![]() It's especially jarring, because this very scene, in which main character Jody's friend Fodder-wing is introduced, is remarkable in its ahead-of-its-time treatment of a person with a physical disability. ![]() I recognize now that my nine-year-old White self was privileged to just kind of blow past that for kids who may have been called that name, it wouldn't have been so easy. ![]() For example, in describing a pet raccoon, the narration reads: "A tiny black paw, like a n*****’s baby's hand, reached out." Seriously!? I honestly don't remember how I reacted to this kind of sentence at age nine, but reading it today makes me angry, because it's so unnecessary and mars what is otherwise an enduring work of writing that is both critically acclaimed and popular. Unfortunately, when a narrator uses objectionable language, even a 1930s narrator, it is somehow harder to accept than when such terms are spoken by a book's characters. ![]() Of course, this really is how the people in the book would have spoken at the time and place it was set. ![]()
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