Dr. Gary Richards Interview Transcription
Sophia Geron: So, what do you know about the book To Kill a Mockingbird?
Dr. Gary Richards: To Kill a Mockingbird is a book that I teach routinely. I first encountered it, I think like many people kind of as a middle school kid. I read it on my own. Then I grew up in Texas, and we had a program like our high school English so it was taught in ninth grade. So, I had officially, you know, in that context. And then I went on, undergraduate it was not taught to me, but I went to graduate school and I was doing Southern Studies at as a literary study. I was doing it at Vanderbilt, which was really interesting place to think about To Kill a Mockingbird because the old school there, the professors deemed it not fit to be taught, that it was children’s literature, that it was juvenilia. Newer generations of course, thinking about shifting canons were like, this is one of the novels that has become so widely read, so widely taught that we need to be thinking about it in scholarly context. So, it was actually one of the books I wrote under my dissertation. And that has become part of a book chapter looking at the way gender and sexuality are handled in To Kill a Mockingbird.
I think usually if you go back to why the book might be banned, it is dealing with issues of race. Of course, it whether going to be frankly dealing with race, particularly race in the context of allegations of interracial rape. Mayella Ewell accused Tom Robinson of that, or that it is a work that in its critique of racism that sometimes replicates racist language. So, the word nigger for instance is used there but usually to interrogate the problem of that.
I have routinely taught it. I teach it in sometimes in southern literature classes, I sometimes teach it in American Fiction classes. Here at Mary Washington, one is post 1950s, so it’s a very conventionally written novel, its very traditional. So, I will sometimes pair To Kill a Mockingbird with a radical post-modern novel. I once paired it with Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, which is wildly experimental, both coming out in the early 60s. Then most recently I have taught in a Writing About the South class. So, I have an intimate relationship with To Kill a Mockingbird.
Sophia: What kind of themes do you talk about in those classes?
Dr. Richards: A couple of them, I would say before I get to themes and content, as I mentioned with contrasting it with Pynchon, I look at it in form. As a person who teaches literary history, I want my students to think the structure, the feel of the novel. So we talk about point of view and narration. That it is the adult Scout remembering her childhood and how that is kind of tricky thing because it adds a sense of intimacy but it is also kind of a deliberate performed naiveté when Scout is telling this, it is as if she is in the moment, not as if she is an adult woman. So that manipulates us. Most readers find Scout way sympathetic. She is such a sympathetic narrator.
As far as themes, we talk about racial justice. That too, has been kind of critiqued, that the themes of racial justice are so heavy handed. That it is, that is why it is usually taught in middle school or ninth grade is that don’t be racist. That. Check. But a ninth grader can feel good about her/his analytic skills when they get that. There is also concern, this has frequently risen from African American critics, that it is a novel that minimizes black agency. That Tom Robison is both physically handicapped, remember his arm has been mangled in a gin accident and then he is killed, ultimately, when you know, he is running away. So, the hero of the novel, of course, is Atticus Finch. For some people that is problematic that you got the upper-class, straight, white, male lawyer is the one who will condescend to defend African Americans. So where is black agency? It’s kind of the kindness and condescension of white people. That is one of the critiques of it.
But I also talk about gender and sexuality. I also talk about small town life, how it is represented. I am trying to think of any other themes that I do, those are the big ones; race, gender, and sexuality.
Sophia: You were saying you don’t know a lot about the book being banned?
Dr. Richards: Yeah, I don’t know a lot about that. I know that frequently it is on banned books lists, I don’t know specifics, but I suspect that it is usually because of the way it handles race, the presence of rape and the presence of derogatory language.
Sophia: So, what we found through our research, is that most of the time, especially in the last like, fifteen, twenty years that it is challenged because of language. The is the big one. The case we are looking at in Accomack County, that is why it was banned, why they pulled it off the shelves because of language. So we wondering because some people argue that the language is necessary to show the racial prejudice at the time and so I was going to ask, do you think it is necessary in the book itself or is something that is like unnecessary?
Dr. Richards: I, I come at this from the perspective of Southern literature so, derogatory language is used repeatedly, particularly the word nigger, that is the word that is most fraught and it invariably prompts very careful course discussions. You know in my classes, you think I often have to negotiate is that word allowable, is it allowed if it is only in quotations, literally came out of, I am doing a Writing about the South class this semester and I only had one African American student in the class, and we were reading Gone with the Wind, and which that word is also used. There in a much more pejorative context, in a way that Mitchell is racist in a way that Harper Lee was not. And so, when the student came to me, I said how are we going to negotiate this word. And in the arguments, that were put forth, some of the students defending the discussion of the word is that because it is so powerful, it has such racialized derogatory punch, we need to be reading literature that makes us have these discussions. The discussions are not useful, but it is also a reminder that language hurts. And when we see this, that is why I would say that someone like Harper Lee wats to put it in there. It is not that just, yes, it is historically accurate, you know for the 1950s when she was writing it, the 1930s when she is setting this, but it is a way that, that word has punch. And writers have always done that. You go back to Frederick Douglass’ Slave Narrative, the first version was 1845. He too uses that word, but he uses it to expose in all the ways that African American slaves were oppressed, it was not just physically and emotionally, but linguistically. So that in one passage, he talks about when he was working in the shipyards, how at first there is a degree of honoring his autonomy, that he is Frederick, he is Fred, when people refer to him. As it goes on he then gets referred to as boy, and to as nigger, the way that it is a word that dehumanizes. So, for him, Douglass was like, absolutely that word needs to be there. I would say Lee probably felt the same way. It is not gratuitous because it is a novel about race and racism.
But, that said, I understand why people are made uncomfortable by it. In my opinion, the United States in the twenty-first century, we have a hard time talking about race. This kind of puts it in our faces.
Sophia: The other question I had was, because you know a lot about the literature of the time, this book, I know that they like put it out there and it became this big success because of what it did. I wanted to ask you, like what did, from your knowledge, what did it do for the social aspect of the time, the literary aspect of the time?
Dr. Richards: It’s part of a whole series of southern writers, white southern writers at the time, who really were trying to join into the discourses of the civil rights movement. But at the same time, it is not, it is a safe novel. We have just been focusing on how derogatory language makes it uncomfortable for some people. On the other hand, as I suggested way before that is there are, it is a safe way of handling racial injustice. That it is through orderly means, that it is through a lawyer, that is through a white man, etc. So, I think that is why it became so popular. It is a novel that makes white people feel good. And in the 1960s many liberal, white liberals, north, south, wherever, that really spoke to them.
So, as you probably know Harper Lee had written kind of, various drafts before this, including Go Set a Watchmen, which was published, what three years ago. And there it’s much more troubling, Atticus Finch is racist. He is a member of the Klan, or at least white supremacist groups. That consider, well one, it was a bad novel. The way that it was written, it is the adult Scout kind of talking about her experiences. So, Lee working with her editors, changed it to make Scout more palpable, that childhood Scout’s voice made it less controversial. I think it was one of the reasons it was so successful, 1960-61.
And there were lots of other novels that were coming out roughly at the same time. Carson McCullers was writing novels that having to do with race at the same time. And much more graphic and they were not nearly as successful.
Sophia: So, the argument, especially in the case that we are looking at, is that this book shouldn’t be taught in schools anymore because of the language and that we should offer more sensitive materials for students who are uncomfortable with the book and I was wondering, do you still think it should be taught in high schools and middle schools, or is it come to this point where it is problematic to teach this?
Dr. Richards: I am a person who advocates for teaching problems. So, I understand that it can be a very sensitive, it can raise sensitive issues. I do worry a little bit about kind of snow flake environments, where we kind of protect students. Now, it needs to have a teacher who is going to be, who handles this carefully. You know that it’s a novel, like many novels that can be abused when it is taught. So, I think it is still useful to teach. I think because it is such an easy read, it’s a read that students often care about these characters and what I find in the twenty-first century, in a digital age, it’s hard to get students to read anything lengthy. So, if To Kill a Mockingbird get them to read, yes having this problematic language and representation of race may raise some tensions in the classroom, but I think it’s a novel students might actually get invested in.
I also worry a little about the classroom creating a space that no longer acknowledges the reality out there. Yes, we might not use derogatory language the word nigger in the classroom, but if a student goes on the street, she or her may be called that. That we want students to have students to have safe learning environments, but we don’t want them not to be reminded of the realities that they are dealing with. And I think that To Kill a Mockingbird, like other texts can do that productively. Reminding them that this is a reality. That we still live racist world. And it is a little bit ironic to me to be reading a novel about race that actually edits out some of the harshness of racism in our discussions.
Sophia: I found that, the complaint is for the parent to the Accomack County school was that her son hears it enough on the street. And she said that my son hears this enough on the street, to her it makes it okay to say these words in the classroom, even though its not really what they are going for. They want to talk about this. I thought that was really interesting.
Dr. Richards: The student who came to me in my class this semester, raised much the same thing. She was like, “I come from a household where that word is not allowed and it just makes me uncomfortable hearing it.” And for me as a professor, using that word, evening if I am only quoting it, even if I am only kind of referring to this is how Mitchell used it, even to point out the racism it’s still has the potential ability to be condone by having an authority figure use it. This is why I said earlier, that teachers need to be really careful when they are teaching this is you have to articulate this is how we are using this word, this is how it is not being deployed to reinforce racism, but rather to expose racism. To remind us of racism.
But I see that parent’s argument definitely. There can be though, I also worry a little bit about a slippery slope because if we have say that word blackened off in the classroom well another student might advocate for another word that is problematic to her. Right now, in the same class (Writing About the South) we are watching the film Moonlight and the word faggot is used. And a student actually raised in our discussion about the word nigger is like, well does faggot have the same resonance. What I thought was good was that we actually talked about it. We got to come back to, this is the power that language has. And so that mother who is raising the concern, I don’t want my child hearing this, I think is valid. Those words still do sting. And even as we are talking about it, you are uncomfortable, I am uncomfortable just saying these words out loud.
Sophia: And there is like from reading it on the page to saying it aloud.
Dr. Richards: Exactly. Exactly.
Sophia: Thank you so much for talking to me about the book and what it does. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Richards: Yeah, I hope it helps with the project.