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Native, Black & Rock & Roll: Histories by Jonah Winter & Robbie Robertson, by Charlie, Age 16

In March 2017, Dr. Debbie Reese first wrote about THE SECRET PROJECT, a nonfiction book for kids written by Jonah Winter and illustrated by Jeanette Winter. This is how she found out about the book and her personal interest:

I was going into my "Debbie--Have you seen series" but when I looked it up, I got a copy right away. Why? Because it has several starred reviews, and because its setting is so close to Nambe Pueblo (my tribal nation and where I grew up is about 30 miles away.)

In her long, excellent thread, Dr. Reese critiques the book for erasing Native people: a "desert mountain landscape" where "nobody knows they are there." They are the scientists of the Manhattan Project. Winter writes about "the faraway nearby," which doesn't sound like nonfiction to me. Using this, he can pull into his story people at a great distance. Like this one:


Dr. Reese writes: "Hopi? That's over three hundred miles away in Arizona."  Where are her Nambe Pueblo ancestors who actually lived nearby? Dr. Reese and other scholars have also written about how this image doesn't represent how a Hopi man would have looked at that time. There is also a question about the use of the word "dolls." This picture is a stereotype about Indigenous people and nations with inaccurate information. I'm going to come back to that. I also want to point out that Jonah Winter played the victim (instead of addressing concerns) in a New York Times article about the critiques, and then Roger Sutton of Horn Book Review wrote a column addressing misrepresentation in that article.

THE SECRET PROJECT is White male mythmaking about a group of scientists creating a WMD.  Yeah. Skip ahead to me picking up Jonah Winter's biography for kids about Elvis Presley at the library two weeks ago. I am an early rock and roll fan because of my dad. He shares his vinyl and knowledge with me. I was interested in ELVIS IS KING which has a fleek cover by Red Nose Studio.


Seriously, I didn't even notice it was the same author as THE SECRET PROJECT. Till I started to read it and think, "Hella what's going on here?" I would say this book is also short of hard facts and should be in the mythology (not biography) section. It starts:

Elvis is born! But, alas, he is born in a humble shack on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, the side where the poorest of the poor people live, down down down in the Deep South--Tupelo, Mississippi.
That almost sounds like another King born in Bethlehem! Also, not much "humble" here--unless it's humble bragging.

But what I really want to get to is how Winter handles Elvis' EPIC appropriation of the Black rock and roll sound, his claim to visiting Black churches and blues clubs and singing like that.

After a number pages about Elvis' White poor Southern upbringing and growing musical talent, we come to this page. The title of the poem is called "The Moment in the African American Church." Here is the image:



And here is the text:

From the dusty road,
Little Elvis hears some gospel singing,
goes to peek in the window,
and Good Lord Mercy!
He ain't never heard nothin' that sweet before.

So much to say. Remember this is a biography not a fiction book. My first question is, did this "moment" actually happen in Elvis' life? He peeked in the window of a Black church. That seems implausible in so many ways. What churches were in the area? Doing some searches online, I see that Elvis is connected with the First Assembly of God Church in Tupelo. This page on tripadvisor claims "the young Elvis Presley worshiped" at this church." Elvis fans visit the place and leave reviews. This page features a plaque that marks the site of the White Pentecostal church that "Elvis and his family attended" and where Reverend Frank Smith "helped young Elvis develop his guitar skills." But where are the local Black churches from the era? Is this what they looked like? Do any survive? What are kids going to think when they see this page?

In the Author's Note, Winter writes honestly:

It is undeniable that Elvis owed much of his success to the essential fact that he was white during an era of massive discrimination against African Americans, an era when the music world was blatantly segregated. 

Elvis' parents who I imagine were hugely racist are not featured in this image. So, how did he come there to have this "moment?" And WHY are there wings on the church? WHY is it floating away? Because it's magically spiritual? Nothing about this page seems real to me. So why is it included? Because it's part of the Elvis myth, and there's more to come.

(Winter writes in the Author's Note that he grew up in the South and that's why he chose to use some Southern dialect. "My Texas grandmother...used to say "Good Lord Mercy..." I can believe that, but why does he only use it on the page with a Black church?")

Elvis and his family move to Memphis, and we get this image and poem.



Beale Street Blues

Recent High School Graduate Elvis,
strolling in and strolling out
of every music club he passes,
listening to the blues, feeling the blues,
getting ideas for some blues he'd like to sing.


We're supposed to believe that teen Elvis crossed segregation and hung out in blues clubs in the 1950s? Huh.

Again, in the Author's Note, Winter is far more straightforward:

"Elvis took inspiration from anywhere he could find it--rhythm and blues, gospel, country and western, and crooners."

Winter also writes truthfully in the Author's Note:

"The first person to record him, Sam Phillips of Sun Records, absolutely was looking for a white musician to play "black music" for white teenagers." 
I don't understand how the same person could write the last page in the book--the one that made me so salty I decided to write this essay. The poem "What is This Crazy Music, Anyway?" includes the lines:

Is it country music?
Sort of. But it's got too much of a BEAT.
Is it rhythm and blues?
Yep--a l'il bit!
It's blues, the music Elvis heard in the African American church--
it's black music sung by a Southern white man.

NO. IT'S NOT. Where did the quotes around black music go that are in the Author's Note? Because there isn't one single thing called Black music. My dad Abe is Black Seminole, my mom Deatrice is African American from Newberry, Florida. I know Black churches, and I know that Elvis' greatest hits don't sound anything like the singing there. He sounds like nobody but Elvis, a hillbilly artist who was aware of different types of music, but filtered them through his own experiences, culture and history.

(My dad also points out that the blues would not be the music in the church--in fact, Black churchgoers from that time may have disapproved of the blues and rock and roll. Dad asks, "Did Winter mean gospel music? But that's White music too, like the kind in Reverend Smith's church where Elvis and his parents were parishioners.")

The music in that flying (?) church and on that Beale Street corner (!) belonged to people who had in common slavery and Jim Crow. It seems from the Author's Note that Winter knows that. Why did he have to engage in the ultimate White boy fantasy of his hero singing "black music" as good or better than a Black man? This is still game today. Look at someone like Eminem. White people (including him) talk about him being the greatest rapper--more real that Tupac or Biggie. It's not enough to borrow and steal--they need to be authenticated.



My dad, who is helping me with this review, said he's disappointed to see this in a children's book. It's a misconception he's heard for decades that "is destroyed by listening to two minutes of Little Richard, so why are we still feeding this line/lie to children? It matters." It's another injustice done to the history of Black musical artists, who already faced terrible discrimination. And it's intentionally perpetuating an offensive stereotype in a time when we are talking about cultural appropriation.

There's a book which includes early rock and roll that I highly recommend to other teens. LEGENDS, ICONS & REBELS: MUSIC THAT CHANGED THE WORLD. One of the three authors is Robbie Roberston, a hero of mine who is a great songwriter and guitarist and is a Mohawk and Cayuga citizen. In this interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Robertson talks about writing the great children's book HIAWATHA AND THE PEACEMAKER. He says about that book, "You can't just publish something like this. You have to go to the elders and get their blessing." I want to compare the way he talks about Elvis side by side with Black rock and roll artists like Little Richard.


Robertson is obviously an Elvis fan. If you watch him when he's young, Robbie looks like a Native Elvis--but more talented and handsome!!!! (See: below image of his good picture book bio.) Robertson also calls Elvis "The King" and he remembers: "When Elvis came on black-and-white TV in 1956, I thought the world stopped turning for a moment. I knew right then, my path was laid out for me." Robertson doesn't discuss cultural appropriation in the 2013 book. The only thing he and the co-authors write about Elvis and race: "Although the South was still deeply segregated, Elvis embraced African-American and white styles of music, combining blues, rhythm and blues, gospel and country." That's it. No claims to Elvis visiting Black churches as a boy or hanging out in Beale Street clubs as a teenager. How much "creative license" are you supposed to be allowed to take in a nonfiction book?




This is a contrast to the pages featuring Little Richard, who is named "The Architect of Rock and Roll." The book states: "Like many African American entertainers of the 1950s, Little Richard had a deep connection to the church. He'd grown up as Richard Penniman, singing gospel music and wanting to become a preacher. After a three-year string of seventeen hit songs...he could no longer reconcile the fact that he had abandoned his religious upbringing in pursuit of rock and roll. In 1957, at the height of his career, he hung up his rock and roll shoes to attend Bible college. After five years of touring the world as an evangelist, Little Richard made peace with his rock and roll legacy."


Now that's a real story of Black church influence and struggles--especially for Black queer people. Little Richard's style, including a high voice and cosmetics with wilder moves than Elvis' hips (which I'm tired of hearing about) probably signaled to many Black queer men and my dad says influenced non-binary artists like MJ and Prince. There is so much talented and forbidden blackness there! I love this person!!!! [I know he still struggles with identity--that's not for me to judge.]


In the Author's Note in ELVIS IS KING!, Winter writes: "I especially loved Chuck Berry and Little Richard who had as much if not more to do with inventing rock as Elvis. But oh, did I love Elvis!"

This love of Elvis I don't share. I think his music is dated and I realized while writing this and talking to my dad that Elvis for real embodies cultural appropriation. I think this MUST be discussed in ALL books about him for kids and teens. If you listen to the CDs that come with LEGENDS, ICONS & REBELS, "Hound Dog" sounds pale compared to "Lucille"--also Otis Redding's "That's How Strong My Love Is" and Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed and Delivered."

Jonah Winter has written successful books about BIPOC, like Roberto Clemente, Dizzy Gillespie and Sonia Sotomayor. Why doesn't he know which Native tribes and nations lived near the Manhattan Project and include them as part of the whole story? Why does he put as fact unproven stories about Elvis' early interactions with Black people and our music and claim he was a white Southern man singing black music, the blues sung in Black churches? Is this what he wants to teach his audience, mostly White kids? I really wish he wouldn't. Like my dad said, it matters. I am Black Seminole--African American, Two spirit gay teen trying to find my place. This DOESN'T HELP. And where are the #ownvoices (Black and queer) Little Richard bios for teens, pretty plz?



BIG THANKS to my dad for helping me with this essay--we had so many good conversations! And to my librarian Miss Ann for helping me edit it and put the pieces together but keep my voice. If I made mistakes, please tell me kindly.




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