Children's Fiction about 9/11: Ethnic, Heroic and National Identities (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Children's Fiction about 9/11: Ethnic, Heroic and National Identities Paula T. Connolly (bio) Children's Fiction about 9/11: Ethnic, Heroic and National Identities. By Jo Lampert. New York: Routledge, 2010. In her examination of a selection of picture books and young adult literature, Jo Lampert explores the cultural impact of the September 11th attacks as represented in children's literature about 9/11, particularly the ways in which personal and communal identities have been refigured as a response to the attacks. Focusing on the intersecting constructions of ethnic, heroic, and national identities, she examines how vying representations—of multiculturalism and isolationism, grief and recovery, vulnerability and agency-share an often uneasy narrative space as authors attempt to create new post-9/11 identities. Lampert's first two chapters set the context for her study. In "Children's Literature and Its Cultural Influence," she draws upon literary and cultural theorists to make the case that the September 11th attacks precipitated a recreation of personal and national identity, particularly for Americans. Facets of this identity shift, she argues, are evinced in children's literature as characters model new identities and ideologies of ethnicity, nationality, and heroism. These texts also anticipate—if not prescribe—the emotional state of readers, often implying their vulnerability and ready need for stories to "heal" the wounded reader (18). In "Identity Shifts after 9/11," Lampert provides a primer on the theoretical perspectives, principally postmodernism and postcolonialism, that inform her study of shifting narrative representations of identity. Her site of interest, she notes, is the space between narratively depicted binaries—between, for example, "American" and "Arab," "inclusion" and "isolation." In the following three chapters—"Ethnic Identities," "National Identities," and "Heroic Identities"—Lampert does the core work of her study, providing close readings to demonstrate how the three categories inextricably intersect. In "Ethnic Identities," she discusses the picture books On That Day (Patel 2001) and There's a Big Beautiful World Out There (Carlson 2002), arguing that through such techniques as the use of personal pronouns (particularly "us" and "we") and the visual representations of white protagonists who must be reassured about the state of the world, the texts construct a "unified [and exclusive] American subject" (55). She further explores contesting [End Page 480] ideologies in the Parvana series for young adults. Told from the point of view of an Arab protagonist, the novels nonetheless ultimately argue for the universal acceptance of Western values. Lampert points out, for example, that representing Arab women as victims, weak, or desirous of becoming "Westernized" makes them "palatable" (65) to intended (largely American) readers. Such representations, she notes, imagine Western countries (particularly America) as necessary saviors and models of civilization. As Lampert points out, such ethnic scripting does little to further any real sense of multiculturalism or appreciation of diversity. In "National Identities," Lampert discusses the picture books It's Still a Dog's New York (Roth 2001) and the Caldecott-awarded The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (Gerstein 2003), as well as the young adult novels Lucy and the Liberty Quilt (London 2001) and Girl X Recreated (Rowe 2002). Here she interrogates how, in It's Still a Dog's New York, Roth's creation of a romanticized national identity evinces a sense of a "national 'forgetting'" that erases "the homelessness, racial tension [and . . .] crime that are also familiar New York narratives" (98). Girl X Recreated, which was in the process of being written when the 9/11 attacks occurred, takes the "form of a fictionalized electronic diary" between Girl X of then-present day 2001 and a boy living in the year 3002 (124). In her choice of this text, Lampert explores 9/11 as a moment of "interruption"; set in Australia, Girl X Recreated both suggests the worldwide impact of the 9/11 attacks and the temporality of their effect as the characters return to typical matters of personal teenage angst a few months after the attacks. The final chapter examines the recreation of heroism following 9/11. From the picture books Bravemole (Jonell 2002) and Fireboat (Kalman 2002) to DC Comics' two-volume anthology, September 11th 2001 (2002), Lampert argues that the construction...