I saw a Book-Off today. I had to go in. I was never really sure what Book-Off meant in Japan, and just chalked it up to one more classic case of Jenglish (Japanese-English). But, today's Book-Off located in Vancouver, brought back pleasant memories so I decided to go in for nostalgic reasons.
Good thing I did! I found the most amazing book. The title? Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. Here is an excerpt from a rendition of Snow White:
Once there was a young princess who was not at all unpleasant to look at and had a temperament that many found to be more pleasant than most other people's. Her nickname was Snow White, indicative of the discriminatory notions of associating pleasant or attractive qualities with light, and unpleasant or unattractive qualities with darkness. Thus, at an early age, Snow White was an unwitting if fortunate target for this type of colorist thinking.
Now that's what I call balanced, politically correct writing. It's about time there was a bit more sensitivity shown in fairy, excuse me, "individual diety proxy" tales. I promise to never read to my children those biased, antiquated tales any longer. I think its time we all live up to the author's charge:
"If, through omission or comission, I have inadvertently displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, aegist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriachalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, I apologize and encourage your suggestions for rectification. In the quest to develop meaningful literature that is totally free from bias and purged from the influences of its flawed cultural past, I doubtless have made some mistakes."
May this blog live up to the same calling.
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