Jane Yolen, The Devil's Arithmetic and Sister Emily's Lightship

[oyceter]

The Devil's Arithmetic: The YA counterpart to Briar Rose. Or rather, given the publication dates, Briar Rose is a more adult look at the Holocaust. Hannah, a girl who is sick and tired of hearing her relatives' stories about the Holocaust, ends up opening a door on Passover that leads to the life of Chaya, a Jewish girl in 1942. I was calmly reading most of the story, despite the horrors of Hannah-as-Chaya finding herself and her entire community sent away to a concentration camp.

I don't know if the -- I don't want to say "prevalence" -- maybe the cultural permeation of the Holocaust and of Holocaust narratives have somehow dulled the impact of yet another Holocaust narrative. I mean, there are works like Maus and Schindler's List, and there's also Life is Beautiful and Jakob the Liar. Not that I've seen Jakob the Liar. But sometimes it's as though the Holocaust has been distilled so anyone can use it if they want to make a tearjerker, and that seems wrong on very many levels.

I've only read the first book of Maus right now, but it reminds me a little of most of The Devil's Arithmetic. The horror is there, but it's off in the distance, buried under the daily hardships and worrying about food and learning how to survive. The blood inherent in the concentration camps has been momentarily hidden. It breaks out in the very last chapters of The Devil's Arithmetic, and suddenly, a book I thought I was emotionally all right about made me cry in bed. Part of it is because it's so sudden -- we know what goes on in the concentration camps, but it doesn't directly affect Hannah. And then, suddenly, it does, and three little girls go to the gas chambers.

Sister Emily's Lightship: Short stories! Jane Yolen does a lot of fairy tale/mythological/etc. rewrites, and for some of them, the endings can seem a little too "shocking" -- you can see Yolen trying hard to turn the formula over. While I liked her rewrite of Rumplestiltskin ("Granny Rumple") as a tale of bigotry and anti-Semitism and her rewrite of Snow White ("Snow in Summer") with a much less stupid Snow White, the revisions felt a little too PC or something. I don't know. It's that feeling of righting a fairy tale gone wrong, of fixing it so that it fits in with our modern morals. "Lost Girls," her redo of Peter Pan, felt like that as well (although I liked the disturbing picture of all the Wendys).

Ones that I did like were Allerleiraugh, a very disturbing rewrite of an already disturbing fairy tale (Donkeyskin/Coat of Many Colors/Tattercoats) and the satiric take on Beauty and the Beast and "The Gift of the Magi" in one ("The Gift of the Magicians, with Apologies to You Know Who"). I also liked the world of "The Thirteenth Fey" and the other two stories in that world -- reminded me a great deal of the Enchanted Forest of Patricia C. Wrede in terms of sensibility toward fairy tales. I also liked "Become a Warrior," a new fairy tale in the shape of the older ones; that is to say, bloody and rather merciless. And "A Ghost of an Affair," which is my idea of a good love story. I think I would have enjoyed the title story more if I knew more about Emily Dickinson. The only resonance it really had for me was one line in which she talks about her dog stopping for death, with the lines "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me" ringing through my head. I suspect there are more snippets of her poems throughout the story, except I am not knowledgeable enough to pick up on them.

Comments

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I remember Jane saying that people say she's done a lot of Jewish-themed work, and that for most people the amount she's done would be a lot, but she's written so much that it's not a large percentage of her work as a whole.

I defintely want to read more fairy tale retellings and more of Jane Yolen's work, so hopefully i can at least read her short stories this summer.

Briar Rose was definitely a very powerful story, the fit of the Sleeping Beauty, the theme of stories and memories and history. I may be partial to The Devil's Arithmetic, but i'm not sure i can say i liked either book *more*.

All narrative consumption is voyeuristic in some ways. I guess i've never thought of history as something that certain people have a right to -- i mean, i know the arguments around who has the right to control the stories that get told and stuff, but i've never felt like i didn't have the right to know a story just because i wasn't part of a certain group of people. And isn't it so important for people to know other people's stories, to know where they're coming from and what their history is and all that?

Oscar time polls and people sort of joking that if you've got something about the Holocaust in your movie, you're sure to win. Gave me a squicky feeling.

I can totally see the joke but yeah, definitely squicky.

I really should read Number the Stars as i don't think i have. I was underwhelmed by Anne Frank's Diary, but i remember reading The Upstairs Room (a novel with a similar story) and being touched more by that, though still not as much as by other stories i had read. I think there's something about the distance from the brutal horrors... i mean obviously it was horrible being confined to such a small space and knowing the risk of being discovered and all, but the stories mostly consist of day-to-day living which is honestly kinda boring, and it's the horrors of the camps that are really so wrenchingly painful (for me at least) as opposed to the more distanced abstract terror of the possibility of discovery and the crumminess of such confinement and so on. I've heard very good things about Night, but i don't think i'll be reading it.

[oyceter]

Makes sense -- I have a limited amount of Jane Yolen works in my head, but when I see the listed bibliography... wow. I am quite impressed.

I don't know if I can say I like BR better or worse than DA, but it hit me much harder for some reason. I think the YA narrative for DA helped a little to distance myself from what was happening. Huh. It doesn't really make sense, considering the level of reader involvement in Chaya's and Becky's grandma's stories.

I've always felt sort of intrusive venturing in on other cultural histories for some reason -- I think I have read too many EAS papers or talked to too many people who sort of fetishize Asian culture (esp. in the anime circles). And I sort of did as well with Japanese culture, so it feels odd, and I'm never quite sure where the line is. But you are right -- history and stories are there to be heard. I've been reading a book on the Rwandan genocide, and the most frightening thing is that it wasn't in the public's consciousness that much, despite the scale and the frightening inhumanity of it.

Night was a kick in the gut to me -- I read it for school in ninth grade (once or twice) and I've never picked it up again. I'm not sure if I really want to...

[veejane.livejournal.com]

FWIW, there tends to be a substantial difference between how children's novels portray the Holocaust and how adult novels do same. The Devil's Arithmetic freaks my shit out so much because I know it's aimed at 5th graders, and I don't know as how 5th graders can necessarily handle it.

Number the Stars is a much less freak-out-y story, wherein all deaths happen off the page and the plot is about escape. A lot of children's books are about the ones who live: When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit is a good example, and Malka Drucker wrote a fact-based story about a couple of brothers who were hidden with a Polish family.

Whereas, Mila 18 or Escape from Sobibor or even Maus is a different kettle of fish, and really not for kids or preteens at all.

[oyceter]

I think that explains why I was so okay with DA for a good deal of the book -- it was for children, and I figured I knew how it ended. But the moment when Hannah links arms with her two friends and walks off, I started crying. I probably would have had nightmares about it if I read it in fifth grade.