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Transgender teddy, girl pirate: authors tackle gender norms at Frankfurt Book Fair

From a transgender teddy bear to a fearless girl pirate, children's authors are tackling gender norms like never before, as debate rages about what it means to be a boy or girl.

Published: 11 October 2017 09:04 CEST
Transgender teddy, girl pirate: authors tackle gender norms at Frankfurt Book Fair
File photo of children's books. Photo: DPA.

Visitors at this week's Frankfurt book fair, the world's largest publishing event, will be faced with a string of books for young readers that defy stereotypes and navigate today's hot-button issues of transsexuality and gender fluidity.

Stories with transgender lead characters in particular have broken one of the last “taboos” left in children's writing, said literary expert Nicola Bardola.

“Some are watching this trend nervously, these kinds of books still make critics uncomfortable,” Swiss-born Bardola said, an author himself.

One of the most headline-grabbing recent titles has been “Introducing Tilly”, a tender story about Thomas the teddy bear who tells a friend: “I've always known that I'm a girl teddy, not a boy teddy.”

The picture book, aimed at children aged four and older, was written by Australian Jessica Walton who was inspired by her own father's transition to a woman.

Translated into German last year as “Teddy Tilly”, Bardola called the book “a phenomenon”.

For a slightly older audience, there is US author Alex Gino's award-winning “George”, which is about a transgender 10-year-old determined to play a female part in the school play.

'Inappropriate'

The book has won widespread praise for its warm portrayal of a feisty heroine, but it has also stirred controversy.

A Kansas district last month decided not to purchase “George” for the area's schools, deeming it inappropriate for young readers.

Gino, a self-described “genderqueer” – someone who refuses to be defined by a gender – promptly started a Twitter fundraising campaign to deliver copies to every school library in the district.

In just half an hour the money poured in.

“Sharing stories of trans people with children is key to trans acceptance. There is no age before which it is appropriate to be compassionate,” Gino told AFP.

In the young adult section, readers can find Meredith Russo's “If I Was Your Girl”, which chronicles an American teen's fresh start at a new school, burdened by the secret that she used to be a boy.

Children's book expert Bardola said the trailblazing tales had triggered much earnest hand-wringing from critics wondering whether it was “appropriate” or “dangerous” to introduce young readers to such complex themes.

He said it reminded him of the stir caused in the 1980s when gay characters started appearing in young adult books.

“The debate is nearly identical. You can tell literary critics are unsure about these (transgender) themes,” he said.

“I think we can be a little more relaxed about it,” he added.

“These books should be judged by their literary quality and children should be given a chance to decide whether or not they want to read these stories.”

German literature critic Ralf Schweikert was more sceptical.

“If you want to talk about what it feels like to live in the wrong body, you are asking for a lot of self-reflection from young readers,” Schweikert told AFP.

For bookworms scouting for a more general take on the gender debate, there's no shortage of new titles out to smash the patriarchy, reflecting a wider cultural discussion about the traditional roles pushed upon boys and girls.

“There are increasingly books for very young readers out there that deliberately challenge these gender stereotypes,” Schweikert told AFP.

He listed the German early-reading book series “Wild Wilma” as a standout example, about the buccaneering adventures of a girl sailing the high seas as captain of a pirate ship.

'Ponies and princesses'

Bardola said stories that turned gender roles on their head had always been around but that such titles tended to peak every few years depending on the zeitgeist.

“Of course you can still find books for girls about ponies and princesses,” Schweikert said.

“But if you want to get away from those cliches, there's a lot of good material out there right now.”

And more titles grappling with gender issues are on their way.

Scholastic, which published “George”, will next year be releasing the young adult novel “And She Was” by Jess Verdi, about a teen coming to terms with a parent's transgender identity.

“And we've seen a number of trans or gender non-binary characters in other books we are publishing,” said Scholastic's editorial director David Levithan.

Books, he added, that “show how gender diverse our real world can be”.

READ ALSO: Star authors en vogue at Frankfurt Book Fair

HISTORY

‘Lost’ manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

A book by one of France's most celebrated and controversial literary figures arrives in bookstores this week, 78 years after the manuscript disappeared

Published: 4 May 2022 11:42 CEST
'Lost' manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

It is a rare thing when the story of a book’s publication is even more mysterious than the plot of the novel itself.

But that might be said of Guerre (War) by one of France’s most celebrated and controversial literary figures, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, which arrives in bookstores on Thursday, some 78 years after its manuscript disappeared.

Celine’s reputation has somehow survived the fact that he was one of France’s most eager collaborators with the Nazis.

Already a superstar thanks to his debut novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Celine became one of the most ardent anti-Semitic propagandists even before France’s occupation.

In June 1944, with the Allies advancing on Paris, the writer abandoned a pile of his manuscripts in his Montmartre apartment.

Celine feared rough treatment from authorities in liberated France, having spent the war carousing with the Gestapo, and giving up Jews and foreigners to the Nazi regime and publishing racist pamphlets about Jewish world conspiracies.

For decades, no one knew what happened to his papers, and he accused resistance fighters of burning them. But at some point in the 2000s, they ended up with retired journalist Jean-Pierre Thibaudat, who passed them – completely out of the blue – to Celine’s heirs last summer.

‘A miracle’
Despite the author’s history, reviews of the 150-page novel, published by Gallimard, have been unanimous in their praise.

“The end of a mystery, the discovery of a great text,” writes Le Point; a “miracle,” says Le Monde; “breathtaking,” gushes Journal du Dimanche.

Gallimard has yet to say whether the novel will be translated.

Like much of Celine’s work, Guerre is deeply autobiographical, recounting his experiences during World War I.

It opens with 20-year-old Brigadier Ferdinand finding himself miraculously alive after waking up on a Belgian battlefield, follows his treatment and hasty departure for England – all based on Celine’s real experiences.

His time across the Channel is the subject of another newly discovered novel, Londres (London), to be published this autumn.

If French reviewers seem reluctant to focus on Celine’s rampant World War II anti-Semitism, it is partly because his early writings (Guerre is thought to date from 1934) show little sign of it.

Journey to the End of the Night was a hit among progressives for its anti-war message, as well as a raw, slang-filled style that stuck two fingers up at bourgeois sensibilities.

Celine’s attitude to the Jews only revealed itself in 1937 with the publication of a pamphlet, Trifles for a Massacre, which set him on a new path of racial hatred and conspiracy-mongering.

He never back-tracked. After the war, he launched a campaign of Holocaust-denial and sought to muddy the waters around his own war-time exploits – allowing him to worm his way back into France without repercussions.

‘Divine surprise’
Many in the French literary scene seem keen to separate early and late Celine.

“These manuscripts come at the right time – they are a divine surprise – for Celine to become a writer again: the one who matters, from 1932 to 1936,” literary historian Philippe Roussin told AFP.

Other critics say the early Celine was just hiding his true feelings.

They highlight a quote that may explain the gap between his progressive novels and reactionary feelings: “Knowing what the reader wants, following fashions like a shopgirl, is the job of any writer who is very financially constrained,” Celine wrote to a friend.

Despite his descent into Nazism, he was one of the great chroniclers of the trauma of World War I and the malaise of the inter-war years.

An exhibition about the discovery of the manuscripts opens on Thursday at the Gallimard Gallery and includes the original, hand-written sheets of Guerre.

They end with a line that is typical of Celine: “I caught the war in my head. It is locked in my head.”

In the final years before his death in 1961, Celine endlessly bemoaned the loss of his manuscripts.

The exhibition has a quote from him on the wall: “They burned them, almost three manuscripts, the pest-purging vigilantes!”

This was one occasion – not the only one – where he was proved wrong.

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