Introduction David Russell, Karin Westman, and Naomi Wood In this issue of The Lion and Unicorn, we explore representations of psychology, privilege, and the boundaries of the human in literature for young readers. Beth Boyens’s “Unearthing the Roots: White Privilege and Trauma in A. S. King’s Dig” provides a close reading of King’s exploration of white privilege and systemic racism in today’s America. Both King’s novel and Boyens’s essay are particularly timely in America, acknowledging, as they do, the unsettling resurgence of racism in a time when society thought it was all in the past. Indeed, Boyens argues that King’s novel, which was the 2020 recipient of the Michael L. Printz award, is an eerie precursor to the series of tragic events from the murder of George Floyd to the insurrection in January 2021. Boyens demonstrates how the various central characters, all members of the King family, “represent [psychologist J. E.] Helms’s stages of white identity.” She further argues that Boyens’s novel provides a guide for YA readers, particularly white YA readers, who seek a better understanding of their white identity as it relates to the trauma inflicted on people of color as well as on American society as a whole. Boyens’s thorough-going analysis provides a compelling guide through of the structure of this very original and complex novel. For example, she points out that the novel is structured like a three-act play, suggesting the “performative nature of race,” which demands that we assume various roles in our daily lives depending on the circumstances. This essay offers provocative insight for those readers already familiar with the novel, and for everyone else it offers an irresistible enticement to rush out and find the book. Tolkien’s literary references to trees in The Lord of the Rings have long been extolled for their advocacy for nature and against the forces of civilization. Indeed, Tolkien himself claimed the role of “an arboreal liberator, along with his general championing of the oppressed.” However, Mary-Anne Potter and Deirdre C. Byrne, drawing on feminist post-humanism and new [End Page v] materialism, provide a different slant on this point of view, suggesting the Tolkien may not be the herald of environmentalism we might suppose. In “Why Do Trees Need Herding? J. R. R. Tolkien’s Mastery of Trees in The Lord of the Rings,” Potter and Byrne re-examine the celebrated cycle, particularly identifying “gaps and aporias in Tolkien’s portrayal of trees.” The authors, in support of their argument, particularly focus on the relationship between forest of Lothlórien and Galadriel, the forest’s eco-steward. Although, they argue, Tolkien would seem to be taking the part of the trees and the natural world, he clearly places the human at the pinnacle of the cosmic hierarchy. “His primary loyalty is to myth and the trees become, at times, obstacles,” and Tolkien’s “eco-stewardship tends to center human masculinity as providing guidance”: “Tolkien may love the trees, but he still feels they ‘need herding.’” And this is not, the authors contend, “because they cannot speak, but because author and readership do not know how to listen to them.” How do we respond when abused children become abusers themselves? In “Psychoanalytic Transference and Redemption in Anne Fine’s The Tulip Touch and Anne Cassidy’s Jennifer Jones Novels,” Chen-Wei Yu explores two powerful depictions of the psychological and social situations of children who become killers. Yu analyzes how English authors Fine and Cassidy build on the social, political, and media response to the murder of toddler James Bulger by two ten-year-old boys in 1993. They not only imagine what motivates a child to kill, they also probe possible responses to that child. Yu uses the theory of transference to analyze and then reflect on how each novelist represents child criminal behavior, those who enable it, and those who seek to help. Though such crimes might at first seem unrepresentable in children’s literature, Yu shows how the two novelists offer models of redemptive self-care, and challenge readers to see and understand. This issue concludes with the collaborative essay “‘mouth...
Read full abstract
Aug 1, 2024
Meredith E Abarca + 4
Open Access