The Cricket and the Anachronism

I just finished reading The Cricket in Times Square to Lily. I think I remember really enjoying it as a kid myself, and on some level I really enjoyed reading it now. Lily loved it, for many of the reasons I thought and hoped she would. In the book, a cricket from Connecticut ends up accidentally coming to New York in a daytripper's picnic basket and is taken in by a boy named Mario, whose family has a newsstand at the Times Square subway station. We both enjoyed the familiar settings, especially the New York details that are already known to Lily: the shuttle from the Times Square station to Grand Central, the rush hour commuters (like the ones who hit me with their briefcases on the way to school, she commented), the excursions Mario takes to Chinatown to learn more about his new companion.

Actually, it was when Mario hit Chinatown for the first time that my own enthusiasm faltered first. I was reading along when I spotted up ahead a few lines a shockingly racist passage of dialogue. The "Chinaman" Mario visits speaks in pidgin English, complete with l's for r's, no articles, and frequent, simpering tee-hee's. Again, uncharted territory: I did not skip, I translated. In my version of The Cricket in Times Square, Sai Fong is a kind, insightful but very well-spoken Chinese-American man who is utterly fluent in the language of his adopted land. Although Lily can read much of what I am reading to her if she pays attention, she rarely tries when being read to, and I turned the book toward me in case she noticed. She did not.

And after the few offending chapters were through, and Mario had received his "ancient Chinee wisdom" from the caricature that was Mr. Fong, I started to let myself sink back into the story. But I can't stop thinking about it. This book was written in 1960. It won the highest prize in children's literature. Was this kind of thing really okay in 1960? I hated that I had to change the words that someone else had written, but there was no way I was going to introduce Lily to that kind of ugly caricaturing myself, voluntarily, at the age of 4. I wondered how many parents still read this book to their kids and didn't change the words, perhaps even took delight in uttering the silly, tiresome expressions in an exaggerated fake Chinese accent that has still not fallen entirely out of favor, I fear, in certain circles.

I am upset by this experience. I am not so naive as to be unable to forgive an author for writing in the context of his time, but I also believe that in 1960 an educated person would have thought better of resorting to this kind of thing in an otherwise delightful book for children. Someday, I will have this conversation with Lily. I am, will be, very curious to hear what she thinks.