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Are there taboos in
children's literature? To my mind the answer would be a yes and a no. If the question
means do taboos exist in children's literature then yes they do. If the
question is should there be taboos in children's literature then my answer
as one involved with and concerned about children's books is a definite no.
The
taboos that are imposed on children's books are
often culture specific as what is acceptable in one culture is
seen as unacceptable in another. One of our authors, well-known story-teller
Cathy Spagnoli says, "American publishers are very touchy about body
functions, the Japanese are not at all (our own folklore is very similar
though unlike the Japanese our children's books are sanitised versions --- a
fallout of our accepting western norms and making them our own). Japanese
children's books have for years included folktales with references to
excrement, urine and so on. They have even brought out two delightful
picture books on these two functions; these have been translated into
English and are so popular! I used to be fascinated as a teller in Japan to
watch other tellers, often elegant librarians or stiff-looking businessmen,
tell tale after tale about passing gas and how urine became a river, etc.
Audiences loved them and took them all in so naturally. I could never do
that HERE (in the US where she lives). The few times I've tried such tales
I've had school principals give me a talking to."
Vayu
Naidu, another Tulika author and founder of a storytelling theatre in
Birmingham, published a series of children's books with BBC's Channel 4
about a calf called Biswas. There were objections to one of her books
because it opened with the mother of little Biswas dying. Death
in a children's book was taboo especially when it did not happen to a wicked
character in the story. In contrast, our traditional stories for
even the very young deal with death in a most natural manner.
Strangely,
as we have discovered in our interactions with foreign publishers, taboos
are not restricted to content and theme of books but even to styles of
illustrations and colour. Anyone who has worked with children
knows how naturally and easily they absorb what seems alien and strange to
adults. In the Indian context all of us who have grown up reading stories of
elves and fairies, scones and ginger ale, oak trees and toadstools know how
we have accepted and loved this 'alien' world. It is unfortunate that it
is adults, who decide what children should read, who impose taboos instead
of encouraging and enhancing children's instinctive ability to live most
comfortably with the diversities around them. Paradoxically,
though there is an upswing in multicultural book publishing, taboos continue
to be imposed and are dictated by the dominant English language book market.
We will allow cultural specificities thus far and no further seems to be the
stand. It is alarming how willingly parents, teachers, writers, artists and
publishers are promoting this highly censored and restricted brand of
multiculturalism.
To the
question should there be taboos in children's literature my answer is no. Taboos
imply censorship, curtailing writers freedom to write the way they choose.
There are writers who work comfortably within an idealogical framework and
others who prefer to repeat a proven narrative formula. And there are other
writers whose work challenges traditional canons by being unpredictable,
innovative, subversive and risk-taking. Such writing most often deals with
issues that are taboo or considered unsuitable for children. But in
the hands of a talented writer the same issues are communicated with a
sensitivity that opens the child's mind in ways that more conventional books
do not. As publishers with a
commitment to good writing we must defend and celebrate a writer's freedom
to challenge the prevailing complacencies of our age. More importantly,
we
must give children the choice to read a range of books from the traditional
and conventional to the more challenging and unconventional if we are to
make them responsible readers.
At
this point I would like to bring up what may seem unrelated incidents but
which expose the more deep-rooted problems we create by our attitude to
childhood reinforced in the books we create for our children. All of us will
remember quite vividly the shock and horror we experienced when we read
about the shooting incidents in schools in the US involving young boys.
There was not one but several such incidents. Evidence shows that they were
planned meticulously making it more difficult to explain them away as
something done in a fit of uncontrolled anger. They bring us face to face
with a reality we find difficult to accept the myth of childhood
innocence.
Marina
Warner in 1994 made two points in referring to the much-publicised James
Bulger murder in the UK, of particular interest to those of us concerned
with children's books. First she suggested that a culture which sets up what
she called a 'nostalgic worship of childhood innocence' is likely to be
vengeful and punitive in its disappointed anger when children fail to live
up to its imagined ideal. The second point was her suggestion that the myth
of the innocent child is associated in particular with children's books.
The
image of the innocent child has been created and recreated in children's
classics and in many contemporary stories. Writers created and many continue
to create an unreal world of privileged children in pretty cottages with
perfect families. Fortunately writers in countries where children's
literature was discussed and studied began resisting this sentimentalised
portrayal of childhood. Of course, there are always those to continue to
perpetuate this myth. But there is also a realistic recognition that
children can be selfish, devious and manipulative,
much like the adults
around them. But there is reverence for the potential and actual
goodness of
children, an understanding of their different ways of seeing, and a sympathy
for their needs and their vulnerability.
In
India however this unreal portrayal of reality continues in our children's
books. We have to only look at stories in our school textbooks to understand
the extent of this. It is a world of goody-goody children and adults versus
the wicked and cruel ones who are duly punished all black and white,
shades of grey being quite clearly taboo. And this is not because of a lack
of talented and sensitive writers but because of a system perpetuated by
the big publishers, distributors and the book-buying institutions like
schools and libraries that has failed to allow for little else. It
is important that we see the dangers of such attitudes as it has a direct
bearing on the compassion with which we are able to deal the child victims
of an increasingly violent world.
Any
discussion on Indian children's books is handicapped by a
culture that has not yet recognised the area of children's literature as a
serious area of study. And children's books sadly reflect this lack of intellectual
discourse and we have books that are clones of Western children's literature
or tales of morality from misconceptualised local cultures. Many of the
taboos we have imposed in children's books are a fallout of our colonial
past. It is a Victorian western attitude which ironically the West has
got rid of and we are burdened with which sees children quite apart from
the adult world and having to be brought up protected from harsh realities.
In stark contrast,
the Indian child in those early days grew up in joint
families and were very much part of an adult world with all its complexities.
Stories were tools to help children deal with that adult
world. The very purpose of the earlier and much-derided moral tales was to
assist in the eventual production of an adult and not a perfect child.
To
quote A.K.Ramanujan: "Even in the most urbane and westernised Indian
households there exists, behind the prim exterior, another India. It lives
in tales of passion and trouble, told to children by their grandmothers and
servants as the dusk descends." Thus to tell children 'tales of passion
and trouble' was seen as the most natural thing to do. The world of Indian
folklore (like in most oral storytelling cultures) is fascinating and
complex. Tales speak of what cannot usually be spoken. What is supposed by
analysts to be repressed and hidden is open and blatant in these tales:
love, betrayal, sexuality, incest, rivalry, cruelty are all explored in
these tales. To quote Ramanujan again: "As these tales are usually told
to children in the context of the family, they are part of the child's
psychological education in facing forbidden feelings and finding a narrative
that will articulate and contain if not resolve themfor the tellers as
well as their young listeners." A wonderfully liberating way of looking
at stories and books for children but which finds no reflection in the
mass-produced books which forms the bulk of our children's literature.
More
and more children grow up in nuclear families and single parent families in
a global culture driven by powerful market forces. It is a rapidly-changing
high-tech world where they are constantly exposed to conflicting and
confusing messages about values and attitudes. In such a context the role of
stories whether told or written becomes even more crucial in helping
children discriminate and make informed choices at every stage in their
lives.
The
publishing scene for children's books in India is at a critical stage. After
a long period of colonial influence when we produced clones of British
children's literature there is now an awareness of the need to break free of
this. The focus now should be it certainly is Tulika's to produce
children's books that assimilate the deep understanding of children's
literature in the West and the strengths of our own storytelling instincts;
books that strengthen and foster an understanding of cultural, ethnic,
racial and sexual identities. How else do we equip children to deal with
death, divorce, class and gender inequities, communal and religious
tensions, AIDS, teenage pregnancies, sexual abuse, the dangers of
consumerism . . . the list is endless. If the world has to be seen and
portrayed to children in the light of the present day through books, taboos
have to be breached, new styles and devices used in the best traditions of
our oral storytelling. Publishers, teachers, parents and all concerned with
children's books have to overcome their own biases and be open to such
books. But a word of caution here. We should not fall into the trap of
promoting books "too obviously out to open children's eyes to the
problems of society and human relationships, producing correct thinking
documentaries rather than literature." What is the benchmark, then? I
would like to quote one of our talented writers, Poile Sengupta, on this:
"It is the range and depth of a book, its
sense of unshackled freedom that makes the writing vivid, the book fun. And strangely enough when this
sense of freedom is achieved, all those tiresome values creep in too not
with bombast but softly, tinged with lovely colour." And taboos have no
place in such writing.
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