Lois LowryUniversity of RichmondMarch 20051HOW EVE.docx

Lois Lowry
University of Richmond
March 2005
1
HOW EVERYTHING TURNS AWAY
How do we know what questions to ask? This is such
a different assignment from the kind I am accustomed to. It’s a
sort of reversal, for me, because each day, as I answer the
cascade of e-mails that come in through my website, or the
letters that publishers forward, I find myself again and again
trying to answer questions. Some of them silly, like “What is
your favorite color?” (which seems to be a favorite of 10-year-
old girls) and some of them irritating, like “How many books
have you written?” – irritating because you want to say, “Don’t
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March 2005

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you know how to look things up? Don’t they teach “library
skills” any more, for god’s sake?”
Nobody suggests that I ask questions.…or even to
think about the asking of questions.…and yet I think it is the
task of the writer of fiction, always, to ask. But you did. Thank
you for that.
**
I began preparing this speech when I was on vacation
recently. I actually took my laptop with me to a Caribbean
beach where I was sharing a rented house with a group of close
friends. In fact, though they needled me about the fact that I
was holed up with my computer while they were out snorkeling
and kayaking, the question put to me by the University of
Richmond – “How do we know what questions to ask?” –
provided a lot of dinner table conversation each evening, as
eight people from eight different professions—a Unitarian
minister, a sculptor, a scientist, a restaurant owner, a composer,

among others—argued and debated “how do we know what
questions to ask” and okay, I confess, ate too much and drank a
substantial amount of wine.
I listened to, and participated in, all of those
conversations and I suppose I took bits and pieces of those
opinions each time I went (reluctantly) back to my computer,
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March 2005
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and maybe I incorporated them into my own thoughts as I
worked.
Then I came home, back to snowy Boston, back to
reality, with my tan fading even as I got off the plane. I dumped
leftover sand out of my sandals and Windexed the spit out of my
snorkeling goggles and put them away, and weighed myself and
decided to go on a diet, and I went back to real life and back to
my computer.

Then I was blindsided. This was about two weeks ago.
The phone started to ring and the e-mails came non-stop.
(Some of them were because I had been a clue….54
across, to be precise….in the New York Times crossword puzzle
the week that I was away. It was amazing how many people do
that puzzle, and of that number, how many of them got in touch
with me. It included a man in Texas whom I last saw when he
was a boy, 50+ years ago, in high school.)
But the thing that whacked me upside the head, as it
were, was something else. There were newspapers and radio
stations calling, asking for a statement, because in two separate
places in the United States…Florida and Missouri, as it
happened…books of mine had incited controversies. People
were
taking sides. Hearings were being held. In one case (Lake
Wales,
Florida) the book in question, (a light-hearted novel published
way back in 1982) the school board actually voted to ban the
book, to remove it from the school libraries.

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March 2005
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In Kansas City, a hearing was scheduled for this week
to decide the fate of The Giver. Someone e-mailed me, and I
quote: “The forces of evil are coalescing” (and he was on the
side wanting to retain the book!) Emotions were very high.
So I answered questions, made statements, did
telephone interviews, wrote letters, and for a period of several
days was completely distracted and did not go back to the
speech I’d begun writing.
One morning I checked the Kansas City newspaper to
see what frenzied outbursts had newly appeared, and I read
this, from a woman who wanted to ban The Giver: “The lady
(that would be me) writes well, but when it comes to the ideas
in that book, they have no place in my kid’s head.”
And from another: “Everything presented to kids

should be positive and uplifting...”
And you know the phrase that came to my mind, as I
read those? The phrase I had given the University of Richmond
as a title for this speech:
HOW EVERYTHING TURNS AWAY.
Let me explain that.
I was asked, probably six weeks or so ago, to provide
a title for this talk, and it was much too soon…I had not yet
thought about what I would say. I knew, of course, because it
has been provided to me, what the theme of this series was to
be: “How do we know what questions to ask?”
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March 2005
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Thinking about that question, (hastily, because I had
to provide a title), I thought: We don’t. We don’t have a clue.
Then I thought: Why don’t we?

And the answer that came to me was: Because we
turn away. A phrase from an Auden poem came to my mind.
(I happen to be a great fan of W. H. Auden. Once, in
fact, at a dinner party, the talk turned to poetry, and a man
sitting on my left—a complete stranger, someone I had never
met before that night—asked me what my favorite line from all
of poetry was. I replied, “Lay your sleeping head, my love,
human on my faithless arm” and he looked absolutely terrified
and quickly turned to the person on his other side).
HOW EVERYTHING TURNS AWAY.
It’s true, I think, that we turn away from things.
We turn away sometimes because it is too painful,
and we don’t want to face it (I have a close friend, a dear and
honorable man, who cannot go to the Holocaust Museum); and
sometimes we turn away simply because it is too hard, and asks
more of us than we have to give.
And sometimes we are simply not paying attention.
The poem by Auden from which the line comes is

called “Musee des Beaux Arts” and the final stanza speaks of an
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March 2005
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actual painting that hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in
Brussels.
….In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything
turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have
seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
I had quoted it back in 1990, in accepting the
Newbery Medal for Number the Stars a book set in Europe in
1943, a time when too many people turned away.
Suddenly, thinking of that poem, and reading the
words of the frightened people in Kansas City, it all began to

come together in my mind.
I wanted to call up my friends from the preceding
week in the Bahamas—who had all, after our vacation together,
gone their separate ways—and tell them. I didn’t, though. I am
telling you, instead.
**
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March 2005
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First, because we don’t have the painting in front of
us, let me describe the scene: It is actually called “Landscape
with the Fall of Icarus” and it’s a complex landscape. A farmer
wearing a bright crimson shirt is guiding a plough behind a
horse in the foreground, and beyond him, past a border of
shrubbery, another man, a shepherd, stands beside his dog
while his sheep graze nearby. Behind him, across a vast bay, a
great city rises, and surrounding the bay, jagged cliffs and

mountains emerge. Several sailing vessels are moving through
the turquoise water; and all of it is bathed in a golden light from
the low sun beyond.
In the lower right hand corner of the painting, in a
place where the sea is dark, shadowed by one of the ships, two
bare legs are visible in the water. You can almost hear the
thrashing sounds and feel the anguish of the drowning boy.
And it’s not just a drowning boy; it’s a colossal
tragedy. He has flown! Up to the sun! His attempt is amazing,
and his failure is monumental; he has flown higher and he has
fallen farther than any human ever has.
And no one is noticing.
They’re too busy, maybe. They’re in a hurry, perhaps.
They have somewhere to get to. Or perhaps it is just too
demanding, too scary, too sad.
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And the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
How everything turns away.
**
Thirty-three years ago my son Ben, then eight years old, took
his pet rabbit, Barney, out of his cage and let him nibble and
scamper in the lawn of our front yard. He had done it many
times before. But on this particular summer day, a neighbor’s
German Shepherd came bounding out of his own yard nearby
and grabbed Barney Bunny by the neck.
Somehow Ben rescued Barney and came into the
house holding him, and I examined the mortally injured rabbit—
its eyes glazing, a bit of blood leaking from his mouth—and had
to tell Ben that his pet was probably not going to survive. We
talked sadly about it, Ben and I, and the he left the kitchen, still
cradling his dying pet in his arms.

After a while I went to see how and where he was, and
from the upstairs hallway I could see that he had taken Barney
into his bedroom and placed him in his bed. The bedcovers were
drawn up to the rabbit’s chin, the long ears were neatly spread
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March 2005
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on the pillow. Ben was lying beside him. I tiptoed away, not
wanted to intrude.
Some time later Ben came to me and told me that
Barney had died. Together we planned a funeral.
And Ben explained what he had been thinking about
as he lay there beside Barney. He was remembering, he told me,
the saddest sentence he had ever read. Page 171 of Charlotte’s
Web.
“No one was with her when she died,” was the
sentence.

**
“Everything presented in a book for a child should be
positive and uplifting,” the woman in Kansas City said last
week.
There is nothing “positive or uplifting” about a
solitary death.
But there is something profoundly moving about a
man, a gifted writer, E.B. White, who was able to put down on a
page eight words…”No one was with her when she died”… that
went to the heart of a little boy and taught him something about
loneliness and loss.
How everything turns away? That writer didn’t avert
his eyes from something painful. I wish I had known him. I
hope
I’ve learned from him. He knew what questions to ask.
Lois Lowry
March 2005
10

**
In 1992 I sat down to wrote the book that ultimately would be
titled THE GIVER. Probably THE GIVER is the main reason
that
I have been invited to speak to you here tonght, because it is the
best-known (and most controversial) of my so-far 32 books.
There is always a period of time, after I have written
a book, before it is published, when I begin to worry that my
brain has simply run out and become empty, the way a cookie
jar does, and all the good stuff is good; only a stiff raisin and
some stale crumbs left. I worry then that I will never be able to
write the next one.
I was in that period...that frightening “Oh my God, I
will never have another idea. My career is over” phase in the
fall
of 1992 when I took a trip to Virginia.
It was something I did very frequently then, flying
from Boston, where I lived, to Charlottesvile, renting a car,
driving west to Staunton. My brother was a doctor there. My

parents, in 1992, were 86 and 87 years old, and they were
failing. A few months before, Jon and I moved both of them to
a
nursing home not far from his office. He was able to see them
all
the time. I flew down whenever I could.
During that visit in 1992, I went, as I always did, first
to see my mother in the medical section of the nursing home,
the secotion where she lay bedridden, fragile and blind, attached
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March 2005
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to an oxygen hose. She would die within a few months, and I
think both of us, she and I, knew that that was coming. Perhaps
we were both in an odd way welcoming the idea of it; I know
that
on her 86th birthday, not long before, when I had read her the
cards that had come, she chuckled and said, “Well, at least no
one wished me happy returns!”

She was quite ready to leave life behind.
But she did not want to leave her memories untold.
Her mind was quite intact, her memories quite clear, and during
my visit she simpy wanted to tell me the stories from her past.
Inconsequential, some of them: a dog she had had as a child; a
naughty escapade of her little brother; a summer evening walk
with her father. But she went on as well to reminisce about her
high school and college years, her meeting my father. Their
marriage. The birth of her first child, my sister; and that
memory diverted her to another, some years later, to the
December morning when her first child, my sister Helen, died.
I knew that had been the saddest day of her life—it
had been mine, as well, to that point (now, having lost a child
of
my own, I can no longer say that)—and I tried, sitting there by
her bed, to move away from it, to direct her to other topics,
other memories. But she lingered there, telling the details of it,
neeeding to remember the anguish of it, for a long time.

When she tired and drifted off to sleep, I went to the
other section of the nursing home, the assisted living wing
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March 2005
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where my father was. He was up and about, shuffling a bit,
leaning on a cane, but still teasing the nurses aides—one of
them
was named Patsy and he always called her Patsy Cline and sang
a few phrases —“Crazy, Crazy fer feelin’ so loneleee”—to her,
making her giggle. He always remembered me when I came. He
showed me off: “This is my daughter, she writes books, she
lives
in Boston.” to people who could not have cared less.
But he had lost his own past. He didn’t remember his
own childhood, his career, the places we had lived, the cars he
had loved—he was a car guy—the travels, the war, any of it.
And he didn’t remember my sister. “What was her

name?” he asked, when I mentioned her. “Helen,” I told him,
and
showed him a picture of the two little girls. He frowned at it
and
shook his head. “And you say she died? How did that happen?”
Driving my rental car back to the airport I began to
think about all of that. What if there were a medication, maybe
a
shot, they could give Dad, and he would remember Helen?
But how sad that would be, for him. He was there, too,
with her when she died. Why make him remember that day?
Well, then, I thought, not wanting to let go of the
“what if” that makes a writer’s imagination ease into high gear:
What if there were a shot to give Mother? It wouldn’t take away
all those happy memories she enjoys so much...but if it could
just obliterate the day her daughter died?
For a writer, the question is most often “what if...?”
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March 2005

13
And so, from the ”what if” of my father’s failing
memory, and from my own musing about the compromises we
make, I created a world—not a large one; a small
community—set in the future, in a time when technology had
advanced in ways that would make human existence
comfortable and safe through the manipulation of memory.
But for me, because I write for a young audience, the
questions that incite and inspire a book must always be
presented through the consciousness of a young person. And so
I created a boy, and I named him Jonas.
Here is how I create a character. He (or in many
cases, she) appears, fully-formed, in my mind. I have a very
visual imagination. I can see the character. Most often he or she
tells me his or her name. That was true in this case.
I saw a boy, young, barely adolescent, ordinary in
appearance. His name was Jonas.
I moved into him and looked out through his eyes. His

world was pleasant and well-organized. He had family, friends,
things to do.
But there was also a feeling (for me, the writer) of
something amiss. I wasn’t certain, myself, what it was. It was
like being six, examining the drawing labeled “What’s wrong
wih
this picture?” on the back of the cereal box. Everything looks
right. But then you find the little things: the shoe that has no
laces, the cat with only one ear.
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March 2005
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I knew something was wrong. I did not know yet,
myself, what is was, when I began the book with this sentence:
“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be
frightened.”
Then I forced myself to look very, very closely at the

world this boy lived in. It was like picking up a rock in a swamp
and seeing the toxic filth underneath, the oozing, slimy,
squirming things that hide out of the daylight. The things that
we don’t want to see. The things we would like to turn away
from.
“Everything we present to kids should be positive...”
the woman in Kansas City said.
I got an email this morning (Wednesday morning,
March 9th, is when I am writing this part) from a 26-year-old
woman who wrote:
I read
the book The Giver when I was about 18 years old
and I really identified with the message of
how … when we become so afraid of experiencing pain
and difficulty,we become afraid of life itself.
She went on to tell me things about her experiences
and about decisions she had made based on what she had
learned from reading that book years before. Her decisions had

Lois Lowry
March 2005
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to do with facing pain. She had, in essence, chosen not to turn
away.
**
Sixty eight years ago this month, in March of 1937, I was born
in Honolulu. My father, though he was an oral surgeon by
profession, was also a very fine photographer, a collector of
cameras. My mother always compained that evry time we
moved (and we moved often, he being a career Army officer) he
would stake out a place for his darkroom before she had figured
out where she could set up her sewing machine.
My first photograph…or the first photograph of
me…was taken, by my father, when I was 36 hours old. My
name was different then. They had named me Sena, for my
Norwegian grandmother, and that was my name until she was

notified; then she sent a telegram insisting that they give me an
American name, and so I was renamed Lois Ann for my father’s
two sisters.
And there were countless photographs thereafter.
Movies, too. In the same years that Gone with the Wind and The
Wizard of Oz were being filmed, my father was filming …quite
professionally in quality…my sister and me toddling in the
gardens surrounding our home in Wailua, on the island of Oahu.
It seems laughable now, in the world of TV and
computers and VCRs, but throughout my childhood, it was
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March 2005
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always an exciting night when we could talk Dad into showing
the home movies. Look: there’s Daddy on a horse! And here’s
mother pouring milk for the two little girls. (We always
wheedled Dad into showing that scene backwards, so that the

milk amazingly jumped back into the pitcher). Look: there’s
Lois
on the beach at Waikiki, with a pail and shovel.
I want you to hold this picture in your mind: a small
blonde girl, new to the world, on a tropical beach, laughing as
the breeze blows her sun hat, and she reaches up to hold it on
her own head. Behind her the turquoise water laps gently at the
white sand.
**
Are you able to see the little girl on the beach? Keep
her there, in your mind.
Now turn your visual imagination into a split screen
because I want you to hold onto the image of the little girl but I
want you to see another scene as well.
This is a scene of a town, a fictional town called
“Omelas” from a story by Ursula LeGuin. I can’t do it justice
and
I wish I had time to read you her words. She describes a town
beside a bay, and it is vibrant with color: flags on the boats in

the harbor, red roofs on the houses, painted walls, gardens and
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March 2005
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parks…and processions on the day of celebration she describes:
people moving, wearing robes; music playing, people with
tambourines and flutes; children calling to one another, birds
flying above; broad green meadows beyond the town, and
joyous
clanging of bells. Horses with their manes braided with flowers.
Young people dancing and singing. Prosperity and abundance.
**
Split your screen again. Move your mind to a
different place and time. Picture now, as well, an eleven year
old
girl on a green bike. She is wearing boys’ high-top sneakers
because she yearns, secretly, to be a boy, and she looks for
ways

to make herself seem boyish and brave,
It is 1948. I have just finished sixth grade, and my
father…the career military man…has now moved his family to
post-war Japan. We go by ship from New York, down through
Panama, across the Pacific, a journey of many weeks, and my
father is waiting for us in Japan, and the green bike is waiting
there for me, too.
He moves us into an American style house (to my
disappointment, because I had envisioned a house with sliding
walls and straw-matted floors) surrounded by other Western-
style houses and all of it encircled by a wall.
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March 2005
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But the bike is my freedom. I ride the green bike
again and again through the gate of the compound’s wall into
the bustling section of Tokyo called Shibuya.

I slow my bike when I discover a school, and I linger
there, watching, when the children in their dark blue uniforms
play in the schoolyard. One boy, just about my age, stares back
at me. We look intently at each other.
Then I mount my bike again and ride away.
**
Now you should have three images. One, a little girl
on a beach in 1940. Second, an amazing place, a place of
vibrant celebration—an imaginary town called Omelas, created
and described by Ursula Le Guin. And finally, a gawky seventh-
grader on a green bike in 1949.
I want to show each of them to you again.
I have the actual film at home, transferred from my
father’s old movie film to a video. It was someone else,
watching
the video once in my living room, who pointed out what was in
it, what had always been there. As the child plays blissfully in
that sunshine, with the Pacific lapping against the sand near her
feet, as she laughs and reaches for the bonnet that has been

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March 2005
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lifted by the breeze….behind her, small on the horizon, moves
slowly across, blurred in the distance, a battleship. It is the
Arizona, headed into port at Pearl Harbor.
It contains 1,100 men who will be dead soon.
It was a tragedy unfolding, and the three year old
child plays as children will, and how was she to know? But as
an adult, watching the film again and again…I simply focused
only on myself. The blondeness of me. The happiness of me. I
never looked beyond.
“You have the capacity to see beyond, “The Giver tells the
boy.
And perhaps we all do. But beyond is where the hard
things are.
How everything turns away.

**
What do we look away from in the second scene? This
time I am going to use Ursula LeGuin’s actual words:
In a basement under one of the beautiful public
buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of
one of its spacious private homes, there is a room.
It has one locked door, and no window. A little
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March 2005
20
light seeps in dustily between cracks in the
boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window
somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the
little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted,
foul-smelling heads stand near a rusty bucket. The
floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as
cellar dirt usually is. The room is about three

paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or
disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting.
It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six,
but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded.
Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has
become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and
neglect. It picks its nose and occasionally fumbles
vaguely with its toes or genitals, as it sits
hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and
the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds
them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the
mops are still standing there; and the door is
locked; and nobody will come. The door is always
locked; and nobody ever comes, except that
sometimes--the child has no understanding of time
or interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly
and opens, and a person, or several people, are
there. One of them may come in and kick the child

Lois Lowry
March 2005
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to make it stand up. The others never come close,
but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes.
The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled,
the door is locked, the eyes disappear. The people
at the door never say anything, but the child, who
has not always lived in the tool room, and can
remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes
speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me
out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child
used to scream for help at night, and cry a good
deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-
haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It
is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its
belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn

meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks
and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits
in its own excrement continually.
They all know it is there, all the people of
Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others
are content merely to know it is there. They all
know that it has to be there. Some of them
understand why, and some do not, but they all
understand that their happiness, the beauty of
their city, the tenderness of their friendships,
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March 2005
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the health of their children, the wisdom of their
scholars, the skill of their makers, even the
abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers
of their skies, depend wholly on this child's

abominable misery.
**
They would like to do something for the child. But
there is nothing they can do. If the child were
brought up into the sunlight out of that vile
place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted,
that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were
done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and
beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be
destroyed. Those are the terms.
The people view the child, know that it is there ache
for it.
But their comfort depends upon the child’s misery,
and so they find a way to live with that knowledge.
They do so by turning away. To do otherwise would
cost them too much.
Lois Lowry

March 2005
23
**
Finally, there is the girl on the bike. She left Japan when she
was fourteen. She grew up here and there, went to college,
married, had children, eventually grandchildren. She became a
writer.
It’s not true to say that I thought often about the
Japanese boy, the one from whom I had turned away, to whom I
had been afraid to say hello. But from time to time,
remembering my childhood, his face, his solemn look, swam
into
my memory.
In 1994, when “The Giver” was awarded the Newbery
Medal, a picture book called “Grandfather’s Journey” was
awarded the Caldecott. Its author/illustrator was Allen Say.
Allen is Japanese, though he has lived in the USA since he was
a
young man.

He gave me a copy of “Grandfather’s Journey” and
inscribed it to me. In return, I signed “The Giver” to him,
writing
my name in Japanese below my usual signature. He chuckled,
looking at it, and asked me how I happened to be able to do
that.
You can picture the ensuing conversation.
“I lived in Japan when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen,”
I explain.
“What years?” asks Allen Say.
“1948,49,50. I was born in 1937.”
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March 2005
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“Me too. We’re the same age. Where did you live?”
“Tokyo,” I tell him.
“Me too,” he says. “What part?”
“Shibuya.”

“So did I! Where do you go to school?” Allen asks me.
“Meguro. I went by bus each day.”
“I went to school in Shibuya.”
“I remember a school there,” I tell him. “I used to ride
my bike past it.”
Silence. Then: “Were you the girl on the green bike?”
Allen and I are close friends now. But we had lost 57
years of friendship because we had both turned away. To do
otherwise—in that place and that time—would have been too
hard.
**
More and more, in the alienated and frightening world
we live in now, I think it is essential that we enter the dark
places, and to face what is too painful, too hard, what costs too
much. We have to look at what is in the distance, on the
horizon. To listen to the language we don’t understand. And to
face the horrible thing in the locked room..

Lois Lowry
March 2005
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I think we…and by we I mean you and me, and the
young people whom I address in my books…we must look at
and
ask questions about poverty and pain and injustice, about
hunger and genocide and ignorance, about greed and power. It
all, I think, comes down to one question and that is the one that
we should know, always, to ask. We should ask it of the
chained
child in the basement, of the young men on the slow-moving
ship, of the one who speaks another language. We should ask,
“In what way are we connected to one another?”
One of the reasons they have been debating The Giver
in Kansas City (where, incidentally, the school board finally
voted unanimously to retain the book in the schools) is because
of what it says about the story on the inside of the book jacket:
In the telling it questions every value we have taken

for granted and reexamines our most deeply held beliefs.
Why, I wonder, are people so afraid to do that?
I feel very strongly that we should question our own
beliefs and rethink our values every single day, with open minds
and open hearts.
We should ask ourselves again and again how we are
connected to each other.
Lois Lowry
March 2005
26
And we should teach our children to do so, and not to
turn away.
Thank you.
Running Head: THE LATIN AMERICA
THE LATIN AMERICA
11
The Latin America

Name
Institution
Abstract
Latin America is a region whose primary occupants are French
and Portuguese speakers. The Latin America region consists of
19 sovereign states with a total area of approximately
19,197,000 Km2. The name originates from two phrases;
Amerique Latine in recognition of French speakers in the
region. The region was formed as a stepping stone to economic
and political development under the umbrella federal congress
of republics steered by Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao.
Before, the natives were under slave rule by exercised by
Europeans on both native slaves and slaves of African origin.
Keyword: Latin America
Latin America Environment and Socio-economic
The landscape is majorly influenced by the indigenous
populations under their well-characterized connection to the
physical environment (Manara, 2014). The ties to the situation
are manifested through their religion economic activities and
political activities.
Individuals in the region were divided based on areas
concerning their economic activities. The south pacific region
was suitable for fishing and trading societies while the
significant rivers of the Amazon basin with plenty water animal
and plant resources with the areas of the Andes mountains
provided security.
Native Groups
The Aztecs

They are commonly known as the Mexica. They are the founders
of Tenochtitlan city currently overlay by the Mexico City. In
1325, there were about 25000 in population and occupied the
areas within marketplaces surrounding the town. The town was
characterized by stone-surfaced road network and religious
practices. The main economic activities in the area were;
woodworking, pottery, weaving and metallurgy copied from the
inhabitants of the Andes mountain. Their collaboration with
close allies let to the building of an empire stretching across
Mexico.
The Nazca
They were less known inhabitants in South America. The Nazca
are renowned for their artwork in the desert of Peru. Their 200-
square mile carving of fish birds and insects is visible on an
aerial view from above sea level thus it is related to the
landmarks for ancient astronauts.
The Chibcha
They occupied parts of South America, in the current Colombia.
They were organized in small agricultural villages. Their skills
in gold working made them famous within the region of Andes.
Currently, they occupy the mountain region of Ecuador, Costa
Rica and Colombia.
The Incan
The Incan empire established in 1438 in Peru, practiced
common ingenious culture. The empire expanded in 100 years to
cover the current parts of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile,
Colombia, and Argentina.
For communication within the region, Incan empire builds an
extensive road network that connected various parts through the
Andes mountain to the Pacific coast. He Incans also constructed

other socio-economic facilities which included inns, towers, and
food storage areas. The roadmaps let the domination of the
region towards the west by the Incans.
The Gauchos
Gauchos existed in Pampas in the 18th century. They were
mainly hunters. The Gauchos exercised their economic activity
by hunting for wild horses and roaming herds of cattle. The
hides and waxy fat were then sold for soap as well as candle
making at elevated prices to European people in the business.
Linguistics
The America's linguistic substrate is still abundant. Though
language study in the region is complex due to extensive
interaction and mixing. There are over 50 indigenous languages
as at present in South America alone. The individuals occupy
most rural parts of the region as the entire region is under
urbanization.
Mayan Language
It is the most spoken language. About 6 million people speak
the language in Guatemala, Belize, and southern Mexico. In
Guatemala, it is native due to less intermixing in the area. The
citizens of Guatemala talk about the language as their first
language.
Quenchea
It is also widespread among 10million natives of Peru and
Bolivia.
It was the primary language of Incans in Spanish. Aymara
language, an equivalent language to quenchea was spoken
around Lake Titicaca. Aymara is the official language in
Bolivia with the Bolivian president Evo Moral being its native
speaker.

Guarani
It is a language that is widely spread in Peru. Almost 95% of
the people speak the language of Spanish. Linguistic
development in Peru is approximated by 5% change in language.
Thus Guarani is the first language.
Creole
It is a language that resulted from the interaction between
Europeans and natives during colonialism. The language
borrows its words from Spanish as a primary constituent,
English, Dutch, Portuguese and other related colonial
languages. Furthermore, the interaction of African slaves’ o the
Atlantic Caribbean coast led to further development of the
Vocabulary of the language.
The European Conquest
The conquest was a pivot point for Latin America. It was
marked by the arrival of Christopher Columbus with three
Spanish ships in 1492. Various changes took place in the region
including slavery, death-both deliberate and unintended. Since
then, multiple expeditions and revolutions took place with the
primary target of colonial territories being exploitation of
natural resources. For example, the alliances and groups within
the Mexican town of Veracruz in 1519.
Political
The region was exclusively under the rule of Portugal and Spain
from 1494 as granted by the Tordesillas treaty. Spain colonized
the east while Portugal colonized the current Brazil. Spanish
and Portuguese languages further spread in the region due to the
inflow of missionaries. Venezuelan Simon Bolivar and
Argentinian Jose de San Martin lead various revolutions in 1806
to 1826 that lead to the independence of multiple territories
within the region.

The cold war also brought about the conflict between the
democratic nations on the west and the communist economic
states. In fear of spreading communism, the United States and
western countries backed up dictators who after that detained
various political prisoners in 1960s. The US supported military
overthrew governments in Brazil Uruguay Chile Paraguay and
Argentina.
Today, the political situation in Latin America is characterized
by the quest for reducing foreign influence. Nationalization and
individualism in ownership of industries are the current issues
prevailing in Latin America. For example, Chile nationalized its
copper company in 2010.
The trend alludes to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez who
enacted the Hydrocarbon law in 2002 and led the nationalization
of all oil production and supply activities. As per now, the
Bolivian president has done so to both oil and natural gas.
Currently, Ecuador threatens to privatize all industries if
foreign companies do not respect the countries business
policies.
On the other hand, some are for nationalism. They believe it has
improved their lives contrary to the opinion of many that
nationalism is for the poor. Countries like Brazil as well as
Argentina have sold their companies to foreigners.
The benefits of privatization lie in the efficient production and
reliable services in the steel and water supply.
Apart from industrial management and restructuring, political
representation has been improved. Indigenous groups are
currently recognized in some countries. For instance. Bolivia
passed the law in the 2009 constitution that acknowledges
political representation of the units. This is an excellent
achievement in the quest for boosting justice, human rights and
property management as well as cultural development. In 2006

Hilaria and Maria Sumire became the first women to be sworn
in in the Peruvian congress under their indigenous language
known as Quechua. The language is currently recognized, and
hence several materials including at Microsoft software system
have been made based on the tongue.
Current Issues in Latin America
Urbanization is on its rapid rise in the Latin America (Hardoy et
al.,2013). The region is developing at an alarming speed despite
the poverty state that traverses most parts. More poor people are
within the hearts of developed and developing cities. Such
occupant is reducing on the social amenities as well as
increased job insecurity. Supply of resources such as water and
electricity have reduced due to the high demand.
Industrialization, on the other hand, is destroying the unique
landscape of Latin America. For instance, the Amazon forest is
being burned and cleared at a very high rate (Gwynne, 2014).
The trees are currently in demand thus the rate of harvesting is
at its peak.
Increased farming activities in the region have also led to the
conversion of plains and natural habitats to ranches. The habitat
will soon be at an imbalance, and environmental degradation
will prevail all over the region.
As more industries are set up, the emissions to the environment
will be on their increase. Finally, the entire atmosphere will be
full of harmful gases that will influence the temperature
conditions and the whole rainfall pattern leading to
desertification in the region.
On the other hand, economic breakdown soon is evident within
the region. This is because more of the country's resources are
invested in the development of towns. The rural residents will
quickly be alienated and geographically isolated in the anguish
of poverty (Abel et al.,2015). Evident in rural areas as per now
are low educational inputs, inadequate health facilities and

services and housing. Most of this alienated individual are
indigenous groups especially in mountainous regions of Bolivia,
Ecuador and Peru.
The efforts of the region to take control over climate change is
a significant step that is a predictor of their future success in
development.
Opinion
Latin America is a region that has been conservative over an
extended period. Its aesthetic ecology is being destroyed as a
result of technological advancements taking place in the area.
Foreign investors are contributing to the establishment of
industries and commercial centers that are leading to clearance
of significant animal habitats like the Amazon region.
On the other hand, indigenous cultural activities are still
preserved despite poverty levels within the region. The natives
have a firm belief in both social and religious believes thus they
can’t let go of their culture.
Conclusion
Latin America still has some sense of naturalism that can be
managed under strategic plans geared towards eradication of
poverty, controlled urbanization, climate change initiative and
political restructuring in some states.
References
Abel, C., & Lewis, C. M. (Eds.). (2015). Welfare, poverty, and
development in Latin America.
Springer.
Bush, M., & Gentic, T. (Eds.). (2015). Technology, Literature,
and Digital Culture in Latin
America: Mediatized Sensibilities in a Globalized Era.
Routledge.

Gwynne, R. N., & Cristobal, K. A. Y. (2014). Latin America
transformed: globalization and modernity. Routledge.
Hardoy, J. E., Mitlin, D., & Satterthwaite, D.
(2013). Environmental problems in an urbanizing world: finding
solutions in cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Routledge.
Manara, A. (2014). Latin American Literature.
Robbins, T., & González, J. (Eds.). (2014). New Trends in
Contemporary Latin American
Narrative: Post-national Literatures and the Canon. Springer.
C. Dice
2012
1
Children’s Writers on Children’s Literature
English 3401
―Certainly we want to protect our children from new and
painful experiences that are beyond their
emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a
point we can prevent premature exposure
to such experiences. That is obvious. But what is just as
obvious—and what is too often overlooked—
is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar

terms with disrupting emotions, that
fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives,
that they continually cope with frustration
as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve
catharsis. It is the best means they
have for taming all Wild Things.‖
--Maurice Sendak, Caldecott Medal Acceptance Speech, 1963
―It's revealed an issue that I'm surprised about, which is the
new preciousness that's been brought to
literature for children now. There is an abject fear of instilling
any sort of dramatic trauma, of sadness,
on the children who are receiving a story. ... And of course that
was never a great concern in the past.
The great children's stories that we all grew up with, there are
always moments of great tragedy and
moving moments of loss in the book that we weren't afraid of --
as long as you bring them [young
readers] back by the end and bring them to where a reader
should be, a child should be. ―
--Berkeley Breathed, on the concerns that the sadness of his
novel Flawed Dogs might
be too sad for young readers. (CNN.com)

―But in 1980, the censors crawled out of the woodwork,
seemingly overnight, organized and
determined. Not only would they decide what their children
could read, but what all children could
read. Challenges to books quadrupled within months, and we'll
never know how many teachers, school
librarians and principals quietly removed books to avoid
trouble.
“Fear. I believe that censorship grows out of fear, and because
fear is contagious, some parents are
easily swayed. Book banning satisfies their need to feel in
control of their children's lives. This fear is
often disguised as moral outrage. They want to believe that if
their children don't read about it, their
children won't know about it. And if they don't know about it, it
won't happen. Today, it's not only
language and sexuality (the usual reasons given for banning my
books) that will land a book on the
censors' hit list. It's Satanism, New Age-ism and a hundred
other isms, some of which would make you
laugh if the implications weren't so serious. Books that make
kids laugh often come under suspicion;

so do books that encourage kids to think, or question authority;
books that don't hit the reader over the
head with moral lessons are considered dangerous.
“Ideas. Censors don't want children exposed to ideas different
from their own. If every individual with
an agenda had his/her way, the shelves in the school library
would be close to empty. I wish the
censors could read the letters kids write.
Dear Judy,
I don't know where I stand in the world. I don't know who I am.
C. Dice
2012
2
That's why I read, to find myself.
Elizabeth, age 13
But it's not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is
the books that will never be written. The
books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of

censorship. As always, young readers will be
the real losers.‖
http://www.judyblume.com/censorship.php
See also an entire article on Blume’s reaction to censorship of
the Harry Potter books:
http://www.judyblume.com/censorship/potter.php
In what ways has your religious conviction informed your
writing? And would you comment on
the presence (or lack ) of religious content, specifically
Christian, in recent children's literature
(say the last fifteen years or so)?
―I think it was Lewis who said something like: "The book
cannot be what the writer is not." What you
are will shape your book whether you want it to or not. I am
Christian, so that conviction will pervade
the book even when I make no conscious effort to teach or
preach. Grace and hope will inform
everything I write. You're asking me to comment on fifteen
years of 5000 or so books a year. Whew!

We live in a Post-Christian society. Therefore, not many of
those writers will be Christians or
adherents of any of the traditional faiths. Self-consciously
Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) writing will
be sectarian and tend to propaganda and therefore have very
little to say to persons outside that
particular faith community. The challenge for those of us who
care about our faith and about a hurting
world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and
hope in their bones and sinews and not
wear them like fancy dress. ―
--Katherine Paterson
http://www.terabithia.com/questions.html
―Last summer I gave a speech at the annual children's book
conference at Simmons College in Boston,
and afterwards, during the question-and-answer period, a young
woman asked me why I don't write
books about the current societal problems of American children.
She was especially concerned, she
said, about poverty, drugs, and sexual abuse. These were topics,
she said, that needed to be treated in
books for children because such books could help children to

deal with them. My answer was, I'm
afraid, rather knee-jerk and glib. "That" I said grandly, "is not
the purpose of literature."
. . .
―Given all these demands, it's a wonder anyone ever
undertakes the writing of fiction at all, at least
fiction for children. It may in fact be impossible to write a book
for children which meet all three of
these requirements. It may be impossible to enlarge the soul,
meet present and specific needs, and
please the reader all at the same time.
. . .
―It's twaddle to say that writers should sit down and try
deliberately to create work of lasting value, and
that, by so trying, they should avoid dealing with the social
problems of the moment because if they
do, their work is doomed to eventual obscurity. If there's
anything to be learned in our present-day
world, it's that ―lasting value" is a term of dubious
significance. I've still got my mother's old metal
kitchen grater. It has four sides and a handle on top, and you
can grate cheese and slice cucumbers with
it, and one side has large perforations with such wickedly sharp

edges that it looks like a medieval
http://www.judyblume.com/censorship.php
http://www.judyblume.com/censorship/potter.php
C. Dice
2012
3
instrument of torture. I don't know what that side is for. My
mother probably got this tool when she
was married in 1928, so it's 61 years old and still going strong.
It has survived my mother, and it will
survive me. That's lasting value for you. It is still possible to
create kitchen tools of lasting value, but
nobody, least of all me, can say what will make a work of
fiction survive. And even if we could, I defy
any writer to create, by an act of will, a work with any built-in
guarantee. As a motive for writing, that
would be arrogant nonsense. The ages will decide what lasts,
not the writer.
―So - literature has hundreds of purposes and I for one no
longer care. But one question remains: Do
we, as writers for children, really have any special
responsibility? We do. We have a responsibility to

do the very best work we're capable of. And I still think that
means we should each stick to what we
know, and do what we do best. Some of us will write movingly
and effectively about the current
societal problems of children and may be able to bring comfort
to those children if only by showing
them they are not alone. Some of us will write funny books,
light-hearted books, and thank goodness
for them! Some of us will write about ideas and snippets of
philosophy we find puzzling and
interesting. Some of us will write about sports, or the solving of
cops-and-robbers mysteries, or aliens
from outer space, or dinosaurs. All of it will be literature, all
fiction. All will serve one purpose or
another. Some will be good, some not so good, again depending
on who's doing the choosing. But, for
pity's sake, let us hope that these books will first and foremost
bring pleasure to their readers,
regardless of which of the hundreds of purposes they serve,
because otherwise it won't matter what
they're about, or whether they're good or not so good, and it
won't matter whether a given writer spent
ten weeks or ten years writing one of them. because no child
will bother to read them. And if a child is

forced to read one in school, he will forget it as quickly as
possible afterwards.
―Maybe, after all, there is one single purpose for literature -
one foremost purpose, anyway. Maybe the
giving of pleasure is the purpose. I find I could care about that.
The purpose of literature is to give
pleasure to the reader. I will leave it to somebody else to define
what pleasure is. It could be a topic for
some other paper: what is the purpose of pleasure? I hope
nobody will ask me to deal with it.‖
--Natalie Babbitt, ―The Purpose of Literature – and Who
Cares? ―
The Ann Carroll Moore Lecture at the New York Public Library,
1989.
http://www.thencbla.org/boardspeeches/babbittmoorelec.html

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