The late British writer Beatrix Potter is being accused of stealing the tales for her Peter Rabbit books from slaves in America, with a woke literature professor saying Potter is responsible of the “appropriation” of black tradition.
In a latest essay, Emily Zobel Marshall, who teaches postcolonial literature at Leeds Beckett college in England, claimed Beatrix Potter ripped off the oral “Br’er Rabbit” people tales informed by slaves engaged on southern plantations. As well as, she accuses Potter of intentionally hiding the “sources” of her literary inspiration.
“Potter’s use of the Brer Rabbit stories as the basis of her tales is not the main issue here … However, the steps Potter took to steer readers away from her sources are problematic.”https://t.co/FMRHSsVWQJ
— The Dialog (@ConversationUK) May 19, 2023
“Her tales owe a debt to the Brer Rabbit stories told by enslaved Africans working on American plantations that needs to be fully acknowledged,” Marshall wrote in her essay, which was printed this month in The Dialog.
Zobel Marshall alleges Potter’s early contact with the “Brer Rabbit” tales was a results of her household’s roots within the cotton business, which she describes as “exploitative.” She additionally alleges Potter realized of “Brer Rabbit” tales by the books of American journalist and folklorist Joel Chandler Harris, who created the “Uncle Remus” character.
She claims Potter tried to “steer readers away from her sources” and that her actions had been “problematic,” including that the Peter Rabbit books are actually concerning the “resistance and survival tactics of the plantation life of enslaved people in the Americas.”
Zobel Marshall conclude, “Potter’s actions in shielding the reading public from her sources have fed into a damaging and reoccurring appropriation of Black cultural forms that continues today.”
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