Kay. I woke up fierce this morning, astonished and appalled by how some people waste their precious limited time.
I'm serious. Sunday was my birthday and Monday was the funeral of someone I loved. I woke up in the middle of last night when my husband made a sudden noise and my heart flooded with gratitude--here I am, beside the man I've loved for thirty-five years.
It's been a hard spring for many people I care about. I can feel my perspectives shifting.
All over the internet, people who never heard of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Lifetime Achievement Award before this weekend are raising a big unholy fuss over thae changing of its name, acting as though this is just another step in a slippery slope that leads to--I don't know, what? Equality? Justice? Loving thy neighbor?
Folks, we're not saying that it's possible that the racist depictions in the Little House books might possibly someday be harmful to some kids. We're saying they are harmful to some kids. We're saying we know they have caused harm. And that therefore, a woman who died 61 years ago no longer gets to have this award named after her. She won it, its inaugural year. No one is taking that honor away from her.
But seriously, all the things to get upset about in this world, you're gonna pick that?
I'm not.
People are still dying from hunger in this world. People are dying from lack of medical care. People are dying from loneliness and mental illness and social injustice and sometimes they're dying for no reason at all, and I'm picking my battles carefully from here out.
When I was doing school visits this year, for the first time, a student asked me directly in a large group presentation, "Is Susan gay?"
When I said, "Yes," the room applauded. The entire room. It was clear to me that the students had talked about it beforehand and cared about my answer.
For the record, I was in a small conservative midwestern town. After my presentation, a girl came up to me, beaming, to thank me for Susan. Here's the thing: it wasn't because she was gay (she may or may not have been; she didn't say). It was because her parents were gay, and they were good parents, and it was important to her to see her family's reality reflected in books.
In my book The War I Finally Won, Susan, the loving adoptive gay parent, makes Ada write, one hundred times, "I will not continue to conflate lack of knowledge with lack of intelligence."
Here are my lines:
I will not revere the past at the expense of the present.
I will not equate skin color, religious belief, country of origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity with morality, virtue, intelligence or worth.
The mountain I die on will be worth the price.
I'm serious. Sunday was my birthday and Monday was the funeral of someone I loved. I woke up in the middle of last night when my husband made a sudden noise and my heart flooded with gratitude--here I am, beside the man I've loved for thirty-five years.
It's been a hard spring for many people I care about. I can feel my perspectives shifting.
All over the internet, people who never heard of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Lifetime Achievement Award before this weekend are raising a big unholy fuss over thae changing of its name, acting as though this is just another step in a slippery slope that leads to--I don't know, what? Equality? Justice? Loving thy neighbor?
Folks, we're not saying that it's possible that the racist depictions in the Little House books might possibly someday be harmful to some kids. We're saying they are harmful to some kids. We're saying we know they have caused harm. And that therefore, a woman who died 61 years ago no longer gets to have this award named after her. She won it, its inaugural year. No one is taking that honor away from her.
But seriously, all the things to get upset about in this world, you're gonna pick that?
I'm not.
People are still dying from hunger in this world. People are dying from lack of medical care. People are dying from loneliness and mental illness and social injustice and sometimes they're dying for no reason at all, and I'm picking my battles carefully from here out.
When I was doing school visits this year, for the first time, a student asked me directly in a large group presentation, "Is Susan gay?"
When I said, "Yes," the room applauded. The entire room. It was clear to me that the students had talked about it beforehand and cared about my answer.
For the record, I was in a small conservative midwestern town. After my presentation, a girl came up to me, beaming, to thank me for Susan. Here's the thing: it wasn't because she was gay (she may or may not have been; she didn't say). It was because her parents were gay, and they were good parents, and it was important to her to see her family's reality reflected in books.
In my book The War I Finally Won, Susan, the loving adoptive gay parent, makes Ada write, one hundred times, "I will not continue to conflate lack of knowledge with lack of intelligence."
Here are my lines:
I will not revere the past at the expense of the present.
I will not equate skin color, religious belief, country of origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity with morality, virtue, intelligence or worth.
The mountain I die on will be worth the price.
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