauthor’s demons still raise important questions for teachers and academics in the fieldsof literature, philosophy, theology, and religious studies. The key word at stake is moralresponsibility. At what point can, and should, moral responsibility trump any aestheticvalue or pleasure? Or rather, how can and should we hold these tensions together—andalso know when to let go?

International Journal of Ethics EducationDOI 10.1007/s40889-017-0042-2

1See also (Carter 1991; Teacher 1992).

* Peter AdmirandPeter.admirand@dcu.ie

1 Dublin City University, DCU All Hallows Campus, Senior House S106, Drumcondra, Dublin 9D09N920, Ireland

Much of this process involves discerning the relationship, if any, between moralityand literature. Such a relationship, of course, is a long and tangled one. We all knowwhat Plato feared about poets, and who can forget the burning and index-forbidding ofbooks deemed morally or politically dangerous, from the bonfires destroying Talmudicscrolls in thirteenth century Paris to the Nazi conflagrations in Berlin, to the imprison-ment, torture, and murder of artists and writers in Soviet Russia, Communist China, andother despotic regimes and systems?

So, too, are most of us aware of the ancient Horatian claim that literature shouldinstruct and delight and Samuel Johnson’s chastising of Shakespeare on someaccounts for his not properly executing the latter requirement, claiming Shake-speare ‘sacrifices virtue, and is so much more careful to please than instruct, that heseems to write without any moral purpose.’2 In times of religious crisis or decline,though, literature and the artist as poet and priest have been elevated to religiousstatus, from Blake and Whitman to post-Darwinian movements trying to findmeaning in a so-called godless world.3

More recently, the power of literature to induce compassion and awareness of theOther has been lauded and praised, giving literature a moralizing cloak and boon,especially pedagogically. Amos Oz, for example, in ‘The Devil’s Progress’ highlightshow reading can open vistas and ports towards other ways of living and perceiving.Such encounters can help transform and realign the world, as some Other deemeddangerous or evil or sinner or inhuman is suddenly rendered as flesh and blood; likeme, but not me.4 For Oz, his previous reading of German authors helped to complicateunderstandably anti-German venom after the Shoah, which rendered all Germansequally guilty (although Primo Levi’s celebrated ‘grey zone’ would seem more fairand accurate). Regardless, for Oz, literature’s ability to help us imagine and empathizewith another is in many ways its cathartic and moral force. Such power is especiallypresent when readers are called to make judgements and critiques of characters—andauthor’s actions or inactions—descriptions or silences.

In David Mikics’ Slow Reading in a Hurried Age,5 he rightfully wants to cultivatepatience in readers (rule 1), in giving writers time to develop and hone their points. Notenough, however, is said of the need to judge (which should be an added rule to thefifteen he provides). Thus, patience and trust in the author must be balanced by healthyskepticism and ethical evaluation. Judgement and moral critique of works of art,eventually, should be rendered. Sometimes, related to, but beyond the written page,real lives—or the flourishing of those lives—are at stake. Relevant examples (notdiscussed by Mikics) include reading Heidegger without commenting on his unrepen-tant Nazi past, or the silence of colonized voices and perspectives as illustrated bypostcolonial critiques of novels like Emma.

2 (Johnson 2009).3 See, for example, (Eagleton 2014; Watson 2014).4 (Oz 2005). Steven Pinker makes a similar argument for what he calls the ‘Humanitarian Revolution’ in(Pinker 2011). In the context of pedagogy, see for example, (Epstein 1986; Matsumura et al. 1996).Throughout 2013 and 2014, the issue was particularly live in various mainstream periodicals and newspapers.See, for example, (Moya 2014; Currie 2013; Paul 2013; Prior 2013). For helpful anthologies and essays onmorality and literature, see (George 2005; Pojman and Vaughn 2013; Cohen 2009).5 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).

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Also recall Simone Weil’s argument that reading patiently and carefully entailshumility and deep attention that can be morally and spiritually fruitful in forging ayoung child or scholar’s character. Such attention to the page, Weil argues, is relatedand linked to our attention towards God, and as importantly, to our fellow humanbeings who may need us. In her typically startling and razor-sharp prose, she remarksthat even if we err while translating a piece of Latin or in trying to solve a geometryproblem, there is value if we do so while sincerely seeking a higher good beyond ourown immediate desires and wants. She thus writes: ‘Should the occasion arise, they canone day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required tosave him, at the supreme moment of his need.’ 6 Weil could benefit from Mikics’reading as one of primarily pleasure and joy, but her idealistic and moral hopes couldstrengthen and deepen that potential joy and pleasure. Such a need for moral reading isespecially relevant since the boon in testimony and memoirs of mass atrocity. Thisentails not only discerning the real from the fake (Binjamin Wilkomirski case7), but inbalancing the aesthetic praise deserved upon works by Primo Levi and Elie Wieselwithout ignoring their call for the world to act because of such witnessing and writing.8

While we should promote the robust value of free speech and the need for intercul-tural and interfaith dialogue, there still comes the issue of whether and how a reader hasmoral responsibility in buying, reading, and promoting what they read. This is espe-cially the case for those of us as educators and academics, but more generally as parentsor as citizens of our pluralist, multicultural and multireligious societies. This, too, is notnew from questions and controversies surrounding novels like Huckleberry Finn andwhether they should be taught in classrooms today, but is an issue still worth examiningand working out some of the contradictions, blind spots, and moral failures that remain.

The need for moral vision and attentive moral listening and reading are needed morethan ever, not only in the context of our expansive and chaotic social media, butparticularly after the morally disastrous presidential campaign in the United States. Weneed no detailed reminders of a President who has uttered or insinuated racist, anti-Semitic, and Islamophobic comments, but we cannot forgot that such comments wereuttered, and contributed to, an ever-more fractured ethnic landscape with rising levels—or what are finally being noticed levels, of racial crimes of hatred and indifference,predominantly against poor black and Latino men.9

For our context, lost in much of the dialogue and soul-searching, as always, is theongoing plight and marginalization of Native Americans. A novel, then, initiallydeemed to be written by a Cherokee man which contains a deep, moral message ofhope and solidarity with the poor and the downtrodden, would seem to be the kindof book we should still praise and promote in our classrooms, our book clubs, andour homes.

6 (Weil 1977).7 See, for example, (Langer 2006; Ozick 2006; Suleiman 2006).8 The field of testimony studies owes much to (Felman and Laub 1992). See also (Young 1990; Langer 1991;Caruth 1996; Cubilié 2005; Waxman 2006; Wieviorka 2006; Goldenberg and Millen 2007; Stover 2007;Matthäus 2009; Crownshaw et al. 2010; Glowacka 2012; Admirand 2012; Rowland and Kirby 2014; Shenker2015).9 See, for example, (Alexander 2012; Goffman 2014; Duck 2015; Stevenson 2014; Coates 2015;Desmond 2016).

Should we still teach a beautiful novel by a racist author?

On (1994)—and off (2007)—Oprah’s list

On a first reading, The Education of Little Tree seems more than deserving of its bestseller accolades and initial place on Oprah Winfrey’s book list. Told from the perspec-tive of a five-year old, half-Cherokee boy who comes to live with his Cherokeegrandparents 10 after the death of his own parents during the Depression (1930, p.66), it sparkles with humor, wisdom, poignancy, and life. The core of the book is theeducation Little Tree receives by his grandparents, an education suffused with love andrespect of nature, practical learning, and reading classical works from ‘Mr Shakespeare’and the Bible – against the later cruel, racist education forced upon Little Tree after hewas kidnapped by government workers and stuck in a government school.

In the book’s opening scene, Little Tree is boarding the bus with his grandparentsafter he has just been placed under their custody.

‘Where’s your tickets?’ the bus driver said real loud, and everybody in the bus setup to take notice of us. This didn’t bother Granpa one bit. He told the bus driverwe stood ready to pay, and Granma whispered from behind me for Granpa to tellwhere we were going. Granpa told him.

The bus driver told Granpa how much it was and while Granpa counted out themoney real careful–for the light wasn’t good to count by-the bus driver turnedaround to the crowd in the bus and lifted his right hand and said, ‘How!’ andlaughed, and all the people laughed. I felt better about it, knowing they wasfriendly 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 wasunnatural black all around her eyes 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 realloud, ‘Wa ... hooo!’ But I figured the pain must have passed right quick, becauseshe laughed, and everybody else laughed. The man sitting beside her waslaughing too and he slapped his leg. He had a big shiny pin on his tie, so I knewthey was rich and could get a doctor if they needed one.

I sat in the middle between Granma and Granpa, and Granma reached across andpatted Granpa on the hand, and he held her hand across my lap. It felt good, andso I slept (pp. 2-3).

Racism abounds in the passage but Little Tree (not yet named as such in thenovel) is shielded from it through his innocence and by the character and integrityof his grandparents. As he never saw makeup, he deems eye shadow and lipstick tobe a sign of illness and wounds. Having a pin on a tie must mean you are rich.Movingly, Little Tree is concerned about the woman, but feels better when shelaughed, though he didn’t know she and the other white people on the bus werelaughing at him and his grandparents.

10 Little Tree remarks that: ‘Granpa was half Scot, but he thought Indian’ (Carter 1993).

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As the reader will soon find out, Granpa is tough, fiery, and independent, but heknows better than to cause any undue harm to his grandchild, already having borne somuch. He also has the quiet, secure love and understanding of Granma, here repre-sented in her reaching out to Granpa amidst the insults and racist barbs. Silentlysuffering such indignities, but with Granpa raging, Granma assures him with a pat onhis hand, implying: ‘This will pass. It will be ok. Keep calm for his sake.’ Little Treeonly sees that his grandparents seem happy (they are not of course in light of theirtreatment) and so he is happy. And he is able to sleep. It is one of many examples in thenovel where the reader has to infer between the lines, as Little Tree, because of hisyouth, is what we traditionally call an unreliable narrator (a term that takes on adifferent and double meaning with knowledge of the author’s full biography).

On one level, therefore, we have a child narrator, or rather an adult narrator telling hisstory from the perspective of himself as a child, juxtaposed with an author pretending tobe that narrator in real life. More problematically, the then living author was trying todistance and reinvent himself from one of his crafted personae, in Carter’s case, as aKlansman and avid segregationist writing major speeches for George Wallace. Thepassage above depicts white Americans at their most vile and racist tendencies, partic-ularly in the context of an orphaned boy and his elderly grandparents, marginal andoutnumbered because of their ethnicity (Cherokee) and low economic class. Yet, theauthor was (or remained) an inveterate anti-Black,White supremacist. At the same time,the passage can be used to highlight and condemn such stereotypes and racism, with thecourageous portrayal of Granpa, the tenderness of Granma, and the kindness andinnocence of Little Tree exposing the shallow and empty racism of the white peopleon the bus. These would be some of the same kinds of white people who would slur theirinvectives against black individuals. Who, then, is holding up the mirror to whom?

A love of wisdom, the spirit, and one another

Again, how should educators and other morally discerning readers now respond to suchtexts knowing these full disclosures, and pulled by emotional, sentimental, or aestheticattachment on the one hand, and genuine moral distaste with its author’s links on the other?

Let me first present a case for why such a book should still be valued, and sohighlighting four representative passages that reveal a love and wisdom of nature, theSpirit, and one another. Can such passages, and really the novel as a whole, annul ordisinvest the hatred and subterfuge of the actual author? Again, to what extent are wecalled to be disinterested readers, principally concerned with being entertained orinstructed, valuing beauty at the cost of moral silence?11

After the death of one of their dogs, Ol Ringer, Little Tree comments:

I felt total bad about it, and empty. Granpa said he knew how I felt, for he wasfeeling the same way. But Granpa said everything you lost which you had loved

11 I want to thank my colleague Kit Fryatt in the School of English at DCU who cautioned me against thenotion of the ‘wise, noble Savage’motif that is in itself also a racist trope. She also helpfully pointed me to thework of T.H. White and Gavin Maxwell.

Should we still teach a beautiful novel by a racist author?

give you that feeling. He said the only way round it was not to love anything,which was worse because you would feel empty all the time.…

He said it was a funny thing, but when you got old and remembered them youloved, you only remembered the good, never the bad, which proved the baddidn’t count nohow (p. 78).

Perhaps in writing those lines, part of Carter hoped that would be so. The passageis characteristically warm and moving, showing profound insight into our need forlove despite the reality of impending loss. While echoing Tennyson’s oft-repeatedline from ‘In Memoriam’—BTis better to have loved and lost than never to haveloved it all’ —it still feels fresh and poignant because it, too, is a specific loss, herecoming from an orphaned child’s tangible experience. Little Tree is also entering aworld that for all intents and purposes will soon be lost, too.12 As such, it becomesadvice all the more wise and relevant. Also important is the reminder of why suchloss is felt and a call to remember and celebrate the good, in this case Ol’ Ringer’sfidelity. Granpa saying you forget the bad about those you love is certainly not truein every case, but is common enough. With Carter as the narrator, as noted, the linebecomes particularly intriguing.

In another moving passage, Little Tree encounters a poor little girl and her familywho picked cotton. After Little Tree told Granma about her, she later made the girlmoccasins and had Little Tree give them to her. The girl loved them but when her fatherfound out, she was whipped with a persimmon branch. He then stormed at Granpa and‘poked’ the moccasins at Little Tree, saying: ‘We’uns don’t take no charity …fromnobody …and especial heathen savages!’ (p. 97).

Granpa told Little Tree he ‘didn’t bear the sharecropper no ill will. Granpa saidhe reckined that pride was all he had …however misplaced. He said the fellerfiggered he couldn’t let the little girl, ner any of his young’uns, come to lovepretty things for they couldn’t have them.’ Granpa later told Little Tree he hadonce seen another Sharecropper act similarly and ‘then the feller set down againstthe barn, where nobody could see him, and he cried. Granpa said he seen that andhe knowed’ (p. 97).

Granpa’s sensitivity to and empathy for the sharecroppers, whom ‘folks that didn’tunderstand called ‘shiftless’ which Granpa said was another damn word, like callingthem ‘irresponsible,’– fer having so many young’uns – which they had to do’ (93)highlight the lessons of forgiveness and holding back judgement that is so crucial toLittle Tree’s education. Where resentment or justified anger could have been theresponse, Granpa tries to see the world from the sharecropper’s perspective—and isdeeply sympathetic to those poor whites, who have historically been degraded anddenounced with varyingly offensive names.13 Such, of course, resembles the prejudiceagainst African Americans, which Carter played a key role in fomenting and

12 (Linderman 2003). See also the story of the great Chief of the Crow nation, Plenty Coup (also told toLindeman) in (Linderman 2002) and his analysis of what Jonathan Lear calls Plenty-Coup’s ‘radical hope’ in(Lear 2006).13 The best portrait of such groups remains (Agee 2001); but see also (Isenberg 2016; Vance 2016) in ‘TheOriginal Underclass: Waste People. Rubbish. Clay-eaters. Hillbillies. Reckoning with the long, bleak historyof the country’s white poor.’ The Atlantic. 90–102. September 2016 issue.

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articulating. Granpa’s words, though, could easily be used to defend any group, and soagain, could Carter have touched on this sense of deep compassion but always meant toexclude black people?

In another relevant passage, Granma warns Little Tree about people who lose theirspirit mind by focusing only on the body-living mind: ‘That’s how you become deadpeople. Granma said you could easy spot dead people. She said dead people when theylooked at a woman saw nothing but dirty; when they looked at other people, they sawnothing but bad; when they looked at a tree they saw nothing but lumber and profit;never beauty. Granma said they was dead people walking around’ (p. 60). For the spiritmind to grow, understanding was crucial, in fact ‘understanding and love was the samething; except folks went at it back’ards too many times, trying to pretend they lovedthings when they didn’t understand them. Which can’t be done’ (p. 60). Is Carterunconsciously calling himself a ‘dead’ – or now resurrected person?

Wisdom in the novel is bequeathed equally by both Granma and Granpa to LittleTree, with the former having a more stable and wide-ranging role. She has deepknowledge of both the Cherokee and Western Ways and so is often the one teachingboth Little Tree and Granpa. Her knowledge is thus both bookish and native, in boththe natural and indigenous contexts. From Plato through the Gnostics and many majorearly Christian thinkers up until the movements of change post-Vatican II and in JohnPaul II’s theology of the body (not to mention key feminist voices and texts), the bodywas often deemed sinful through lust and animal craving, with the woman as temptress,luring and sullying the soul.14 This is emblematic in Granma’s comment that somepeople saw nothing but ‘dirty’ when they saw a woman. A different image of the deadin life—not the walking dead popularized in zombie films and television, or the horrorsof the Shoah,15 these are individuals only out for profit, who only see what is of use tothem, and their desires. They are the dead: soulless. Carter the Klansman and segrega-tionist again resurfaces with questions still unanswered: how can he see a black personand only see the vile—and not become soulless in doing so?

The key, as garnered in all these examples, is to understand: to watch and to listen, toobserve. With such understanding come the roots and possibility of love. Of courseunderstanding can also mean to see what is vile and wrong—and these cannot be loved.Ultimately, such understanding and love are rooted in history and memory.

The past sometimes contains forgotten resources to guide and aid a lost present orgives direction or support for the future. Such speaks to why we need to delve intohistory and to know our past. Granpa tells Little Tree: ‘If ye don’t know the past, thenye will not have a future. If ye don’t know where your people have been, then ye won’tknow where your people are going.’ Little Tree then learns of the life of his grandpar-ents and great grandparents and of the Cherokee people, and in particular the Trail ofTears, so named: ‘Not because the Cherokee cried; for he did not. They called it theTrail of Tears for it sounds romantic and speaks of the sorrow of those who stood by theTrail. A death march is not romantic.

14 The literature is vast, but see for example, (Johnson 1992; Isherwood and McEwan 2016; McPhillips andIsherwood 2016; Pui-Lan 2010; Briggs and Fulkerson 2014) On (Paul 1997).15 In the context of the Shoah, see, for example, (Delbo 1995) and for a reflection of the so-called Muselmann,see (Agamben 2008) and especially his inclusion of testimonies from those identified as ‘former’Muselmann,166–171. For the problems of using the term Muselmann, see Hussein Rashid’s review of (Hussein 2014).

Should we still teach a beautiful novel by a racist author?

‘You cannot write poetry about the death-stiffened baby in his mother’s arms, staringat the jolting sky with eyes that will not close; while his mother walks….

It would not be a beautiful song. And so they called it The Trail of Tears’ (p. 42).In lyrical prose that ironically accomplishes what the narrator said is impossible,

Carter paints in moving detail the exploitation of the Cherokee people by the ‘govern-ment soldiers.’ Notice the various interpretations of the events: the victor names thesuffering experienced by the Cherokee but cannot do so in triumphal terms because ofthe virtues and heroism displayed by the people on the march. When wagons wereprovided, still the Cherokee refused to use them for everything was taken from them,but they ‘would not let the wagons steal his soul.’ And so:

‘As they passed the villages of the white man, people lined the trail to watchthem pass. At first, they laughed at how foolish was the Cherokee. TheCherokee did not turn his head at their laughter, and soon there was nolaughter’ (p. 41).

Here the moral fidelity of a people’s identity, maintained despite suffering andbetrayal, is remembered in the name the oppressors render this event. It cannot beeuphemized as advancement, progress, or victory. Little Tree’s lesson is clear, not onlyabout the failures and hypocrisy of the US government’s treatment of the NativeAmerican people but how there is hope in truth being known through honesty andfidelity to identity and values.

As story, these tales are empowering and cathartic. Such cherished wisdom shineswith ample tenderness and feeling, and perhaps, knowing such came from a troubled,racist, and violent man, need not diminish its value.

Love and the KKK

Mention the author Forrest Carter, writer of those above passages, and there isbound to be some disagreement. At the least, did such a person ever really exist,having been irrefutably linked to be Asa Earl Carter (sometimes known as (‘Ace’),a racist and hate-monger? For those like me who read Carter’s novels beforereading about the disclosure of Carter’s double life, how should we re-read, orrather, should we boycott such works as form of protest and solidarity with theauthor’s victims? Again, how can we celebrate a so-called iconic novel of humilityand tolerance when the author was the antithesis of such ideals? Contemporaryreaders can see this most clearly in Douglass Newman’s 2013 documentary, TheReconstruction of Forrest Carter which highlights Carter’s ties to the KKK andGovernor Wallace. The images and video reels depict a crusading, anti-black, anti-Jew, pro-segregationist demagogue. In a radio broadcast from 2014, public radiodocumentarian Joe Richman admits how his own daughters love Carter’s book andhe is debating when to tell them about the author. He remarks: ‘Whatever ForrestCarter believed in his heart of hearts, it’s safe to say this is a book that Asa Carterwould have hated.’16 With such awareness of the author’s biography, can one still

16 (Blumberg and Richman 2014).

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deem a work of his morally beautiful and enriching and still (contra OprahWinfrey) promote it to others? Further muddying the waters, how does one’sown ethnic background play into such claims? Knowing the history of genocidecommitted against Native Americans, as forcefully captured in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of The United States,17 among other works,to what extent can such a work still be promoted, especially among those of uswho are not Native American, let alone Black or Jewish? Should our religious,ethnic, or national identities factor in such conflicts, demanding sensitivity andempathy in light of past moral failures by European Americans, in particular, ordoes such blanket labelling render an injustice to those born after such events,even if they may still benefit from certain kinds of privilege?

It is commonplace, of course, to separate the art from the artist: if we only enjoyedworks of art and literature from individuals who tick every one of our moral or purityexpectations, we would be left with few pieces to admire. Caravaggio created some ofhis most haunting and beautiful paintings (many of the life of Christ) while on the runfrom an alleged murder he committed. The more we delve and expose an author orartist’s life, the more we often can find to disparage, condemn, and censure. For somecritics the artistic product is all that ultimately matters and one should not require moralsaints and paragons in the fields of literature or art. To some extent, I agree.

More prosaically, take the relatively harmless novels of Charles Dickens, steepedwith moral platitudes and his ethical and social agendas. Most of these remainpraiseworthy, such as his critiques of child labor or of the ‘Yorkshire Schools (inNicholas Nickleby18) which led to laws protecting children. Yet, Dickens, the moralcrusader and rebuker of others’ sins, is deemed in a different light when we consider hispoor treatment of his first wife, Catherine Hogarth.19 Perhaps what makes Dickens’behavior inexcusable is because he rarely hesitated to denounce the immorality ofothers. Hypocrisy, pride, and arrogance are thus on vivid display. Likewise, considerCarter changing his name and playing the Native American guru, a full-grown LittleTree. There are at least two divisions here: in one case an artist not claiming orpretending to be some holy or moral crusader while still managing to produce aestheticand morally uplifting or challenging works. Then there is an artist pretending to besome moral embodiment or spokesperson but steeped in hidden hypocrisies and lies.The latter is obviously worse, but both examples should leave us hesitant and confused.

As a theologian involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue, I virtually shy away from thewritings of Martin Heidegger, for example, and have consistently rebuked authors whoestablish their moral foundational premise, especially in terms of our relations with oneanother, via Heidegger. Here I am most persuaded by Jewish theologian DavidPatterson or the more recent depiction of Heidegger in such works as Yvonne Sherratt’sHitler’s Philosophers.20 But the truth is in part, that having come to Heidegger’s textsafter deeper knowledge of Heidegger the unrepentant Nazi (at least in any convincingway) I carry little sentimental impulse or bias to try to reclaim or re-salvage him.Arguments that he is one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century unmove

17 Beacon Press, 2015, 1.18 (Ford 2003).19 See (Tóibín 2013). For a sympathetic account of Catherine Hogarth, see (Nayder 2012).20 See, for example, (Patterson 1997; Sherratt 2013).

Should we still teach a beautiful novel by a racist author?

me. Perhaps if I had come to his texts first, but then at issue here is what the artists areclaiming and attempting to do and whether such attempts or claims cannot be discon-nected from their autobiographical stories. To be candid, though, our personal stories asreaders and thinkers are often intertwined within our own encounters with such works. Iam clearly biased in the case of Carter’s novels, as I am with the Gospel of Mark(formulated through the political and liberation readings of Ched Myers21) despite someconvincing claims by Jewish (and Catholic) theologians highlighting an anti-Judaictendency in Mark.22 Here, perhaps, is why.

Generational learning from little tree

My mother had given me The Education of Little Tree while I was in high school in theearly 90s. Then more apt to kick a soccer ball than read, the novel grasped my attentionwith humor, poetry, and tragedy. I went on to read Carter’s other books, also enjoyingWatch for Me on the Mountain: A Novel of Geronimo and the Apache Nation (1978). Aphoto I still have depicts my then 93-year old Grandma from Templeboy, Sligo readingthat same copy of Little Tree while we were vacationing together in 1997. I stillremember her laughing out loud at certain points, especially when Little Tree wastrying to plow the fields, with her remarking: ‘that’s how it was,’ recalling an experi-ence she had as a child back in Ireland. Here is the passage, marked in my book withthe marginalia ‘Grandma…’

I had to push up on the handles to make the plow point go into the ground; and sobetween the pulling down and the pushing up, I learned to keep my chin awayfrom the crossbar between the handles, for I was getting continual licks that joltedme pretty bad’ (p. 48).

I can still hear her laughing: these are happy memories, but the more one hears ofCarter, even these memories can be tainted. But should they be, or to what extent,should they be so tainted?

Ethical reading and teaching

After his political career had ended (a career dependent upon his support ofsegregation), Asa Earl Carter went into seclusion in the mid-seventies. Literaryfame, though, would arrive with the publication of The Outlaw Josie Wales (and amovie based on the novel starring Clint Eastwood). The author of that book wascalled Forrest Carter who also presented himself as a Native American guru, laterclaiming Little Tree was autobiographical when that novel was published. ManyNative American advocates and leaders discredited Carter and corrected his por-trayal of Native American ways. But the novel still sold. Truth be told, after

21 See (Myers 2010).22 See, for example, (Cook 2008; Cunningham 2015).

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discovering Carter’s real origins, I defensively sought to prove a change in his laterlife, originally looking to General George Crook, Indian fighter-turned Indianadvocate, who appears in Carter’s last novel, Watch for me on the Mountain. Wouldnot he be the perfect symbol, if not proof, of Carter’s change? Yet such a claim, asAmy Kallioe Bollman e-mailed to me, is muddled in insupportable and contradic-tory evidence. Parallels between the two remain, though, and why Carter presentsCrook in a favorable light deserves deeper investigation.

One aim of Carter is certainly clear: like WC Williams in In the American Grain,Carter seeks to resuscitate lost, hidden history, the history of the defeated that has beencast through the victor’s lens. In Watch for me on the Mountain, Carter writes: ‘Theheroic struggle of the Apaches, a people with no political history, no financial influ-ence, and no friends in the press, is missing from the pages of history. Yet this struggleof a small group of people resisting the attempts of two powerful governments toenslave and exterminate them is unmatched in history’ (p. 19923).

Carter thus seeks to reinscribe the ‘missing pages’ of history through his fictional-ized novel that on the surface seems to speak from the point of the omniscient and toacknowledge that the only fiction, the only lies, come from the US Army or thegovernment. The narrator writes: ‘The record shows clearly that on every occasionwhen the Apaches were so treated, they returned unquestioned honor and fairness.Sadly the record of the US Army falls short of the Apaches’ (p. 227). Carter’suncompromising position allows for no other alternative, and so appoints his ownversion, his history replete with formerly missing pages, as the only authentic one.

Carter’s life, for a time, also seemed to have missing pages. As LawrenceClayton writes: ‘His explanation of the years prior to 1973 was always vague andincluded references to working at various odd jobs as he lived a vagabond life. Inshort, he told a story that would support the image he sought to project: a poorlyeducated, part-Cherokee Indian itinerant who had been reared by his Cherokeegrandparents in the mountains of Tennessee.’24 Then his real past slowly surfaced.Henry Louis Gates writes, ‘far from being a native Cherokee and Storyteller-in-Council to the Cherokee Nations, [Carter] was a Ku Klux Klan terrorist, a right-wing radio announcer, home- grown American fascist, anti-Semite, rabble-rousingdemagogue and secret author of the famous 1963 speech of Governor GeorgeWallace of Alabama, BSegregation tomorrow! Segregation for ever!^ 25 Sidesremain open for dispute, including the gamut of excuses and explanations on bothsides, but Bollman perhaps expresses the controversy best: ‘Just as there is noBproof^ that Carter wrote for Wallace or that he led a Klavern, there is no Bproof^that he underwent any profound philosophical changes.’

Even Carter’s death is clouded in a bit of mystery but the dominant version says itended with a drunken brawl with his son while slurring racial epithets. Somewhere,Carter sought to hide his earlier lifestyle (or continue the battle through writing as somehave argued), who never admitted the past that was proved indisputable, and who likemany writers and artists before him, could express a beautiful poignancy in their artwhile also demonizing others with their personal demons. Carter’s book, in my hands

23 (New York: Random House, 1990).24 (Clayton 1986).25 (Gates 1991).

Should we still teach a beautiful novel by a racist author?

now, and also its image in my memory, having been held tenderly by the hands of mythen ninety –three year old Grandma as we each smile for the camera, is one I stillcherish. And yet–.

A mixed verdict

Even now, after 20 years have passed since my first reading of the novel and 25 yearsafter Dan T Carter’s irrefutable case linking Asa Carter and Forrest Carter, I stilltreasure the book and look forward to reading it to my own children. But sooner, ratherthan later, there will have to be an explanation and it will start with a reminder thathaunted, broken people, battling hatred and rage, can create something beautiful. Andmaybe there is hope in that notion, and also maybe a lesson: because all of us arehaunted and broken in some way, and even in striving to create beauty can proliferatethe muck.

As a theologian, I contend that the book remains a rich repository of wisdom andguidance for the care of nature and of one another, so that I can affirm that one’s life isenriched by encountering Little Tree, Granma, Granpa, Willow John, and Pine Billyand other memorable characters. And so, in the Spring of 2017, I included it again inmy postgraduate course, BLiterature and Theology: Intersections, Bridges, and Gaps.^Because of the tension and ambiguity of the issues at stake, I did not require purchaseof the novel but provided ample pages in advance on our private class page. Never-theless, one student was visibly angry with me for including the book in the course,showing me pictures of her adopted African children, and saying she had innocentlypaid for an e-version of the book, and should have known in advance about the author.Note that I had instructed the students, if possible, not to read up on the bio of theauthor before reading the book, in part to have them read the work with an unbiasedpoint of view (as I once had) before then hearing the biographical details in class.Whether I do so again is unlikely, though I still affirm the value in the work.

Nevertheless, this affirmation entails a responsibility: an awareness and call toteach against the deep hatred and bigotry that sullies its author’s reputation and theharm such doctrines unleash. It demands we grapple with that negative legacy, notmerely to evaluate one haunted and broken creator, but also ourselves and oursociety, and our tendency for hypocrisy and doubling (confer Robert Lifton andmuch work on Nazi concentration guards who could be kind at home) that we arealso culpable. Literature is not morally neutral, and while a certain separation of theartist and the art can occur and is needed, such separation can never be total, for insilencing or hiding a creator’s known moral failures (and here we are not referringto the minor infractions of all of us), one is implicitly condoning them. But tosilence completely a beautiful text because of an author’s moral failing is alsowrong. The middle way, or Aristotelian mean, is often messy and ambivalent(especially if it can reconcile the good elements at each extreme view), but is alsooften the most authentic path. So place or keep The Education of Little Tree on yourcourse outlines or Recommended Book Lists but also be prepared for the deep,important moral discussion that will arise when the story of its author is revealed,and with the wisdom and moral vision of Granpa, Granma, and Little Tree to guideand help in condemning and challenging such hatred.

Admirand P.

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