Please consider that Harper Lee probably never set out to write a seminal work that would sell millions of copies and garner endless critiques. It was her first (and really her last) novel. She wrote astutely and eloquently about her hometown during the Depression. Perhaps the critic would be happier reviewing the Autobiography of Iceberg Slim.
6
As long as we're talking about over-rated novels, what about Great Gatsby?
I hated it in high school and still do. First, the first=person narration from a minor character doesn't work. Fitzgerald has to arrange for Nick to be present whenever anything important happens -- when a gangster boasts about fixing the World Series, when Gatsby tries to dazzle Daisy with his shirt collection, etc. When Nick isn't present Fitzgerald has big problems -- the crucial backstory about Gatsby's love for Daisy comes to us third-hand, through Daisy and Jordan. And he devotes the opening two pages to assuring us that Nick isn't an Unreliable Narrator.
And then there's racism. Gatsby as a nouveau-riche is ambivalent, but when Fitzgerald wants to ridicule nouveau-richenesse he brings on a rich black man. And we are constantly reminded that the World Series gangster is Jewish.
And what's the moral? That old-money like Tom Buchanan is worse than nouveau-riche Gatsby? Sorry, bot I already knew that. I'm from the South, where old-money = former slaveowning family. Fitzgerald was mainly aiming the novel at his snobbish prep-school friends.
8
GATSBY is te best book ever written.
Before dismissing a classic (if admittedly imperfect) work of American literature, perhaps you should re-read the novel instead of sharing your very self-assured high-school impressions of it.
"What's the moral?" Gatsby isn't a fable and certainly doesn't presume to offer a simple moral -- other than the obvious fact, never more evident than in the decades since its publication (and especially in the past two years), that the wealthy and amoral in America get on while the rest of the population struggles and picks up after them.
Anybody who in 1960 needed Harper Lee to awaken them to American racism isn't awake yet, and can be trusted to be a closet white supremacist.
7
What a ridiculous statement. I was 9 at the time, and that book opened my eyes big time. I think I just may be able to suggest that many other people who are not white supremacists--closeted or otherwise--felt awakened in some way by this great book.
By the way, Your claim suggests that you personally know the essence of anyone who read the book in 1960.
My gosh?! How did you find out who we all were? How did you come to know how we individually feel about things as profound as race in America?
Please be precise in your explanation. I'd love to know how one does such things.
3
Not sure that someone who detests the book - Roxane Gay - was the right choice to review a book about the book.
8
Cardboard characters, designed to make its readers feel good about themselves.
Not serious literature.
11
I've read TKAMB probably 60 times in my 65 years. Over the years, one starts to realize that there is much more to the story of Atticus (and his bother, John, and sister, Alexandra) that does not appear in the movie version.
Then, read "Go Set a Watchman". Supposedly, it was written before "Mockingbird" and I believe that to be true. Three or four chapters in, there is a chapter regarding Scout, Jem and Dill playacting a "revival". It is in the same voice as Scout in "Mockingbird". It is my belief, and those of my friends who grew up with Harper Lee (called Nelle, not Nellie), that her editors found the 6 year old voice more compelling than the voice of a 27 year old woman, living on York Avenue in the 90's in the late 1950's regarding the changing opinions in a changing America.
Regardless, "Mockingbird" made many of us aware of what was going in the South during that time.
6
You have to take "Mockingbird" for what it is: a 1950's story that addresses racism at a Southern town in a way that had its own effect on a country that was barely becoming sensitive to racial inequality. The author's intention was to tell a story about the treatment of an African American in the sort of environment that was common to the country at the time. That it was so widely read left a mark on millions of Americans who may have given the issue of race relatively little thought. It was hardly the seminal document that launched the effort to address racial inequality, but it forced millions to begin thinking about it. In that respect, it did contribute to the change in our more passive interest in perhaps the most critical social issue of our country.
11
Personally, I've always felt Mockingbird became popular because of the timeliness of the subject matter when it was written. I would not say that Harpet Lee was a great author.
3
Any work from the past that was responsible for rejecting the racism of that moment and slightly moving the goals of humanity towards more tolerance is now to be regarded as racist itself? I have listened to this garbage about Twain and now this? Useage of the N word in depicting a very real world in the 1950's or the 1860's does not constitute anything but accuracy and in the revisionist view just recording the moment is apparently too revolting to be taken in. Those stinking racists Clemens & Lee are really the bottom of the barrel aren't they? Pul-leze,
12
What an absolutely mean-spirited review. Grow up.
6
Ever since I have been a young teen, I have read "To Kill A Mockingbird" at least once a year. It is the type of book that provides new insight as you get older. (And, I am much older now!)
I think Ms. Gay's book is garbage. I also think Howell Raines defense of "Watchman" to be nonsense. The book should never have been released. It was written by a woman in her declining years and published by a company looking to make a quick buck.
4
What a depressing review. Gay doesn't explain her claim that Mockingbird is racist; she just states it like we're supposed to believe it. And calling Atticus a "white savior" misses the point entirely; he wasn't. Tom Robinson is convicted and murdered and Atticus is unable to do anything about either.
Just because he was trying to do the right thing doesn't mean he was some kind of stereotypical "white savior." There simply wasn't a black person in the town who could have done 1/10 of what Atticus did to try to help bring about justice. And the book in many ways was way ahead of its time, but Gay writes about it like it was released in 2010, ignoring entirely its historical context, which would seem to be especially crucial here. She complains that Tom and Calpurnia aren't fully formed characters, but if she could remove her blinders she would see that that that was exactly the point: Scout, a young white girl just learning about how her world really works, grew up in a society where whites didn't care about the character of black people, since they were mostly just their servants anyway, and many of the ignored had to don metaphorical masks to navigate their way through a treacherous and dangerous white-dominated world; a world that could turn violent and murderous in a nanosecond. So how was Scout to really understand Tom and Calpurnia at her age and with the invisible barriers that prevented blacks and whites from really knowing each other at all?
18
As a Canadian, I recently read it for the first time.
I keep wondering if I read the same book.
The issue of the trial and racism doesn't appear until rather late in the book.
Until then, it is the story of the travails of a little girl who today would be labeled "queer", "gender fluid", maybe even trans, as she tries to cope with the social realities of her little town.
She is lucky to have her liberal-minded father on her side as she battles close-minded, snobby women who want her to behave like a proper lady. One of her male friends is clearly gay.
She discovers class differences, religious conflict, and the racial divide.
It seemed to me to be first and foremost an expression of personal rebellion against the rigid gender codes of the time, and the novel depicts most women as stupid, superficial and petty and strong enforcers of the code against which Scout rebels.
The racial element appears rather late, and, it seemed to me, mostly to provide for an actual plot. The novel was mostly a novel of manners until then, then it turned into a Perry Mason type suspense, with the racial element rather secondary, and finally a suspenseful chase scene.
The gender issue got totally ignored as the racial element got top billing, but it was really not the core of the book.
7
Ms. Gay offers as part of her criticism the fact that the tale is told from the perspective of a young white girl. Well, Harper Lee was a white woman. Had she presumed to tell the story through the eyes of, say, Calpurnia, I bet Ms. Gay would double down on the disapproval. Ms. Lee would have been accused of appropriating a story that was not hers to tell.
Yes, there are elements that would be unacceptable were the book written today. But you can't unwrite history. The story still stands as a tale of courage and compassion and coming-of-age, and applicable far beyond race relations.
8
I hate this terrible book because of its fundamental, blind hypocrisy. Finch spends the entire tale lecturing us about the foundational importance of equality before the law. Then in a rushed, breathless conclusion, when a death occurs in confused circumstances that involve his own children, Finch violates his own preachings about the fairness of the rule of law and strikes a corrupt front porch deal with the town cop to sweep the death (murder?) aside due to his selfish desire to spare his children any unpleasantness in the courts. This is a parable of elite white male privilege, sadly marketed as white racial uplift.
8
I am a high school teacher in Ontario, where Mockingbird is still taught in a great majority of schools, typically at the grade nine level. It seems especially popular in predominantly white communities. I wish that it was replaced with something else, primarily because I think it is a seriously flawed book but also because I think it tends to offer white readers a comforting but erroneous message, namely that racism happened long ago in a terrible place called the South, where many mean white folks didn't treat black people nicely, except for the heroic white people who tried to save those helpless black people. I think it teaches that racism is a problem of another era and another country, not that it is an ongoing problem, a systemic problem, and a problem that cannot be changed without allowing racial minorities and others who face discrimination real agency, empowerment, and enfranchisement. And furthermore, that adjusting to a more democratic society will involve uncomfortable adjustments to white privilege.
14
For me, this is the summer of delving into the classics, "To Kill a Mockingbird" being one of them. I'm about one-third of the way through the book however, I am aware of the plot from having seen the movie, more than a few times. What's striking to me in this book - at the point I am now in reading it - is the emphasis on religion and the fact that Alabamans were more than aware that "a man carrying a bible can be a whole lot more dangerous than one carrying a whiskey bottle" and that judgment of others sometimes accompanied that self-righteousness.
But the reason I love the book so much is that it reminds me of when I was young, in 1960 by the way. Summers were endless, windows were open and outside fused with our living rooms and children played - imaginary games. I'm sounding old and nostalgic which I probably am, but that was a great time to grow up.
12
Most instructive, Ms. Gay...
3
way too late to review "To Kill a Mockingbird." get on with your life, Ms. Gay.
19
The book Ms. Gay is suppose to review is about why both the book and film "To Kill A Mockingbird" matters, and not a review of the book "To Kill A Mockingbird"....
4
An incredibly condescending review.
26
It's infantile garbage. Put it in the dumpster and bring back "Evangeline." American kids don't need to read about "racism." The media hardly talk about anything else.
4
About half of this "review" doesn't address Santopietro's book, but instead damns Lee's novel for being something other than Gay wanted it to be and dismissing those who like it as racially insensitive.
She completely ignores the fact that the story is told through the eyes of a child (unusually, a girl). The triumph and the power of the book--as with a great many novels--is the authenticity of the narrator's voice. Why would she be "enlightened"? How astonished is she when she is forced to spend time with a drug addict in withdrawal; learns that her poor-white classmate isn't just a tacky kid who pours syrup on his meat; witnesses the sickening ability of Mayella Ewell to damn a black man out of her own ignorance, terror, and abuse; watches "regular" neighbors gather as a lynch mob at the door of the jail? And as the guilty verdict is announced, the children experience profound confusion that such a thing could be. And then there's Boo Radley. Why wouldn't she see her father as a hero? Many children do.
As for the "white savior" argument: he didn't "save" Tom Robinson; moreover, what black person would have been allowed to help? So what's the solution there?
Rather than turn up one's nose at a little white girl's experience in the rural, Depression-era South, why not read the book side-by-side with "The Bluest Eye"? Fist-shaking is far less effective than art.
I sometimes wonder how many thousands of novels we'd have to jettison if the "offense" was sexist.
54
I don't know. Has criticism become so degraded that every work of art is to be henceforth judged on a one-dimensional scale of "wokeness"? How narrow. How depressingly limited a world view. And ultimately, how self-defeating.
22
I always felt book and film were portentous. We were supposed to treat them as classics because of their topic. Gregory Peck was totally wrong for the part.
3
Thank you, Roxanne Gay. I first read Harper Lee's novel as a 13 year-old -- a black child in strictly enforced racially segregated Richmond, VA. And although I loved Scout's voice and insight and humor, and I found her journey of discovery beautifully conceived and executed (not to mention the joy in getting to know Dill, one of the first gay characters I happened upon in mainstream literature), I was always perplexed by the popular celebration of Atticus. This is Scout's story, and it is she who sees the effects of this toxic brand of human complexity that deepens her understanding of her world. Atticus defends Tom Robinson (and yes, the blacks in the novel are only literary devices) because the judge asks (would he otherwise?), and after the guilty verdict and Tom's death by the Sheriff, Atticus chooses not to question the Sheriff about why Tom, an innocent and unarmed man - not threatening -- but running away -- needed to be killed, and not simply captured. Instead Atticus' response is only that he told Tom not to try to escape. Again, and typically, to Atticus Tom was responsible for his own death. Maude (the neighbor) comforts Jem by saying that Atticus had been called to do the "unpleasant" chores -- not the right or the good deeds that would've been the defense of an innocent black man, but the "unpleasant" assignment. All of this makes for a story that does not sit well with me at all -- a black man from the 1950s South.
16
Happily, there are still enough open-minded lovers of great literature--and film-- that Mockingbird will outlive Gay's writings.
15
I am an African American who had the pleasure of teaching high schoolEnglish Literature for a few years. Although I have great respect for Ms. Gay, I have to pushback a little on this perspective. I taught dozens of novels to students and few had the profound and provocative effect on students that 'Mockingbird" had. It turned out to be a starting point for many an enriching classroom discussion and few books pair so wonderfully with the film version. For various reasons students find it extremely accessible. Now I have to admit I taught in majority white classrooms, but If I had stayed a teacher I would have taught it every year.
11
Three thoughts:
1. I really like Concerned Citizen's comment about Boo Radley. Both in the book and in the movie, Boo teaches us not to be too quick to judge and how to relate to others.
2. I was profoundly unimpressed by the book aesthetically.
3. The white savior trope may not be entirely accurate. Something else goes on with Atticus and it is why the book is well liked by many who share my profession of criminal defense lawyer. Standing up for another, standing against power, standing in when nice people, of all races and religion, do not like the accused is not easy. Easiest is to join the condemnation of the accused, and to call for prison when the person is accused of doing something we disapprove of. Easy is to carry a sign or lament imprisonment after conviction of some person we paid no attention to but who later we decide fits within our side's view of someone who should not go to prison. Being there and standing with the individual, when essentially everyone either wants you and the "bad" person you stand with to lose or is utterly indifferent is difficult. The criminal justice system is not designed to validate saviors of any race because it is not designed to recognize the accused as part of the human race. Defense lawyers like to point to Proverbs (the godly defend), as well as Atticus. We exaggerate. People do. Still, it remains that standing with is an honorable important act, not reducible to mere political terms,
14
As a white American who believes that racial bias is a constant debilitating thread in American history, I am disappointed there are those who regard any book that illustrates how that bias has stained our history in a negative light.
The classic works of American literature from Tom Sawyer to TKAM have to be understood as representative of our culture at the time they were written, not criticized half a century later for not being in line with current thinking.
20
I applaud Roxana Gay's stand on the the importance and significance of the book. It certainly makes the claim of universal value less convincing.
6
I am white, I loved this book, and I’m not apologizing for either.
18
"To Kill a Mockingbird," both movie and film, are windows that open a lot of eyes, especially for young people just beginning to think about a world bigger than themselves. The book stands alongside "The Diary of Anne Frank" in that regard. Is it the "be all and end all?" Of course not, but it hardly deserves the scorn heaped upon it by the writer.
4
Opinions come and go, are a penny a dozen. Our schools and universities teach students a load about dissection, but whether the critics and the other dissectors know what it's like to actually write a novel and understand what putting it together (rather than tearing it apart) involves
seems worth questioning.
Fortunately, author Roxane Gay is more than a dissector, but while Lee's novel does portray a white man to the rescue account, the rescue fails tragically when racism and murder triumph.
If some characters in Lee's novel are less well-realized, perhaps it is because the narrator is a child. But I don't know.
If the novel (an the film) have shortcomings, if the novel does inform and awaken readers of any age, if it provokes them to read from page one through to "the end" and enlightens them about the pernicious evils of racism and The Way We Were (and in many ways, still are), then perhaps it has significant value.
My guess is that Harper Lee's creations will outlive both Mr. Santopietro's and Ms. Gay's critical adventures.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
8
I have read TKAMB many times and teach it in both a law and literature and women’s studies course. It’s lessons about race are not the heart of the novel. In fact, the Robinson story was not the center of the original narrative. Gay is correct that the black characters serve only as vehicles through which the story of Atticus and Scout is told.
The novel tells the story of Scout’s loss of innocence, the strength and power of parental
love and the bonds of community that battle but cannot always overcome evil. That is why the novel ends with Atticus in Jem’s room, watching over his child, who was injured and nearly killed by a white racist. “He was there when Jem fell asleep, and would be there when Jem waked up
in the morning.” The novel is about the power of love, and that is why so many of us, including I, cry as we read those closing words, name our kids and dogs “Atticus” and continue to love TKAMB.
28
Given the enduring appeal and popularity of To Kill a Mockingbird, what surprises me is the lack of attempted understanding the reviewer gives to the positive values and moral uprightness that the novel represents to millions of readers who condemn racism. Those of us who love the novel are, I think, alike with the author in condemning the evils of racism, yet one would be hard pressed on reading the review to feel much appreciation for the book in this regard.
4
I read Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” simultaneously as comparative literature for contrasting perspective, and it was instructive. As Mockingbird is told through the voice of a grown white woman recalling her childhood experience in the segregated south, this story is likewise told by a grown black woman doing the same. Each story is about a child’s examination of prejudice, but Scout in Mockingbird is looking from the outside in while Angelou is deep inside, trying to make sense of the white world – almost as if from Plato’s cave, interpreting shadows.
Their similarities and learnings are as poignant as their differences. It’s all a world of double standards, and they are a fearful thing. They allow you to hold diametrically aligned but contrasting views in the cradle of your mind with no moral angst whatsoever. It takes children a while to get the hang of it, but not long. The problem, of course, is that we all are guilty and remedy requires a hard lonesome fight against the resolute crowd.
7
Sometimes literature just makes you stop and think about something you never stopped and thought about. For a generation or two of Americans, Mockingbird made us see the injustice in personal terms - the death of a good and innocent man, solely because he was black. The injustice revolts us, and makes us open our eyes.
For my generation we had "Angels in America" and "Laramie" added to the catalogue, and part of the changing landscape of how we saw people who were otherwise hidden from our day to day reality.
Humanizing people, even if it done without much finesse as Roxanne Gay feels, is valuable in its own right. If Mockingbird, or Laramie or Angels made one person more aware of injustice, of suffering, or just the day to day reality of another person, and more aware of responsibility to change, then the value of the work is true.
17
You feel the same thing about TKAM that I do about Ellison's Invisible Man. Apparently, some books just can't transcend race.
Did you all read To Kill A Mockingbird?
It’s about Scout’s awakening. A young, white girl.
The reviewer may be right about the title of the book not reflecting the contents.
Can’t say for sure till I read it.
1
The book I refer to in sentence four is “ Why To Kill A Mockingbird Matters”.
"The book is a 'product of its time', sure, so let me just say that said time and the people who lived in it were plain terrible."
From my perspective that is the value of the book, that it paints a rather accurate picture of the systemic racism, ignorance and oppression in existence at that time and place.
I lived in southern Alabama from '63 to '70. As a white youngster, I didn't experience racism, but I sure witnessed it. I haven't read the book for many years, but I catch scenes from the movie adaptation fro time to time. It is a reminder of the injustices America is still struggling to rid itself completely of.
10
This review of a brilliant literary work, “To Kill A Mocking Bird” that opened up the world’s eyes to racism when it was written reflects a particular strand of narcissism that permeates American intellectual life today. To wit, this recurring habit of taking literary works out of historical context and denying them their richness and power because they fail to speak to today’s most immediate social issues in a satisfactory way. This is intellectual arrogance and it serves no good purpose. Rather, it shows a deep disrespect for past generations of individuals, like Harper Lee, whose writing did much to advance the discussion of racial injustice in America and and convey the evil of racism in a real way.
62
Interesting discussion. A bit weird that no one seems to be talking about the role of the Ewells--the family from the "other side of the tracks" (I think literally?) that precipitates most of the plot. Attacus Finch's defense of Tom Robinson relies on establishing the Ewells as liars, and by suggesting that Mayella Ewell had propositioned Robinson and been refused.
Ms. Gay is totally right in saying that Mockingbird is all about "race" for all the wrong reasons, but its puzzling that no one is talking about the novel's take on "class." The Ewells are obviously what used to be called "white trash," and it is on the notoriety of this pernicious element that Atticus Finch's defense relies. Mr. Ewell is an uneducated bumpkin with violent tendencies; his daughter a lying, amorous manipulator, whose transgression of flirting with a black guy--and worse, being rejected by the same--she hides behind a larger murder narrative.
Its telling that Finch's defense of Robinson relies less on the factual impossibilities of the case than on casting Mayella as a vengeful lower-caste liar. (One wonders how this sort of defense would work post-MeToo.)
Mockingbird never suggests that this strategem--that is, defending one character at the expense of another on grounds of "class"--is invalid. Indeed, the smokescreen of "race" tends to obscure the whole issue.
I'm glad to see Mockingbird finally being "called out," but from what I can see, it's not being called-out for enough.
7
I think the Cunninghams are introduced as a foil to the Ewells. Calpurnia/Lula; Atticus/Bob Ewell...I imagine in the Jim Crow-era the book was published, people were pretty shocked. Sort of like the set-up of 'The Help.'
This is an interesting thread.
The only people who were “saved” in this novel were Atticus’ children. The “white savior” was Boo Radley. It is this touch of irony that saves the novel, for me, from descending into the slough of treacly tomes best left behind.
I loved this book from the moment I first read it, however, Roxanne Gay has that invaluable perspective that I lacked as a white child growing up in a Jim Crow state. I would love to see a work entitled “Calpurnia” from her ...
10
Is To Kill a Mockingbird a great novel? No.
Was the movie superior to the book? Yes.
Does Harper Lee rate a place in the pantheon of great American writers? No.
On the other hand, does anyone deny that her novel was an astonishing debut by an unknown author, and that it had, and continues to have, an enormous cultural impact and relevance? No -- except for Roxane Gay.
Indeed, like it or not (and Ms. Gay clearly loathes it), To Kill a Mockingbird has achieved iconic status and indisputably ranks as one of the defining literary events of the early 60s and the Civil Rights era.
Finally, one wants to ask: What sort of reader/reviewer summarily dismisses a work of imaginative literature and feels superior to it simply because it doesn’t satisfactorily reflect her own personal experience and views? (As if a reader were to say, How dare you write about poverty and cruelty, Mr. Dickens? I’ve experienced them first-hand!) Ms. Gay’s review sets a new low for peevishness and small-mindedness.
34
I agree with a lot of what you have to say. TKAM was to literature about race what Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (which came out around the same time) was to literature about ecology: revolutionary and somewhat ahead of its time. They represented an entirely new approach, a new way of thinking about things, and new forms of expression. That neither is necessarily a literary classic isn't the point. They were in a sense revolutionary polemics, because they forced their readers to look into their own souls, as well as take a good, hard look at some of the worst attributes of the world that we had built, and confront some ugly realities. That both books were written by women in a period where men were still dominating both literature and science is noteworthy as well.
3
Roxane doesn’t need to understand a white child coming to terms with the perniciousness of racism because SHE already understands that perniciousness? What an impoverished view of the importance of getting inside the minds of others on critical issues! Blacks, Whites and all other ethnicities most certainly should be striving to grasp the roots, limitations, and possibilities for change in racialist perspectives. To Kill a Mockingbird, book and film, have been instrumental in the relearning that has made the evolving world that we all—including Roxane—live in today. Arrogantly believing that one is beyond all that is something we cannot afford in public discourse today.
32
Put people and readers in a sealed box and they will stay there, even longer than an interesting, but mediocre, time-bound novel such as "To Kill a Mockingbird." Here are the boxes Roxane Gay's sub-par (for her) review, puts herself and, some unspecified "target audience," in: "Perhaps I am ambivalent because I am black. I am not the target audience. I don’t need to read about a young white girl understanding the perniciousness of racism to actually understand the perniciousness of racism. I have ample firsthand experience." Well, that's one black take on Lee's admittedly dated (What else could it be?) work. I just wish Gay had taken the time to really dig into why this novel grabbed audiences in the early 1960s and what that meant for those readers in those times. She or Santopietro need to write whole other novels, other essays, dealing with today's "serious racial tensions [that] our nation still faces."
5
If white people (fictional or otherwise) resist racism or try to ameliorate its worst effects, they're "smug" and "saviors"; if they ignore racism they're indifferent or callous. Seems like they can't win for losing.
15
It's a kid's book that some adults read in order to feel better about themselves. It is corny and sentimental. It is not a book for readers, in the broadest sense of that word. Roxanne Gay is a reader.
12
You might want to re-read it. The book is about so much more, which is why it continues to resonate with millions of people, and always will. Gays might be a reader, but she's not a very good one. Her own prejudices came through loud and clear.
2
Way too much baggage to place on kids reading a pretty good book. You are not 13. They are.
5
Hear, hear!, Roxanne Gay. I too read "Mockingbird", as a schoolgirl way back in the late '50s, early 60s, and couldn't understand what all the brouhaha was about this pale, insipid book. As the only "Negro" student in my class, I was apparently supposed to rave and exalt this "daring" exposure of the horrors of racial prejudice in the South of that time. But I just never got it. To me those characters and incidences rang faint, and false. They did not truly represent me as a Black girl, or any of my experiences with white racism in America. I had witnessed more virulent (if not more violent), episodes of rabid dog,mouth foaming, saliva frothing, rabies bitten racism in the comparatively safe environs of the Bronx, New York City, than what was evoked by this book. I am pleased and feel affirmed in my school-aged reactions to this book, by Ms. Gay's article. And though it comes sixty years later, it is all the more sweet to realize that I was not truly alone in my perceptions.
12
The book deals with other aspects of human weaknesses and failings besides racism.I thought the most interesting part of the book was the children’s relationship with Boo Radley and what they learned from it. Jem also learned a lesson on tolerance when he read to the neighbor lady addicted to morphine. Atticus tells Scout “You never really know a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” If we have empathy for others the world will be happier place. I think Roxanne Gay seems to have an vision skewed to look at only one aspect of the book.
7
Of course "Mockingbird" wasn't written for black people. It was written for clueless white boys like me who were coming of age in the 1960's. I've read the book several times, but it's my imperfect memory of the movie that sticks like that maple syrup Walter Cunningham smothered his dinner in. Yes, I understand the "white savior syndrome," but let's just try to savor a few vignettes.
* Jem senses the danger when the lynch mob shows up at the jail Atticus is "guarding." The boy is scared right down to his dirty toenails, but he refuses to budge. Atticus orders him to go home. "No sir!"
* After the guilty verdict is rendered, the judge (the wonderful and underappreciated Paul Fix) says not a word as he gets up and retires to his chambers--slamming the door behind him in disgust.
* The eyeglasses keep slipping off his nose as Atticus--"the best shot in Maycomb County"--takes aim at the rabid dog.
* Scout's ridiculous ham costume that simultaneously protects her even as it prevents her from fleeing or clearly seeing what's going on during the attack.
*Atticus' intro of Boo Radley to Scout: "I believe he already knows you."
* Scout counting the seconds as Jem runs to retrieve his pants that were snagged on the fence. It is perhaps the scene in which she's the most terrified.
* And, of course, the classic: "I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I'm still sheriff of Maycomb County. And Bob Ewell fell on his knife."
1
Probably sorghum, not maple syrup.
Could never get into the film or the book. It also always reeked of white savoir mentality. I feel like it's one of those ways in which white people can do very little but think they are doing enough by reading this book. I think The Help is another book that does that and is also horribly racist.
11
I read “To Kill a Mockingbird” a very long time ago – not because it was assigned in school, but because I wanted to read it before I saw the film. I was very young and it resonated with everything I knew about racism then and still does even today. But it is not clear whether Ms. Gay’s review is about her own bitterness about being black in a racist country (it is very real -especially today), or she dislikes “To Kill a Mockingbird” because ?, or she dislikes Santopietro’s book because of that bitterness. A lot of hate in the review.
23
I found well-explained criticism, not hate.
5
There is not a lot of hate in her review. She gives excellent reasons why she thinks the book is not good. She doesn't sound bitter at all. Just matter-of-fact.
I think it's a great review. Never liked the book or movie myself for the same reasons she states.
4
Thank you Ms Gay! I am an English teacher (20+ years), white, and I truly dislike this book. It is most often taught in middle school with little to no effort to reconsider its "white savior" message. White students get to feel smugly self-important while students of color feel embarrassed, uncomfortable, angry, forgotten. What 12 or 13 year old student of color, often one of only a few in a classroom, wants to be the one to slaughter the sacred cow that is To Kill A Mockingbird by pushing back against its incredibly flawed construction and themes? This book is on the required reading lists for most school districts in this country, often as the only book to contain a black character; for students of any color, but especially for black students, this is a travesty.
20
You must be a joy in class.
1
“The “n word” is used liberally throughout.....”
As far as I can tell, these sentences are rather odd for a piece that appears in a book review section. Harper Lee’s book is a presentation of a particular area, subculture, and time. As such, of course people in the book use the “n” word and exhibit racism. Wasn’t such a presentation more or less the very point of the book? Those are “features,” not “bugs.” So why complain about it? Is this reviewer suggesting that the book is at fault for depicting racist characters? If so, that would of course be absurd. A depiction of a deplorable characteristic is not an endorsement of that quality. And it is arguably one of fiction’s important tasks to open our eyes to other viewpoints, personalities, and issues. The point is to open our eyes to other realities (no matter if they are frightening or uncomfortable), not coddle us.
In regards to the identity of the reviewer, I appreciate the sharing of personal info such as race, but I don’t care about such issues in the context of a book review. When reading a book review, I want to know if it’s a good book or not; and that, in my opinion, should be an aesthetic determination. If this reviewer’s feelings about “Mockingbird” are influenced by his or her personal history, that sounds like good material for personal reflections and essays. But I don’t know what that info is doing in a book review that is supposed to evaluate the artistic merits (or lack there of) of a work of literature.
27
She ever so clearly states many reasons why she thinks this book is not good, notwithstanding her personal views of Mockingbird itself.
Mockingbird is one of the great literary statements Against racism ever written. This also holds true for Huckleberry Finn, which also uses the "N" word, and which also rejects with great strength the racist society from which that word arose.
3
I guess when you go into the media-reviewing room carrying a hammer - pretty much every book or movie starts to resemble a nail.
16
I am from the south and I have never read To Kill a Mockingbird. And I have no intention of doing so today. It just isn't that easy to summarize how awful things were back then. I loved my friends in "Colored Town" as much as my other friends, but nothing prepared me for the pain of losing them when I reached a "certain" age. If you didn't live it, it isn't real. And, personally, I wouldn't recommend that anyone have to live it. Much to painful.
5
I respect the writer's opinion. I hope she will respect those who like the book and not question their good faith in doing so.
9
The first sentence of To Kill a Mockingbird states the essence of the tale being told: it is a story about how Jem Finch broke his arm. In that simplicity rests the astonishing power of the novel itself which culminates in its last line, the eternally emotional affirmation of a father's unconditional love. That is why it matters.
13
This review has proved to be much more revealing about people's opinions of TKAM than about the book Gay has reviewed. Personally, I have mixed feelings about TKAM. There's some great work in there. As a coming of age story, it works well. I, too, appreciate Lee's wit and intelligence.
But the central drama of TKAM as a lesson about racism falls flat. It's a balm for the white soul that casts Atticus Finch as a savior and the moral dilemma as simplistic.
Gay's review is entirely fair. The title of the book sets out a question that the author fails to answer.
I think the editor, however, was aiming for clicks when he made Gay's opinion of TKAM the headline.
12
While I can understand much younger than myself having a different perception of TKAM, I still cannot shake the lack of historical perspective. When I was 9 years old, I visited the south with my parents where one evening we had dinner with another family who brought their daughter who, at the time, was 10. We all went to a rather elegant restaurant, where we were fawned over by the black wait staff, many of whom were as old or older than my parents. When one of the staff assisted me with my chair, I turned and said "thank you". The family we were with were white southerners, and their daughter, the 10 year old, turned to me and said scoldingly, "You don't thank them. That's what those people do". I understood clearly what she was saying and, as my little protest, made a point of saying "thank you" for every service perfomed for the rest of the meal. It was 1960 in Virginia. Harper Lee wrote of the deep south 30 years before that, and the Jem character was even younger. Children learn about racism just as they are carefully taught to be racist and Lee was writing from the perspective of a child. Therein lies the power of her story. The depth to which racism was ingrained into our culture in the past is, today, unimaginable. It was as sure as the sunrise and considered perfectly natural. When I read TKAM in school a few years later, I immediately thought of that 10 year old girl whenever I thought of Jem.
15
Thank for that story
Having had this misfortune to teach this novel a few times, I always let students read the first fifty pages or so before I do any introduction. Then I ask them two questions: Why is there no coherent narrative yet and why are we interested in the viewpoint of a seven year-old snob? They are stunned because they were told this book is great.
TKAM was so successful because it filled in Yankees on a situation not yet brought to them by TV or personal experience. There is no need for it now.
My paternal grandfather was born in Alabama in 1869, a notch down the social scale from the Finches, but still middle class. My Yankee mother's family actually were gentry and minor aristocracy in England, but the truth is that any American who pretends to be an aristocrat really is just pretending.
8
You have missed an essential point. It's the viewpoint of a woman looking back on her early years and trying to reconstruct those times, not the narrative voice of seven year old. And you taught?
2
Having read Mockingbird as a youth, viewed the film (at Radio City Music Hall in NYC) and having had the good fortune to speak with Brock Peters (born George Fisher) many years later about his role in the film, I would say that Ms. Gay's take on the novel is spot-on.
Like most Black folks in those days, many of us saw the novel and film as an assist from a "white liberal ally"-- no less coming out of the South. Everyone liked to see it as a sign of progress. Later, Black folks learned through the struggles of the 60s and beyond, that the reality was quite different.
As Ms. Gay suggests, Mockingbird is a story about Scout; the novel's points of view are hers. And, so the other characters remain largely two-dimensional;even Tom Robinson, the town's Black scapegoat.
Surely, this novel is of its time and can no longer command the same moral authority it did almost sixty-years ago. Yet, it persists in the hearts and minds of many. Why does it matter?
Like Gone with the Wind a generation earlier, Mockingbird matters because it has become embedded in our collective consciousness as a balm for white guilt: In the first instance, we "learn" in GTW that white folks really didn't treat their slaves so badly. In the second, the comfort of knowing that, with a white protagonist at our side, justice will prevail.
In much that has come out of assumptions of white superiority, the romance lives on.
Now, I must read the Watchman! From what I hear, the romance dies there.
9
A book is what the reader makes of it, whatever the writer intended. To me, the book was about Atticus, and was a classic hero story -- the man who saw and did what was right, alone among, and alienated by, his society, (think Gary Cooper in High Noon. Think Jesus.) We need stories of heroism. And, I have known such people. As for Tom Sawyer, I read it every summer when school let out -- it had no lesson, but was a darned good read.
5
Atticus, a hero? No. He blames Tom Robinson for his own death. He took the case, not because he thought it was the right thing to do, but because the judge asked him to do so. If he were so righteous he would've taken the case without the prompting. And after "Watchman" we now know a fuller story about Atticus' supposed racial heroism.
1
I read "To Kill a Mockingbird" five times. The first four times (from my late teens in 1979 to my early 30s in 1995) I loved it.
The 5th time (2002), I felt uneasy, when I saw it differently, as a story about blacks being saved by "good white people". I had become sick of such stories.
Notably, a friend of mine, independently went through the same transition.
9
I'm with you there, Roxane. Never thought of it as such a great work. I had a boyfriend who was a musician who actually wrote a song for Scout he was so enamoured by it (he didn't last long as a boyfriend). I really do not have any affinity for the South, and that may play a part in my indifference. I think, though, I found it fairly pedestrian.
3
I watched the movie as a little white girl and of course saw myself in Scout, wished my dad was Atticus, cried over Tom Robinson and his family.
Until I read Bryan Stevenson's book, "Just Mercy," I had never viewed it from a black person's point of view.
Shame on me.
And by the way, Bryan Stevenson is *truly* Atticus Finch.
Thank you Roxane -you always make me think, and often make me flinch about my privilege as white person. Your voice and perspective is so necessary.
14
Perhaps my view differs due to a generational difference between Ms. Gay and me. I understood the racism and life in the South. I am a black woman and the parts of the book that stuck were Boo Radley and his interaction with the children. I read this at 12. It had a lasting impact on my life and how I treat people (especially people with disabilities).
What needs dissecting and put out to pasture is A Streetcar Named Desire.
14
Exactly. I read the book in 1993. I knew how the plot about a black man accused of raping a white woman was going to end. Nor did I feel that Atticus had a white savior mentality.
Even Atticus killing the mad dog had its own story. A young girl sees a different side of her Dad that she did not know existed. There is so much going on in that book. To only focus on the racism isn't "seeing the forest through the trees".
3
An "abstract evil'? Not an abstraction at all -- but quite real -- if you have your eyes open.
I think Concerned Citizen touches on one of the overlooked aspects of the novel. While the primary focus is on racial prejudice in the South--and I understand why Roxanne Gay wouldn't be particularly impressed by that--what I took away from reading the novel 3 or 4 times as a youth is that it's more broadly about prejudice of all kinds and how ignorance of other people fosters prejudice. Drug addiction, mental illness, poverty--prejudice against victims of all of these are dealt with by Lee in the book. As for racial prejudice, for white folks like me, racism was (and for many people still is) an abstract evil. TKAM humanized and personalized it in a way that made a deep and lasting impression on my and thousands of others.
15
I know of no other novel taught in school that so consistently, year in, year out, seizes the attention and adoration of young readers of all colours and backgrounds. Show me another that can do that I will never use Mockingbird again in my classes.
17
Mockingbird should now be read/seen in the context including Go Set a Watchman, and the greater sophistication we now have about the time-bound nature of racism. With the two Atticus' portraits, we can begin to appreciate that justice is a moving target, and a daughter's coming of age requires harsh judgment that full adulthood must re-interrogate.
"Racism" is also endlessly dynamic in a human world in which we will always "other" even as we aspire to overcome our fallibility. "Racist" is too flat a term. The trajectory of Harper Lee's tale bends toward justice, even if all too humanly.
But the tale more fundamentally speaks of love. Atticus would be there when Jem waked up in the morning --- as, ah, those immigrant parents wish they could be.
5
Funny that most all of the comments here have only to do with defending the original book, TKAM, and not the new book that is being reviewed, WTKAMM.
To my mind, Ms. Gay’s critique of the newly published book seems much better than the new book itself.
7
Call me simple, but what I love about TKAM is its child's-eye view of the world. Dressing up as a ham for the school pageant! Seeking out the mystery of Boo Radley (those odd little trinkets in the tree trunk.) The episode of the lunch plate soaked in syrup. The mad dog. The inexplicable behavior of adults. A well intentioned father.
What I don't understand about it is-- if Atticus is such a great defender, why does he harangue the townspeople (and jury) about their moral failings, and not insist that they notice that the accused has the use of only one hand? Seems to stack the deck.
10
I'm curious why Ms. Gay, considering her dismissal of the book, uses the adjective "seminal" — influential, groundbreaking, important. Also, why she (and apparently Santopietro) ignores the fact that the trial is used in the context of a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age novel. The action is seen through the eyes of the 10-year-old narrator and describes her loss of innocence.
10
I spent two years teaching remedial reading in an all-Black school. My students were classified as ninth graders, but were mostly 17 or 18 years old.
Thanks to a generous grant, my students had access to many novels, and could choose their own titles to read.
Without my input, (I am white) "Mockingbird" was the hands down favorite with these students who lived in north Florida. They were allowed to keep the book and share it with family members if they so chose.
I was taken aback when one grandmother came to a parent/student conference and said that her entire extended family had read and loved "How to Kill a Mockingbird".
After some pondering on my part, I realized that both she and my cohort had indeed understood the novel, and recognized and identified with Tom Robinson, the mockingbird.
34
Oh thank you, Roxane Gay, for suggesting that the emperor has no clothes. As a Black woman who was sixteen and living in a Washington, D. C. , where "Negroes" were resisting white supremacy, Jim Crow, when To Kill a Mockingbird was published, I did not have and still do not have any fond memories for this favored and favorite American text. I will not rehearse your arguments about the novel here, for they are well reasoned; but rather I pose raise a query that is in someways unfair: I have always had trouble with the story of Robinson's death while escaping from custody. It is a neat ending to the narrative as are all such tales of Black men killed at the hands of the law. It was/is the stock explanation for the execution, dare I say the "lynching," that the white courtroom spectators believed the defendant deserved. His martyrdom occurs at a remove, is simply reported by Finch, so that Scout and we can lament the wrongheadedness of both our society and the prisoner--a regrettable conclusion but to be expected--and then to be briefly acknowledged and then passed over to arrive at more felicitous circumstances: a grateful Black community and a reconciliation with Boo. This conclusion is a liberal's dream: the story of a courageous attorney upholding the law in an unjust world, a feisty little girl who prefigures an America evolving toward what? A juster society.? A gullible audience falling for the okey-doke.
13
and, what would you have atticus do? make the world over ? for you? nonsense . . . i lived through this as well . . . william wilson dallas texas dallas press club 1981
Having read Ms. Gay's essays in the Times, I have to ask, Does she like ANYTHING?
28
I don't get the objections to the review.
Ms. Gay states her views of To Kill a Mockingbird, I find to be reasonable and relevant. I don't need to agree with her questions, just acknowledge that they're important to consider.
So, properly, she looks for the book's author to address the issues she raises as being roadblocks to the ongoing importance of TKAM. Her criticism, in the end, is that he does not. That's eminently reasonable.
16
The writer quotes Sondheim to talk about ambivalence. He is describing moral "gray areas"--how few characters in Harper Lee's book are either fully good or fully bad. He makes a reference to Sondheim's "Sorry-Grateful," which is all about gray areas and ambivalence. The quote seems neither "jarring" or "bewildering," despite Roxane Gay's description. Even if she were genuinely bewildered, I'm not sure that sentence needed to be included in the tight space of a New York Times review.
3
And then there's the filter that many people don't even realize--the screenplay Horton Foote wrote for the film. That film is probably the most emphatic relict of Harper Lee's book. Try and re-read it without hearing Gregory Peck's voice.
Did he smooth some of the harshness, or did he highlight it? That may be another chapter--Foote's body of work before and after 1960 indicates that he was the best editor that Lee could have hoped for.
And if the book and film no longer speak with the same impact as they did in the early 60's, 60 years is a long time for a book to have any impact. Spend much time in thrift stores and you'll bookshelves weighed down with best sellers that never saw another printing run.
It did have an impact, and at the right time. It changed a lot of minds for the better. I doubt anyone in this discussion will write anything that will have a fraction of that effect.
24
As a black person whose white English teacher, back in the day, thought they were doing God's racism-eradication work by teaching this novel...all I can say is THANK YOU for putting this out in the ether, Ms. Gay.
I've NEVER understood why this book is considered some venerated work of anti-racism. It's not. It does the lightest of lifting.
I cheered upon seeing this article.
39
It was pretty heavy-weight back in the day. You know, like "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
If it helped open the eyes of a segment of white people, it isn't to be sneered at.
12
The thing your teacher was missing is TKAM is a work of fiction, and it's not the task of fiction to correct the world's ills--only to point them out. Unlike much of southern fiction written before TKAM, the novel portrays the desperate circumstances of black people charged with a crime, how it could happen without a shred of evidence, and how it was ultimately a death sentence, one way or another. That the normal rules of a courtroom were suspended when black men were involved (and often still are).
The book filters these undeniable facts about the justice system and race, particularly in the south, through the eyes of a young white girl and her imperfect understanding of the world. But this is only one layer of the narrative, which is also focused on the vagaries of childhood, southern culture, and the many forms of social and class prejudice that helped produce and inform racism (such as the ostracizing of Boo Radley).
It's merely a good novel, very well written, offering a clear-eyed portrait of a place and time, which just happens to address racial issues truthfully. That's all.
Some English teachers do their students and Harper Lee's book a disservice by oversimplifying what the book is about and how it works as an effective piece of storytelling. But the fault is in how it's taught, not the book itself.
6
Sad to see this comment section seems to be full of white people defending their love of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. I think Gay handled this very well and was not entirely coming for your precious, racist book. Just pointing out some of the flaws that come with being an aging novel handling controversial topics and wishing that the author of this book had done the same. Pointed things out and been more unbiased.
45
I am white and female (in but not from the South) and I've always found the book naive.
And the movie: Beautiful Gregory Peck is the Virtuous White.
The White Paragon risks all to save the downtrodden. In this universe he escapes all that would have actually happened to him and his in the real world.
Applaud yourself, White Choir!
4
"I think Gay handled this very well and was not entirely coming for your precious, racist book. "
My, how open-minded of you!
3
Racist, like so many other words now, is used so casually and often as to lose much of its meaning.
You don't like a book or books? Fine, but that doesn't give you the right to condescendingly and broadly judge the people that do.
I grew up in Wyoming in the 60's. Both the book and movie affected me and opened my eyes to issues I'd never been exposed to or was even aware they existed honestly. It was a start that led me to Malcolm X and Bill Russell's autobiographies. Books were my initiation to injustice and the civil rights movement.
Don't know if that would have happened if I hadn't read TKAM.
51
The words "racism" and "racist" need to be used more often. Because this country is a racist country built on inequality.
White people need to get used to the word; and, more importantly, recognize that the implicit bias stew, in which they were raised, was and continues to be racist.
Racism is more than just using bad language and beating people up. It is an insidious, pervasive system. It's subtle, too. And if you're saying things like "[racism] is used so casually and often as to lose much of its meaning," then you continue to be part of the problem, in as much as you don't yet understand how racism works. Read "Blind Spot" or seek out, online, anything written by Robin Diangelo to start learning.
Lately, it seems like white people are more concerned about being called a racist than actual racism.
24
I wonder what Ms. Gay thinks of "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. Sometimes, white folks can open their minds, even just a little, by seeing the world from the perspective of other white folks who may have a clearer understanding of the effects of their own white privilege. It's mistake to discount the humanizing power of books like these.
23
What is happening to "To Kill a Mocking Bird" has happened before __ to "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Uncle Tom was supposed to show the humanity of slaves to its (white) readers but it ended up as a pejorative word.
Novels are historical artifacts __ so are their authors and their (real or imagined) audiences.
Literary merits or demerits aside, the above fact must be taken into account. Both novels made positive, if very imperfect , contributions by talking about what their (white) readers did not talk about.
Again, it is one thing to critique a novel for its style, depth of characters, etc. But judging it out of its historical context distorts the judgement.
36
"Uncle Tom" wan't just show humanity. He was intended to be a Christ figure and his killing by slaveowners was a martyrdom. But in an era where the Times identifies Christianity with uneducated evangelicals, the religious symbolism is completely missed and most of the novel seems meaningless..
1
Study the time art work was created "in", not the time the art work is set "in."
I'm a little bit older than TKAM and grew up in the south. It was an incredible read when I was a child. Rereading it in my 50s, I enjoyed it again.
As Ms. Gay knows, some books are a portrait of their complicated times. This book is probably true of how Harper Lee experienced her world, the racist south of Alabama more than 50 years ago, with all it's racism, problems, complications.
I think we'd be better off acknowledging and appreciating when an author writes a great - if flawed and complicated - novel that speaks and endures across generations. This is true of both "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "Huckleberry Finn." Both are problematic politically but there isn't any question that as far as racial problems in America, both Harper Lee and Mark Twain attempted to address the bigotry they saw in their lifetimes in an artful way that felt honest to them.
Maybe that's as much as we can expect of great writers. Attempt to speak to the concerns of their time in a way that
expresses their basic human decency and also tells a whale of a good story. Both Lee and Twain meet that high bar.
These books were written several lifetimes ago. I'm still thrilled we have them both.
21
Racism isn't political, it's inhuman.
"Atticus is written as the platonic ideal of a father and crusader for justice."
That's not true, really. Atticus Finch makes some breathtakingly bad decisions based on his ideals, foremost among them his conviction that he's heard the last of Bob Ewell and that his family is safe from his resentment.
Finch's sister Alexandra and Boo Radley, both of whom know human nature rather better than Atticus Finch, understand and fear Bob Ewell's brutishness.
Any seventh grader who's read To Kill a Mockingbird can tell you that.
As for the legacy of the Civil War: Southern aristocracy, protective of its plantation economy, was responsible for those first shots, but for the most part it was Southern farmers who, sold a bill of goods about "states' rights," fought and died and kept their hatred of Yankees alive and well.
They have been fighting ever since. Given the number of conservatives in small and large positions all over America, they might be winning.
16
I have always been embarrassed for white people who tell me there is no greater novel than To Kill a Mockingbird. I’ve heard it countless times. When they tell me this, they expose themselves as racists, when, they think they are proving they are not racists. There is no other work of literature that serves this function in our society. I also use the word literature lightly. The book is a mass culture novel that is not, I’m pretty certain, literature. I hope that soon it will be recognized as such and disappear from English classes across the land. And no, I’m not black. Like Roxane Gay, I am a thinking person.
11
You may agree with Roxane Gay on her premise, which has much validity. But you are wrong to call people who admire "To Kill a Mockingbird" racist. Gay is right to point out the novel's flaws and inadequacies, but she never deems those who are fans of the book as racists. To say you like -- even -- love this work is not to "prove" anything.
19
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is still one of my favorite books. I grew up in a small town in Alabama and the book resonated with me.
A childhood favorite of mine was "Huckleberry Finn", which I read when I was eight. At the time I was also reading the bible, so was inoculated to the horrors people, and God, can inflect. Reread it again a couple of years ago with an adult eye and saw the reason for the controversy. But I still loved Huck and Jim.
Some other favorite books of mine are: "Their Eyes were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston, "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, and "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte.
What I believe these books have in common is a powerful triumph of storytelling and characterization. And staying power. I certainly won't forget these...
11
Ah, but we miss the point. We can no longer discuss "Mockingbird" without discussing “Watchman.” If we compare and contrast, as we were taught in those English classes of yore, our eyes might open wide. We could learn much of writing (and editing, and publishing), of history, of the American experience, of human reality, you name it. The Atticus of "Watchman" is a real person, a real American, of his time and place -- racist, yes, and beginning to overcome it; this, not Gregory Peck, is Harper Lee's real hero, no? ... And he damn sure is important.
3
Terrific review -- almost certainly better than the book it reviews.
I think coming-of-age is an OK platform for storytelling. The book is not really about racism at all, and doesn't pretend to be. It's about doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. We can argue about whether or not it should be about racism,
but Lee did not confront that all-encompassing sickness.
The movie really hit me with two pointed elements of atmosphere.
One is the shooting down of a rabid dog, memorable mostly because it echoes the repeated assertions of Jesse James' father-in-law-to-be, a newspaper editor who identifies various villains as deserving that fate, in an earlier film. It was the right thing to do, for the health of the community, but only Atticus did the job.
The other is Boo Radley, played with impeccable self-contradicting agitation by the young Robert Duvall, an apparently crazed and unhinged white guy who turns out to
have a tender heart. You can almost see Duvall's entire career foreshadowed in Boo.
4
Ms Gay is quite correct, the audience for the book is white, and specifically, southern whites. So, if Ms Gay is not moved by the story, that is her loss, but to many of us whites, it was and remaines a good reminder of an evil in American society. And for that reason I think Ms Gay should have at least an ounce of thankfulness for the book.
27
I do not think that black people should be 'thankful' for when white people realize an ounce of humanity for the tragedies we have put on them. This comment is full of victim shaming and I do not believe you would have said this to a black person's face.
20
That was most interesting, Ms. Gay. Thank you.
Full disclosure: I am an older white person. I remember when "Mockingbird" came out. We still have the 1960 edition. Somewhere. I should look for it.
I like the book, Ms. Gay--though I take all the points you make so cogently. But "Mockingbird" isn't ALL about racism--black people and white people. SOME of it is certainly about taking a tearful look back at our own childhood. SOME of us (not ALL of us) enjoy doing that.
"I knew," Scout concludes her book, "that he would be there for me in the morning." (Or something like that.)
Oh to be a child again! Surrounded, enfolded by the loving care of ever vigilant grownups.
BUT. . . .
. . .I vividly remember reading (I was teaching the book) Mildred Taylor's "Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry."
Suddenly--with a sense of shock!--I realized what had been missing in "Mockingbird."
FEAR.
You are part and parcel of that black Georgia family. Besieged, as it were, by a hostile white majority. In whose hands lie all the laws--all the power--everything.
And the people! Very real people. Much more fleshed out than poor Tom Robinson. Or Calpurnia. People who really are. . . .
. . DEALING with--LIVING with. . .
. . .that ever present sense of POWERLESSNESS.
Yes, I do take your points, Ms. Gay. And yet. . . .
. . .I'm sorry. I still like "Mockingbird." I can't help it.
I'm an older white person. Must be in my genes.
Or something.
17
With this review, we’ve witnessed the beginning of the dismantling of traditional white literature by the next generation of “people of color” critics. Whether is this is good or bad is not my decision. We are at the crossroads of whites becoming the minority and people of color taking over the mantle of power, and I welcome this.
Soon, the majority will become the minority and the minority will become the majority as more brown/black babies are born than white babies. My only wish is that they all exercise their right to vote, (and soon!) so that this last bastion of old-white-man-power-brokers are sent in their way.
I disagree with Ms. Gay, but I find her views interesting. May she guide the way for those behind her.
11
"We are at the crossroads of whites becoming the minority and people of color taking over the mantle of power, and I welcome this."
Why? Just curious.
In my experience, I don't find people of color any more virtuous than white people. Until we can admit that there are fools of every color, things will not improve.
15
These comments, ugh! I get it--you guys understand racism so much better than Harper Lee. Of course, you are writing in 2018, nearly 60 years after Lee, and you need to demonstrate the superiority of your moral reasoning. Such pretentiousness. Your failure to grasp nuance or context is embarrassing.
33
I am 75 years old and read the book when I was much younger and liked it a lot. However at the point in my life growing up here and never really had any interactions with people of colour, and hadn't read James Baldwin yet, I think I was very naive. As a Jew, I experienced anti-semitism in my all waspy world and later other discrimination. It wasn't till later in 1963 when living in the U.S. that I was "exposed" to people of colour and later when I travelled to the South even more racism that changed the way I saw the world. Then I started reading Baldwin and other black writers, my favorite being Audre Lorde. Roxanne Gay is someone I admire and she says things that few are prepared to, like taking on a "classic" novel. I admire her even more for this. Unless you acknowledge that race and other things influence us in so many ways, we are truly lost.
3
This is a great review. I have read both To Kill an Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman. I really loved Go Set and thought it was a great sequel (or prequel...) to a great "American Classic".
After reading the review on why Mockingbird Matters, I was struck by the quality of the writing and the professional respect that the author of the review had for the author of the book. I purposely went back to the top of the article and saw that Roxane Gay was the reviewer. I have read several of Ms. Gay's collections of short stories and many magazine articles; that she put such craftsmanship into a book review comes as no surprise. Please continue to employ professional/outstanding writers who clearly love to both read and write high quality literary comment.
17
I've been trying to read the 100 Greatest Novels, and got to To Kill a Mockingbird last year. The writing style was warm and inviting, and I found myself actually caring about the characters.
If you want to talk about a classic that doesn't hold up to its reputation, I'd suggest Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. Ugh, what a slog it was to get through that one. It couldn't end fast enough for me.
5
"Sound and Fury" IS a slog to get through, but not because Faulkner was a poor writer. He deliberately chose his POV characters -- a mentally-impaired man, a suicidal depressive, a con man who never thinks about the ethics of his actions -- to make a point about a society ( the Jim Crow south) in decay.
For the first time I am considering the title as a pun which would be To Kill a Mocking Bird. The double entendre is interesting.
2
There's also an excellent hunting guidebook entitled "HOW to Kill a Mockingbird".
This seems an exceptionally meanspirited review. I don't think race has to define "target audience" and I couldn't agree less with the idea that Atticus, Calpurnia and other characters are anything but flat and no, they are not beings on whom just "white people" project their feelings: they are fully realized characters, and that is the reason for the book's success. Yes, the "n" word is used throughout as it is in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but the idea that the use of this word is racist in other book is one I don't buy. The word is used to undercut racism, to undercut dehumanizing people.
I usually find Roxane Gay illuminating, inspiring. What on earth is going on in this review?
http://www.thecriticalmom.blogspot.com
54
TKAM matters and will always matter because Lee took the time to usher white communities to a place where they could attempt to understand the black plight with more depth than they ever could before. In light of this, Gay’s analysis reeks of pettiness.
29
Growing up as a first generation, biracial Muslim in post 9/11 America, I certainly had my share of experienced racism. I was part of several out-groups. People found my very existence threatening. I didn't need a book to understand what it's like to feel hopelessly despised by wider society but all the same TKAMB is my favorite book and the reason I'm now studying law.
I'm painfully aware of the lack of understanding and ignorance present on both sides of the aisle, ignorance which detracts from the humanity of both and makes mutual understanding near impossible.
I noticed, growing up, if I called attention to a societal ill--one that impacted me--I'd go unheard. I could not talk about the challenges of being a Muslim in the US, Palestinian rights, issues of biraciality with nonmembers
I wasn't a trustworthy observer. I had a horse in the race. Whether my observations or experiences are true are secondary to the disbelief that someone from a marginalized group could view society impartially.
This is the importance of TKAMB. It shows America its ugliest face.
Its truth is only made palatable by the vehicle by which it's packaged--Atticus and Scout. One of the privileges of belonging to the majority is that your voice is heard. Your observations are deemed valid and impartial. It's a responsibility many shirk from--but TKAMB didn't and that is why it's important. It's a voice from the majority speaking for us, knowing it has a better chance of being heard.
13
"I wasn't a trustworthy observer. I had a horse in the race. Whether my observations or experiences are true are secondary to the disbelief that someone from a marginalized group could view society impartially."
This is so well put.
2
I read this book in my early teens after seeing the movie. What gripped me the most were its melodrama and the archaic and stranger bits of Southern folkways: Jem reading to a bedridden addict; the school pageant with its costumes celebrating the local economy; that very odd word, “chiffarobe;” syrup (whatever that was) as a condiment. Rabid dogs and a
man with autism leaving gifts in a tree. Kids with a housekeeper, but no mom.
Growing up in an integrated suburb of NYC during a time convulsed with racial strife (and progress), I knew about racism, but I did not know about the South, which was as foreign to me as China.
8
Chifferobe puzzled me for years until finally looking it up and finding it was merely a clothes press, an armoire. Always liked the way the word was spoken by Tom in the movie. The"syrup" or processed sorghum was a cheaper sugar substitute, possibly made locally.
2
I've never heard it suggested that Boo Radley was autistic, and it's never occurred to me after many readings of the book. Where did that come from?
When N. Harper Lee wrote TKAMB she understood that the book might color her career and she very likely knew from conversations with her friend Truman Capote already famous what was possibly awaiting her. What is critical is that in the 21st century we are learning new lessons and understanding things differently than our parents. What happens is that each generation uses a story to define its own folly and success it becomes a mirror and we chose to believe what we see or not. It is doubtful that Lee intended anything more than a soft tribute to her father. We are the ones lighting up the book and using it as a tool to define bigotry and class exploitation. Her father might well like this response.
1
To this young white woman, To Kill a Mockingbird was a revelation. I could do something, I could educate myself, I could join thousands of young people registering voters. I patterned my life on what Atticus Finch might do or think. I did grow up to realize how idealized the characters were. When To Set a Watchman came out, I understood why. I resisted reading it but found, when I did, a very good book explaining the south. For those of us who grew up not particularly experiencing racism, either personally or vicariously, To Kill a Mockingbird gave us a direction.
20
From another perspective, I loved TKaM but not because of Atticus, court battles, or right vs wrong. I loved Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. I still remember Toms' withered arm (so I knew he was innocent) and Boo's isolation. For me, it was the first time I had read a story with main characters who were disabled, either physically or emotionally. I connected with both characters and cared about them. When Tom was shot to death, I grieved. My point is perhaps there are more readers like me who were more invested in the 2 special characters rather than the major book themes. It does not sound like this new book examined a wider range of reasons for TKaM's longevity.
27
But Lynn, both Boo Radley and Tom Robinson are part of those major themes -- as are the Finch children.
Tom Robinson is but a subplot in To Kill a Mockingbird -- a large one, of course. Small-town life, with its religious prejudices, secrets that occur behind closed doors, false pride, and long memories, is an even larger subplot.
The Ewell family also gives coloring to much of that small-town life: they are people who can get an education any time they want, but they don't want one and haven't for many generations . . . .
For the rest, I certainly agree with what you say.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a good book and very much worth reading over at least twice; there's a lot in it that's easy to miss if you're just looking at Tom Robinson.
2
Nor, alas, does Gay's attack.
1
MOCKINGBIRD has is a lie at its core: that a prominent white lawyer could vigorously defend an African American man for a rape of a white woman in 1930s Mississippi *and keep his high social standing in the (white) community.*
This lie is brought full circle at the book's end, when the local law enforcement chief protects Atticus Finch and his family, by filing a false police report.
We who know anything about what the American Apartheid South was like know this is nonsense: Atticus would have been either physically exiled or shut out permanently from polite society.
And as we learned decades later, the Atticus Finch of Harper Lee's original manuscript was an avowed white supremacist and an active in the White Citizens Council; that character was reportedly based on Lee's father. Lee wrote the MOCKINGBIRD Atticus character at her publisher's specific requeste -- and America ate it up!
WHY THIS MATTERS:
No book has been as widely read in American schools, and no character has inspired more good-intentioned people to go to law school. But the book's premise is that a lawyer can fight entrenched power and still enjoy the highest social privilege. That's not how it worked in the 1930s, and it truly doesn't work that way even today. Strike at the heart of privilege, injustice, and the entrenched economic and social order, and you, lawyer, will be shunned or crushed by polite society, not embraced by it.
78
Gregory, I don’t know where you grew up but I grew up in the South of the 1950s, which wasn’t vastly different from the South of the 1930s. However, our small town in Virginia was nothing like Birmingham or even the town in the novel. There were still segregated schools but white folks and black folks knew and respected each other and interacted on a regular basis. Our white and black churches had joint Easter sunrise services and other exchanges between black and white churches. If one of our respected lawyers represented a black man in such an instance, it would not have been the end of his career. There would have been a few racists who would have grumbled but most of our residents would have accepted it without a murmur. When desegregation came it occurred without a single incident because the students and parents accepted it fully. Were all the people completely free of bias? No, they weren’t and that would probably never be anywhere. I do think the novel is important. Our high school students need to see how ugly it was at one time. Today’s students are far less biased than in earlier times and it comes as a shock to hear the “n” word bandied about freely and to see the attitude of white people towards black people. It is important and maybe can be compared to the ugliness of today’s alt-right movement and the politicians who wink and nod at it.
17
Your comment, Ms. Cagle, certainly appears well-intentioned. But you grew up in a system designed to plunder African Americans (despite their central role in building Virginia's economy), to rob them of even the most basic economic opportunities, to deny voting rights and equal protection under law, and to enable others to terrorize African Americans entirely without legal consequence.
That's what the 1950s American South's economic and social structure was all about then, and it wasn't much better in the North.
This reality doesn't square with the "things weren't quite so bad" picture of life for African Americans in your VA small town that you've offered here. Growing up, how could you have even know how bad life actually was for your fellow Black citizens, in a society designed to hide the depth of that horrendous truth from you? I ask this question sincerely and without disdain.
And 60 years later, is our best literary opportunity to show the conditions of the American South really TKAM, a book that treats its Black characters as objects, and whose central character is a now proven ahistorical contrivance? These elements actually reinforce a certain kind of condescension, and worse. We need to do much better as a society.
3
" .. But the book's premise is that a lawyer can fight entrenched power and still enjoy the highest social privilege. That's not how it worked in the 1930s, and it truly doesn't work that way even today .."
Trial lawyers advertise 24x7x365 on TV to get rich and fly around on private jets. Res ipsa, sir.
"Mockingbird" is comforting to white people (beloved protagonist, admirable father-figure, a seemingly righteous message), but suffers most because it offers no real insight into racism. White Christian Americans chose to enslave other human beings not simply for their own profit, but to imagine themselves on a higher plane by standing on those below. Black people are the convenient shadow-scapegoat for all that White America finds intolerable in itself. Rather than looking fearlessly at the real root of our national problems (power and privilege, economic and social inequities), we continually heap blame on all non-whites because it suits everyone at every level. Those in charge like things just the way they are, and if "Mockingbird" gets one thing right, it's the willing blindness and comforting mindless conformity that reflects our ongoing moral decay.
17
I've taught this novel to largely white 8th graders for a decade. (I am white.) It helps expand horizons. It also has cringe-worthy moments. I think the final lesson from Atticus-don't judge anybody until you have walked a mile in his shoes--trite, and unhelpful. Should I have empathy for a racist? For the guys who lynched? Nope. Of course, in our polarized world, we could use some more empathy, just not for the fellows with the rope.
12
I wonder if this volume might have received a different evaluation from a writer who actually liked the novel.
33
I would guess that anyone who writes a negative review of a book probably doesn't like the book very much. If all reviewers who don't like the book they are reviewing are disqualified for that reason, there would be no or few negative reviews. Saying or suggesting that Roxane Gay should have been disqualified from reviewing this book because it didn't impress her is wrong and misses the point - it's not a book for black people or a black audience and doesn't really engage its subject matter, at least if that subject matter is racism.
6
As a book reviewer and literary scholar with over forty years of experience, I can say that there are many books that I like, but would not judge as particularly good.
Like/dislike and good/bad are not the same. It's nice when they coincide, but not necessary. Bad literary criticism confuses these categories.
This is a clear, well written review. Ms. Gay doesn't like "To Kill a Mockingbird"or this new book about "Mockingbird", but she concisely tells us what she finds good and bad about both. We need to read more of what Roxane Gay writes.
33
I've always thought that books like "To Kill A Mockingbird" are just for white people, to make liberal-thinking white people feel good about themselves. (They like to imagine themselves as Atticus Finch, doing the right thing just because it is the right thing.)
My main issue with the book is that is still relegates black people as "the other". We should leave black people alone because they are like sweet mockingbirds that only create music....no, black people are humans just like white people. A book cannot combat racism when it is unable to see blacks as equals.
17
Sallie, that is the whole point! The people in this small Southern town didnt view blacks as equal to whites. That was realism. If that hadn’t been part of the book it wouldn’t have shown the reader the truth about that time in history. It wasn’t true everywhere but it was true in many places.
8
The "mockingbird" was not a black character. Perhaps you need to reread the book?
Tkam was the best southern white folks could do at the time. I don’t know a more damning statement. I don’t see much evidence they’ve improved on their own.
9
Thanks you, Ms. Gay, as always, for daring to say uncomfortable things in clear, uncontrovertible terms, and for doing what a critic should do: making clear where a work falls short, and providing a more informed lens with which to regard the subject matter.
9
While I sincerely appreciate and value your critique, I am still interested in reading this book because To Kill A Mockingbird remains one of my favorite novels (and I am not white). To me, the major theme of the novel is the killing/death of innocence. And that theme is represented principally through the characters of Tom Robinson, Scout, Jem, and Arthur/Boo Radley.
45
Yes, that's it exactly! The death of innocence. Harper Lee makes the death of innocence poignant and memorable, precisely because her description of innocence, right from chapter one, is at once charming, funny, and deeply ironic.
I think perhaps this classic novel is too subtle for some readers. Commenters on this page, and Ms Gay herself, appear to have slept through the scene of Scout and Jem and the Black church service, and the incisive (oh so innocent) portrayal of the conversation at Auntie's tea party. And what of the subtle lessons Atticus allows Jem to learn from Mrs Dubose, that nasty racist neighbor for whom Atticus can muster pity and respect as she battles addiction to die "clean." People are complex -- even nasty racists. Harper Lee was masterful at revealing this truth. Her novel is a treasure on many levels. And racism is only one of its themes.
4
Ms. Gay's analysis certainly has some merit. Any literary work has plusses and flaws, and, certainly, To Kill a Mockingbird is not an exception to this truism. The potential strength of Ms. Gay's arguments are weakened considerably when she veers off course to state that the book would likely only appeal to "white" people as some of them use it as a vehicle to become aware of racism in the United States. Ms. Gay provides no data to back up who this book might appeal to and for that matter why. I agree with Ms. Gay that racism, although less caustic then it was that the time this novel was written, is still persistent. One need look no further than the racist pronouncements of the current occupant of the White House and the support given him by the voters who placed him there to verify that supposition. However, Ms. Gay's treatment of all caucasians as a single group, and she does indeed do this throughout her opinion piece, smacks of the same simple-minded thinking and racism she points out as routinely practiced by some whites. Her reductionist pronouncements come across as resentful and sarcastic, rather than well-developed and clear. I don't deny that there is an undercurrent of racism in many quarters throughout the US, but to throw all members of any race into one bucket is not only inaccurate and unfair, but disqualifies the writer, in my view, from being taken seriously.
67
...and another comment that presumes white is the enduring and forever default. Perhaps Ms. Gay was talking about the Black readers experience- one that I, as a Black woman, can co-sign. To laud a book as still mattering, perhaps we should raise the standard to include mattering to a broader audience than just White folks...
6
IMHO, what all this misses -- a well-written, well-edited immediate blockbuster, quickly made into a well-made movie classic with fine acting .. tailor-made for the middle-school classroom. Period, full stop.
The discomfort voiced by many of these comments speaks volumes. It’s hard to hear criticism of one’s childhood icon. Personally, I find Ms. Gay’s analysis refreshing. Amongst most of my liberal white teacher friends, the book is still taught with the same reverence with which they read it as children. Let’s move past the Hollywood schlock and cartoonish idealism and get real, people. A more illuminating historical context might be the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice, aka the National Lynching Memorial.
2
Compared to truly great writers like Faulkner, Wright, and
Ellison, and Flannery O'Connor "To Kill A Mockingbird" is indeed small fare. But at a time white Americans were, many for the
first time, looking at racism critically it provided a good and
sympathetic read. In this way its influence as a work of
art has been far more sociological than literary, as has the
work by others of both races.
12
I have no idea why the review of this book was assigned to someone who thinks so little of the Harper Lee novel. But this commentary is political polemic masked as a book review and contains passages--"[t]his book is a 'product of its time,' sure, so let me say that said time and the people who lived in it were plain terrible"--seemingly written by a struggling high-school student.
I do not mind a critical review. But let it be fair. And given the book review in which it appears, let it offer a higher level of writing and criticism than this review.
I have no idea whether Tom Santopietro has written a book worth reading. I only know that he has written a book with a political tone that Ms. Gay finds wanting.
61
To reduce her review to a matter of a dislike of a political tone, not only ignores the very cogent points Ms. Gay makes about the content and structure of this book, but also the very real context in which the original mockingbird book has been lauded in- both then and continuing. I guess there are still people who prefer their Blacks one dimensional and their introspection void of any true reckoning.
6
Gay's review reminds me of the reviews black critics and academics gave Styron's, Nat Turner in 1967. Odd, how a fiction novel can provoke such controversy.
" .. Strike at the heart of privilege, injustice, and the entrenched economic and social order, and you, lawyer, will be shunned or crushed by polite society, not embraced by it .."
Google "Bingham family" and "David Halberstam" and "Claude Sitton." Attempt to argue away their historic actions. That will take a lot of work, sir.
As to the "intellectual" analysis of the reviewed book -- there are more than 2,200 doctoral-level dissertations on Shakespeare. I seriously doubt any of them had an effect on the public school process of always re-assigning the same material, year after year ..
Dose the book have faults , Yes. However it is most often read by students entering high school. [ my granddaughter read it in the 8th grade].For my generation it showed how lawyer's must fight in the face of a raciest and unjust political system.When I was in law school [ 1968-71 ] a majority of us [ African American, hispanic, feminist and yes white ] went to work as public defenders , legal aid , civil rights , environmental , labor and a host of other public interest lawyers. I spent over 30 years as a public defender and most of my fellow students have spent their entire careers fighting what we called the good fight. My granddaughter , age 15 hopes to become a Public defender and my god son is all ready a public defender .
Ms. Gay as an adult this book would be difficult to reread however I have seen its impact on young lives . For me that is why it still matters.
38
I try not to personally attack commenters but your grammar makes me wonder if you were a lawyer and how good you were. Besides that, I think you miss the points Ms Gay is making. It is a novel; it is fiction. It should not be used to explain life in the south to anybody.
Roxane Gay is correct that she is not the target audience for To Kill a Mockingbird. She does not need racism explained to her; she lives with it every day of her life. White people, however, need racism explained to them -- I certainly did, and am still trying to learn. It is a hard message to hear, that one is part of a majority benefiting from the oppression of a minority. It's very easy for the majority to shut the message out and even to blame the messenger. History shows that, if heard at all, it is heard slowly and incrementally.
What Harper Lee did effectively in 1960 was to show a step in the message: Be like Atticus Finch, not like Bob Ewell (the antagonist in Mockingbird). Ewell-style racism--viewing blacks as subhuman instrumentalities to be subjugated and killed if found inconvenient--was a real problem. For more than 50 years, though, white people internalized the message, "Be like Atticus," which is not enough, but it was an improvement, and worked to delegitimize Ewell-style racism, at least until Trumpism.
That's why Go Set a Watchman caused such upset among many whites. We now see Atticus's racism, which is destructive to our seeing ourselves as Good White People. The decline of lynchings is good, but police killing unarmed black men leave them just as dead as Ewellian mobs. White people could use a modern Harper Lee to show them, "Don't be like Atticus; be kind and open and accepting of all." With enough steps forward, we eventually will defeat racism.
50
To Kill a Mockingbird is, sadly, one of the most widely taught books in American middle and high schools. It’s beloved by many (usually) white teachers. I reread it recently and have concerns about it for the same reasons that Roxane Gay does: the flatness of the African American characters and the valorization of Atticus Finch. It also touches on domestic violence and a false accusation of rape, whose treatment reflects prefeminist views from more than half a century ago. In addition, it’s not even a very good book. Many secondary English teachers have moved on to teaching more contemporary and better quality fiction, but this one is still frozen in amber in the canon in too many classrooms.
19
I agree with you, Sandra Wilde, and had been thinking about exactly the same metaphor: "frozen in amber." I read it 40 years ago and liked it very much at the time, but have no doubts that Roxane Gay's analysis shows how the novel is inadequate to students today. Boomers fetishize the memory of their youthful progressive pasts--frozen in amber--in order to prove that they are not racist, and are still progressive. The reverence for TKAM is part of this white enterprise. There are so many books more deserving of TKAM's place on required reading lists.
1
Oh, I never found Calpurnia particularly "flat"; nor have I found Atticus particularly "valorous."
No one mentions Aunt Alexandra, whose complacent beliefs are challenged by hearing them uttered by the essentially vulgar church ladies with whom she has come into more frequent contact.
It seems to me that people who really hate To Kill a Mockingbird haven't really read it carefully.
3