Literature

Steve's post below, which includes the Tintin cartoon, triggered some memories for me. Tintin is quite popular in India, and I've read a bunch of those. (Asterix is also very popular in India, but that's besides the point). Of course, before coming to the U.S., I never really realized that there was something terribly wrong with an image like that. I guess that's the kind of ignorance that comes with inadequate high-school education and also growing up in a racially homogeneous society.

BTW, and here's where I am going with this post: this brings me to the subject of children's lit written by British authors. I guess just like cricket, children's lit is Britain's colonial "gift" to countries like India. Especially reading one author - Enid Blyton - is like a right of passage for anyone and everyone who ever attended a convent school in India. I absolutely loved her stuff when I was growing up, but looking back I can't help but see the racial and religious undertones in her work (Most of her stuff was about reforming or reformed "naughty" kids, boarding school stories (recently re-popularized in the Harry Potter series), and about magical "far away" places). Most kids in her work owned at least one golliwog, and as is sometimes with literature, it was the illustrations that were often the most telling. I post a few below:










It's actually strange now that I think about that: I was given this last book The Land of Far Beyond as a prize for some contest in high school by my school principal. (I went to a catholic school). The book that I had recd. had a different cover and there was no indication on it that it was a "re-telling of The Pilgrim's Progress." Hmmm...