Tsitsanu, by Luciano Ushigua (a trilingual Sapara book)
It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I love children’s books. I love young adult fiction*, I love middle-grade fiction**, but most of all I love picture books. I love them Elizabeth Barrett Browning-style. I love the wide variety of artistic-styles and the short written form (when they have writing at all). Anthropology is not totally out of touch with this, as some have used the creation of children’s books*** as a tool to help communities struggling with language loss and revitalization. But recently I have been thinking that picture books may be even more valuable to anthropology than just the sub-section who work on linguistic and cultural revitalization.
I really really want to engage with a more public form of anthropology, but the opportunities I have seen do not suit me****. I like blogging, but long experience with online diary-style writing has made me cautious of anything akin to fieldnote blogging. Margaret Mead‘s regular column in Redbook seems beyond both my expertise and my clout. But a picture book is a snapshot of a time, a place, and a constellation of relationships and social issues, and how great would it be to base it on fieldwork! Illustrations can help provide more depth and breadth, and the book itself can be read at whatever level the reader is ready to engage at. As Madeleine L’Engleonce said, “if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
A Handful of Seeds, by Monica Hughes, illustrated by Luis Garay
And this would not exactly require the formation of a new genre. Picture books are already suited to this purpose. For instance, Catch That Goat! may be a counting book, but it is also about a Nigerian marketplace. A Handful of Seeds presents a story about capitalism, family, police brutality, urban farming, and homeless children, but it is a book I would pick up for bedtime snuggles any day. The Night of the Moon: A Muslim Holiday Story is simply an account of Ramadan as celebrated by a Pakistani American girl – this genre is just begging for anthropologists to get in on it!
Now I just have to think of what to make it about …
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* Like Looking for Alaska
** Like Ruby Lu, Star of the Show
*** One that I love is the Kichwa story Kuntur kuyashkamanta, The Condor Who Fell in Love
****I mean, sure I hope my publications will not be hidden behind mammoth paywalls, but making your academic voice available to the public does not make your work really publicly accessible …
Sam Grace 