File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1999/postcolonial.9907, message 121


Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 13:21:34 -0700
From: "Marlene R. Atleo" <maratleo-AT-island.net>
Subject: Re: Not White, Not Quite?



>Spielberg wasn't on the Amistad, but his depiction of the events >were
gut-wrenching and moving.  

gut-wrenching and moving is hardly the equivalent to having been there and
understanding the actions etc through the eyes of the participants...
I am glad Alan used this allusion because America has colonized and
continues to colonize the life world through the film medium in the most
incidious ways....

in the last couple of weeks psychologist make public how often they
recommend movies to their patients to help them gain therapeutic insight......

Scholastic Books has a series currently that culls the 'experiences' of
historical children for today's children in a series called "Dear America"
that masquarade as "diaries" of historical children - promising "you will
experience first hand what it was like to grow up in another time and
place" ..suggesting that children "Open Their Diaries...Make History Your Own"
http://www.ebsread.com/dearamerica/books/index.htm
a group of us examined one particular book supposidely written from the
perspective of a Native American child 
The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl,
Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880.  Our review points out from a
Native American perspective the lack of authenticity of this book....at
http://www.oyate.com
this example from children's literature demonstrate some of what we are
talking about here....how colonizing this process of fictionalization is
especially when still speaking for others....

The esthetic contrivance of lived experience through Hollywood is hardly
post colonial....it is still pure colonialism.....

>I feel that Steinbeck, Joyce, and a host of other
>authors who are read by some as "non-postcolonial" can be read >as such,
and by reading them in that light, we can come to a more >full
understanding of postcolonialism as a whole.

Steinbeck and Joyce have not/could not meta themselves in their writing
from that perspective....



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