Little Black Sambo
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The Story of Little Black Sambo is a children's book by Helen Bannerman, a Scot living in India, first published in 1899. The little boy who had to sacrifice to tigers his new red coat and his new blue trousers and his new purple shoes— which the tiger wears on his ears— but outwits the predators in his world, to return safely home and eat 169 pancakes for his supper, was a children's favorite for half a century before it became controversial. The story takes place in a fairy tale India, and the tigers racing around the tree are turned into ghee, rendered as "butter."
The book has a controversial history. Many consider the work to contain racist caricatures and stereotypes, and the word "sambo", partly as a result of the book, has a long history as a racial slur. The original illustrations portray Sambo in classic, "darky" iconographical form (see Blackface), with inky skin, wild hair and bright red lips.
However, regardless of the degree of racism in the original story, many pirated versions were knocked off at a cheaper price and which gained greater availability in its day. These often were more degrading, as mentioned by [Barbara Bader].
In 1996 noted illustrator Fred Marcellino observed that the story itself contained no racist overtones and produced a re-illustrated version, The Story of Little Babaji, which changes the characters' names but otherwise leaves the text unmodified. This version was a best-seller.
Julius Lester, in his Sam and the Tigers, also published in 1996, recast "Sam" as a hero of the mythical Sam-sam-sa-mara, where all the characters were named "Sam."
A modern printing, with the original title, in 2003, substituted more racially sensitive illustrations by Christopher Bing, in which, for example, Sambo is no longer quite so inky black. It was chosen for the Kirkus 2003 Editor's Choice list. Some critics were still unsatisfied. Dr Alvin F. Poussaint said of the 2003 publication:
- "I don’t see how I can get past the title and what it means. It would be like... trying to do 'Little Black Darky' and saying, 'As long as I fix up the character so he doesn't look like a darky on the plantation, it's OK.'"
In 1997, a race-free version of the book, Chibikuro Sampo (“sampo” means “taking a walk” in Japanese), replacing the protagonist by a black Labrador puppy going for a stroll in the jungle, was published by Mori Marimo from Kitaooji Shobo Publishing in Kyoto. The same year, the translations of the two other race-free versions appeared: Sam and the Tigers, by Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney, and The Story of Little Babaji, by Fred Marcellino .
Bannerman's original was first published with a translation of Masahisa Nadamoto by Komichi Shobo Publishing, Tokyo, in 1999.
The once-disappeared Iwanami version, with its controversial Dobias's illustrations and without the proper copyright, was re-released in April 2005 in Japan by a Tokyo based publisher Zuiunsya, because Iwanami's copyright expired after 50 years having passed since its first appearance.
References
- Barbara Bader, "Sambo, Babaji, and Sam," The Horn Book Magazine. September-October 1996, vol. 72, no. 5, p. 536.
- Phyllis Settecase Barton, Pictus Orbis Sambo: A Publishing History, Checklist and Price Guide for The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899-1999) Centennial Collector's Guide. Pictus Orbis Press, Sun City, CA.
See also
- List of banned books
- A Zambo is a person with Black and Amerindian ancestry.
- Ethnic issues in Japan#Allegations of Anti-Black Racism
External links
- [Free eBook: The Story of Little Black Sambo] at Project Gutenberg - text-only edition
- [Free eBook: The Story of Little Black Sambo] at Project Gutenberg - illustrated by [Florence White Williams]
- [Review in the Boston Globe]
- [Helen Bannerman on the Train to Kodaikanal]
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