Outcry in Montgomery county as Linda Coombs’ book on European colonization of Native American land reclassified

Outcry in Montgomery county as Linda Coombs’ book on European colonization of Native American land reclassified

Anti-censorship advocates have joined book publisher Penguin Random House in condemning a Texas county that reclassified an account of European settlers’ colonization of Indigenous Americans as fiction.

The furor in Montgomery county – near Houston – follows the decision by a citizens review panel, at the behest of rightwing activists, to place Colonization and the Wampanoag Story by Linda Coombs in the fiction section of children’s libraries.

The book aims to present young readers with a historic look from the perspective of Native people of the colonization of New England, according to PEN America, the nonprofit advocacy group for free expression in literature.

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“To claim this book is fiction dismisses our perspective and history,” said a statement from Debbie Reese, founder of American Indians in Children’s Literature.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
    11·
    1 month ago

    It’s worth noting that the book does contain several chapters which, on their own, would probably be classified as “historical fiction”.

    They are clearly identified by the title “When Life Was Our Own”, and the author introduces them as a story which will provide context and depth for the surrounding non-fiction text.

    A pretty reasonable approach for a children’s book, and also one which is thematically appropriate, given the importance of oral history in the preservation of Native American culture.

    The book starts with a story, “When Life Was Our Own,” which describes Wampanoag life before any European contact. The story was created to re- late traditional Wampanoag culture, beliefs, prac- tices, and values based on our oral traditions and research done over many years. There are no writ- ten sources of these early times, due to the processes of colonization described in the other parts of the book. An understanding of precontact life brings clarity to the impacts of colonization on Indigenous people.