June 8, 2023 • 42 mins
Host Glynnis MacNicol has loved Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House books since she was a kid. She’s not alone in this, a lot of people have a strong devotion to Laura. Some travel miles to visit her houses and attend pageants dedicated to Laura and her books. But over the years, Laura, her work, and her legacy have become increasingly controversial. How do we reckon with the things we loved as a child? The stuff that made us who we are? Glynnis takes to the road to find out, driving across the midwest to all of Laura’s houses. First stop: Walnut Grove, Minnesota.
Go Deeper:
Visit Walnut Grove
Keiko Satomi’s article, At The Library: Libraries put 'Little House' series in new light
Dr. Debbie Reese’s blog, American Indians in Children’s Literature
Follow us for behind the scenes content!
@WilderPodcast on TikTok
@Wilder_Podcast on Instagram
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
There are towns all over America you've never heard of. Oh,
welcome to independence. Oh my god, I just said that. Okay,
it's not twenty cars. They're not easy to get to.
The nearest airports are almost always hours away by car,
three hours of my destination. The roads wind through farmland, prairies, forests, mountains,
(00:30):
desolate spaces. The farthest feels like the smallest, most remote
place there. But every year the people come. They arrive
in droves. It's like something out of field of dreams.
A dirt lot becomes a parking lot, a prairie becomes
a stage.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I think there's so many cars here you would think
you were a county fair even you say.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Five hundred cars. Families pile out of cars and costumes
because they're fantastic. They're wearing dresses, aprons, bonnets. Of course
it too, and last summer we joined the pilgrimage and
came here too. We arrived in the middle of vast
(01:16):
fields to discover entire towns right out of the eighteen hundreds,
covered wagons, actual horses, a cow.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
They're all four aged cows, and that's why they're moderately
well mannered and only people's aprons.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Hundreds of thousands of people have flocked to these places
for nearly five decades, literally from all.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Over the world, people from like Italy, Germany, like Japan.
It's like really like all the way over there to hear,
Like y'all know about this place?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
What is bringing people here? What inspires this devotion? Or
should we say who?
Speaker 5 (01:59):
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Laura Ingalls Wilder,
and I'm here Laura Ingle Wilder's day.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the children's book series Little
House on the Prairie.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
When people ask me who Laura Ingles Wilder is.
Speaker 6 (02:20):
I usually tell them that she is one of the
most important American children's book authors of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Which was turned into the hit TV show Little House
on the Prairie. I literally wake up in the middle
of the night and go, somebody somewhere is watching the
last of the group. Laura is the subject of entire
academic fields of scholarship annual conferences. She has inspired fashion lines,
cultural trends, and entire lifestyle industry, and about seventy five
(02:55):
years after her death, thousands of people still flock to
tiny towns in the middle of nowhere to celebrate her.
I think I've been happy in a long time. This
right here, this is my childhood fantasy come to life.
(03:22):
Laura's books have been read by millions. In many ways,
her story is the American story of being on the
road as a young girl. She traveled thousands of miles
in a covered wagon her family in search of a
better life. She's a Hollywood Western She's Jack Kerouac, but
in a nap dress with braids.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It's almost this mascot of American settlers.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
She witnessed the birth of modern America, and she wrote
down everything she saw.
Speaker 7 (03:47):
Everybody who's lived from covered wagons to airplanes, is a
time machine. But not very many people wrote down what
their experience.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Was, or nearly everything. Her books are based on her life,
but in the process of telling her story, she erases
a lot of others.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
It requires putting yourself in the shoes of an individual
embedded and really complicated, sometimes violent systems.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
That mythology of the frontier, the mythology of manifest destiny.
I think the pressures of the narrative were really heavy.
If we pretend to past was not as controversial and
difficult and racist as it was, then, how are we
going to deal with the racist issues we're grappling with today.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I didn't think about any of this when I read
these books as a kid. I just fell in love
with Laura and basically mainlined her story straight into my DNA,
which is where they stayed for a long time. But
with any kind of love comes responsibility. One of the
reasons for this trip is my desire to look honestly
at the thing I loved the most. What am I loving?
(04:56):
Should I love it? Will I still be able to
love it? On the other side, lor Anglees Wilder, whose
stories embody the best and the worst of America, who
seems to reincarnate with each generation. Her problems are still
our problems. But who is she really? And what can
she tell us about the America we live in today,
(05:20):
in a country currently at odds with itself and its history.
Could there be a better time for this exploration? There's
never been a better time than now. I'm Glennis McNichol,
and this is Wilder. This is my parents Atlas from
(06:14):
when I grew up. National Geographic Atlas of the World Revised,
third edition, and it comes in a box these days.
When I pick up a little House book, I'm immediately
time traveled into nineteen eighty two. I'm in Kitchener, Ontario,
an hour west of Toronto. I'm sitting on the brown
(06:34):
braided rug in my family's wood paneled living room. I'm
seven years old. In my memory, I would come downstairs,
would be like a Saturday morning, and every one would
be asleep in the house, and I'd pull this out
from the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the family
room because I would want to look at where Laura
(06:56):
Ingalls lived. There's nine books in the little House. In
the last five of them, she lives in a place
called De Smet South Dakota. Here it is, it's in
the middle of home in page two seventeen, almost near
the bottom, and it says dsmet Sdak and it says
thirty two D five. So page thirty two is a
double spread of what I now understand to be the
(07:18):
midwest of the United States of America. So my left
finger would be on five, my right finger me on D,
and then I'd pull them together to where they meet.
The joy and excitement of seeing where she lived on
an actual map was so gratifying to me and exciting
because she was a real person and this little tiny
(07:41):
entry on a map just seemed like proof to me
that it was possible to be an adventurous girl in
the world. And then I would try and hold my
finger here and then flip the pages back to the
one that showed the whole map of the United States
(08:05):
and find South Dakota. And then I'd look over because
on the big map the top of Canada shows and
I could find Toronto, and then just to left it, it
was Kitchener, where I lived, and I just remember trying
to like measure it with my hands. My hands are
much bigger nails, so it's like one hand with But
as a kid, it was like for me where I
(08:25):
was to Laura Engles where she was was like two
of my little seven year old hands, And that felt
super important to me that I could measure the distance
between the two of us, like here's where I existed
and here's where she existed, and I can see them
both on the same map and they're not that far apart.
This map was such a big deal to me, it
makes me want to cry looking at it. So obviously
(08:48):
I have an intense relationship to Laura. But when I
say Laura Ingles Wilder, what do you think of? What
about when I say little House on the prairie. Do
you see the yellow box set of books, or maybe
Melissa Gilbert with braids running down a grassy hill? Or
do you think of nothing at all? Why don't we
start with the basic facts. Laura Engleswilder was born in
(09:11):
a log cabin in Wisconsin on February seventh, eighteen sixty seven,
in the aftermath of the Civil War. She spent her
childhood on the American frontier, and by the time she
died in nineteen fifty seven at age ninety, she'd witnessed
the violent transformation of the American West. Her lifetime saw
the advent of electricity cars, two World Wars, television, and
(09:33):
Elvis Presley. She'd made her first trips in a covered wagon,
and three years before her death, she flew on a
jet plane. When I think about the arc of Laura's life,
I'm reminded of that line in Madmen, when Bert Cooper's secretary,
former Hellcat Eyeda Blankenship dies. She was born in eighteen
ninety eight in the barn. She died on the thirty
seventh floor of skyscraper.
Speaker 7 (09:56):
She's an astronaut.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Laura's an astronaut, a time traveler, or at least a
time traveling machine. For me, that time machine takes the
form of the Nine Little House Books, which roughly cover
her pioneer childhood during the years eighteen seventy through eighteen
eighty five, as she and her family traveled around the
American Midwest from Wisconsin to South Dakota. I didn't know
(10:20):
it when I was seven, but I wasn't just mapping
out laws journeys on my parents atlas. I was, in
some ways also mapping out my own future stories. I
would write trips I would take, often dragging along with
me unsuspecting friends.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
What I remember is like, Okay, the goal was to
get from New York to San Francisco as quickly as possible,
And suddenly you had re routed our journey to go
through southeastern South Dakota. And before I knew what was happening,
I was in a field in the middle of nowhere,
at the tail end of a Laura Ingels Wilder live
(10:58):
action role play pageant.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
This is Joe Piazza, writer, podcaster, and one of my
best friends and co producer of this podcast. In twenty fifteen,
I dragged her four hours off our route hoping to
see a pageant, but we didn't get there in time.
She was very tolerant.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I'm always tolerant, my friend.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yes, that's true. But my question is, were you surprised
when I did that. Did it feels like you discovered
some new side of me?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah? Actually it did. I mean, you're one of my
best friends, but there were things I just didn't even
know about you before I discovered. You're deep and intense
and sometimes pathological. Love for Laura Engeles Wilder.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Feel like opening a closet in the house of one
of your best friends and being like, hm, oh.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
What's going on in Why are there all these headless
dolls in here?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I mean it kind of felt like that, but in
a nice way.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I mean, from a very young age, it felt like
I had like not a lot of examples of how
to be in the world, and she was just sort
of how I located myself in the world. And the
fact she was a real life person. You know, I
was a big reader as a kid, and I think
a lot of people who love Laura have the same
experiences like you loved Anne Shirley and you loved Nancy Drew,
(12:13):
but of course their fictional characters, and Laura was real
and she was my age. When I read the books,
I literally thought she'd written these books when she was
six years old, and she sort of wanted to have
adventures and thought wolves were exciting, and she couldn't sit still,
and she had a temper, and you know, she idolized.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Her father and you idolized your father.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, definitely when I was that age. You know, that
sort of magnetic, larger than life character that you.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Don't see as a real human being until you're a
grown up and have been to lots and lots of therapy.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Exactly until you unpack that. But I think too, it's
been interesting realizing that she captured a lot of like
really complicated family dynamics before that was the norm for ya.
And she talks a lot about resentment to Ma, jealousy
over her older sister, and how Mary was prettier and smarter,
And I was like, oh, this is also my family dynamic,
(13:08):
and these are all the things I'm experiencing. And it
was the fact that I recognize those experiences and she
wrote them down and then people wanted to read about them.
It was like, oh, these things you're living are worthwhile.
The things you're experiencing, even as little kid, are interesting
to other people. And that to me was such a
big deal.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
The story of a young girl is interesting like that.
That's a gut punch, right, like, oh my gosh, I'm
I'm a child. The world kind of tells me I'm insignificant.
But her stories were worthy, and therefore I feel.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Worthy exactly, And they were worthy in like the smallest ways.
The first book in the series is Little House in
the Big Woods, and it's like of all the books,
that's like a fairy tale. And they're in a little
cabin in big woods and at the very very end,
Laura and Mary are in bed and playing the fiddle
by the fire, and the last line of that book
(14:04):
is I'm just gonna pull it out and read it
to you. She was glad that the cozy house and
paw Ma in the firelight and the music were now.
They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now.
It can never be a long time ago. Like even
me reading that to you right now, I get the chills.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I kind of have the chills, so philosophical. It's way
more philosophical than what I read in most children's books
Sweet Valley High.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Right, It's like imagine like feeding that to a six
year old because of course, part of the obsession of
Laura's she lived in the olden days, like she got
to travel by a horse and buggy and like put
her hair and braids and whatever. But like in that moment,
I really was like in my bedroom, in my bed thinking,
oh my god, is my now gonna be someone else's
(14:55):
olden days? And like my six year old head explodes,
and I immediately pull out a little diary that someone
had gave me in was like, well, I'm also going
to write my life down because obviously I have to
get this on paper lickety split. And I have that
diary still, and the first line of it is I
want to be a writer. I don't know what kind
of writer I want to be. Mom, And I went
(15:17):
to boggaining today. To boggaining is Canadian for sledding, and
that was like me thinking, like, maybe this is going
to be the olden days sometime too. I better start writing.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Little Glenness in the Suburbs. So from everything that you're
telling me, it actually does feel like Laura Ingles Wilder
and the things that she wrote remain endlessly relevant today
in lots of different ways.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
It certainly seems that way, and I think one of
the things we're trying to unpack when we do this
podcast is what it is about her that keeps her
relevant still because you know, the TV show is still on,
the books are still being read, people are still traveling
to see her, and like, what is it about those
descriptions and those revelations that make her life so visceral
(16:04):
we can still relate to it having gone back, you know,
for another reread for this podcast. What's so incredible is that, like,
the America that she's writing about in the late nineteenth
century also speaks to the America that we're in right now,
and in some ways it sort of speaks to where
we're all going.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
So let's get going.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
The thing is, while Laura and goes Welder may be
my on the road, she's not actually on the way
to anywhere. Her houses are literally in the middle of nowhere.
They are a pilgrimage and the truest sense of the word,
you have to want to go there, You have to
really want to go there to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas,
and South Dakota. And that's what we're doing. We're going
(16:51):
on the Great Laura road Trip to figure out what
this hold is that Laura has on her readers and
on America and what we're supposed to do with it.
So let's set the scene. Like any good road trip,
there's a cast of characters. Me obsessive Joe, who knows
very little about lor Engeles Wilder, and our producer Emily,
(17:12):
a millennial who loved the TV show which she watched
on DVD. We started in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, the side
of the book on the banks of Plum Creek and
even more famously the setting of the TV show. Well,
actually we started on the way to Walnut Grove. You're
based off towards Walnut Grove because we realized the pageant
was tonight and not tomorrow, as we had organized our
(17:34):
entire triporeal But.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
You know what, you texted me in a panic, and
I really urgot that shit you did.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And honestly this was thrilling for me. Becaus the TV
fan representative, He's like, oh my god, I've really strained
to Walnut Grove.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Guys, what we need to pay attention what we're in
Walnut Grove.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Walnut Grove. Walnut Grove was the first place we ran
into the reality that Laura's past really is our Now
we'll get to it after the break. Also, we need
to figure out with the pageants.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Well, great, let's take a picture. Okay, describe what you're seeing.
(18:28):
I mean, there's so First off, there's so many cars here.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, you would think you were a county fair.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And now it looks like there's a whole little house
on that Curry TV set.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
It does look like that. So, after racing across empty
farmland into the setting sun, we finally arrived in Walnut
Grove to discover the pageant parking lot was already almost full.
Are sing Oh wait, I'm sorry, but look Charles.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The parking lanes are named after character.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
We quickly realized that every detail of the pageant had
little house branding on it. Nothing had been left untouched.
We're parked in Mary, are we? Yeah? I think we're
parked in Caroline. Past the gates. The concession looks like
a professional kitchen. The water bottles are branded with little
house logos. There are Mom Pop bathrooms, and then just
beyond there is a huge stage.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
This is Walnut Grove, a busy growing village on the
edge of.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It looks like the set for a TV show.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
And supplies.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Tonight's pageant is based on the banks of Plum Creek.
The fourth book in the Little House series, it takes
place in Walnut Grove, although the town is not actually
mentioned in the books. Because Walnut Grove is also where
the TV show is set, it makes sense that their
pageant is the most Hollywood, the flashiest.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
This is better send. Some off Broadways did.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Sets roll out on hydraulics. Their effects are not what
you'd expect in a tiny town in the corner of
seemingly empty farmland. Real fire. There was so much energy.
It was clear. The crowd was dazzled and so were we.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Really really exceeded my expectations.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah, it was spectacular. It was spectacular rock. The whole
day actually has been fairly spectacular. And we came back
to town the next morning and we got to see it
in daylight. It looked a little different.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
There's a lot of empty store friends, American Legion Insurance
and real estate.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
It was a lot quieter. I don't mean just small
town quiet. I mean it was a bit too quiet.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
This town looks like a zombie apocalypse hit.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
It does. So I'm curious what struck you the most
about Walnut Grove when we first got there for the pageant.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I mean, honestly that it was a total ghost town.
Most of the businesses were closed and they looked like
they had been for a really long time. We saw
no people, There was no real commerce, just a couple
couple of shops that were open, and we had to
stay at a hotel that was thirty minutes away because
(21:14):
Walnut Grove didn't have one.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Like we know, the town is only seven hundred and
fifty people, but like the pageant, felt like it was
such a huge community effort. When we drove in the
next thing and it was like completely empty, it was
just so striking.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
But we did eventually find some people and they were
all in the gift shop.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
They were all in the gift shop for the Lower
Angles Wilder Museum. I mean all of them, Like we
met the entire town in the gift shop. I have
family that has lived here for a really long time,
like great grandparents and my grandmo who used to work
here on my mom's side, there's a farm, and I
think it's a century farm this year, mister Lson, Ye, yeah,
(21:55):
were fantastic.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I never thought you were a twenty one year old.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
We meant have been surprised. But the gift shop is
used to a crowd over the whole year.
Speaker 8 (22:05):
We can get up between ten thousand to probably twelve
thousand a year. We've had twenty thousand in one year.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
In addition to all the locals, there's also fans just
passing through, like a pair of motorcycle ladies we met
who were driving across the country days. I read all
the books when I was little so and then there
were the people you might describe as professional fans. And
one of the things I'm really interested in is Laura's
(22:32):
life as a farm woman later on, and that's actually
what my program was about.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It was in the kitchen with Laura.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
The truth is we could have stayed in the gift
shop all day, and we had to leave after an
hour because we had an important appointment with Bill Richards,
the director of the pageant. On our way to meet him,
we noticed something we hadn't seen before. It's what is
this mural? What's Boo Baye Foods?
Speaker 9 (22:57):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
On the side of Boobay food it's the only grocery
store in town, was a mural. It was a fifteen
foot high painting of a pioneer woman linking arms with
someone wearing what appeared to be a traditional Southeast Asian outfit.
Was a pioneer woman, Laura, who was the person she
was linking arms with.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
The little grocery store d early kind of price.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah, boo buye boobuye. That means butterfly.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
We asked Bill about it when we met with him
back at the set of the pageant, and he told
us there was a large Mung community in Walnut Grove.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Has there been a large munk the mun community early
two thousand. At one time the Munk community was one
third of our school.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Really yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
The Mung are a Southeast Asian ethnic group who do
not have a nation. They're historically a refugee community and
have settled all over the world, including the United States.
There is an estimated sixty six thousand Munk living in
Minnesota and they make up a little under half of
Walnut Grove's population. The mural we passed at Boo Bay
Foods is a tribute to their settling here.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And it's interesting because they say the town.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
In my mind, the story of the Mung and Walnut
Grove shouldn't surprise us. Immigration is the story of all
American towns, even if that story does not always make
it into the history books. So it's not that surprising
that there are among in Walnut Grove. But what is
surprising is why there's a large population there.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
And the story is that as they were looking around,
why did they come here to talk about us?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
They read Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
To be honest, when Bill told us this, we were skeptical.
It seemed a little too scripted, like an episode a
Little House in the Prairie, a very special episode. But
it turns out Bill was right that much like Laura
and her family had settled into this prairie town looking
for new opportunities and a nice place to live, so
had this other immigrant community. More than a century later.
Speaker 10 (24:50):
Yes, Harry, who owns THEE Boo By Store, has started
loved the show, read the books.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
That's Sean Yang. He was the first Mong council member
in Walnut Grove. In his relative of Harry Yang, who
opened Bubai Foods back in the early two thousands. Harry's
family lived closer to the Twin Cities, but there had
been an economic downturn, the housing crisis was starting to
bubble up, crime had risen. He was looking for a
quiet place to move his family, and.
Speaker 10 (25:15):
So he asked his wife and his kids where should
we move to? And his daughter suggests that how about
we try Little House in Prairie. And he's like, what
is that? And so she explained to him. She show
him the show. He watched a couple episodes, but they
took a trip down there, and he decides to sit
it down in Warner Grove as suggested by his daughter.
(25:38):
He is the pioneer of the Monks in southwest Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Here the monk have a very family oriented culture. So
with one family came a bunch of families who settled
not just in Walnut Grove, but all around southwest Minnesota.
Speaker 10 (25:52):
We did account it was about thirty thirty five families
to one hundred and thirty some families in twenty and
eight to twenty twelve, so that was a big jump.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
So suddenly in the early two thousands, seventy five years
after the first Little housebook was published, nearly four decades
after the show first aired, this quiet rural town was bustling.
Sean really confirmed that the mun gave the town new life.
Speaker 10 (26:20):
One of my neighbors says that the town is live
again because all of these kids are out there playing, biking.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
So when the Mung families began to settle on Walnut Grove,
the communities embraced them, and according to Bill, this was
partly thanks to Laura too.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
And I think one of the reasons that Walnut could
handle it maybe better. I mean, let's not say that
they handled it well initially. There's always this oh us
them kind of thing, but because we've had so many
different groups coming through here, so in.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Many ways, Laura paved the way for the Mung and
Walnut Grove. And it's not lost on Sean that there
are parallels with Laura in the story of the Monk.
Speaker 10 (26:55):
I think we could relate to Laura's story very very much.
It's how hard is to adapt into the environment, and
so we're trying to teach the other kids, how can
you learn from Laura's legacy and make that your own legacy.
If Laura from her time, if she could make such
an impact on it, how can we as community most
(27:17):
that forward.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
To me, it's inspiring how Laura's story keeps inspiring movement.
I mean, even in this small town that seemed pretty
desolate to us, there's still something special that happened here
because of Laura.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
I know. I mean the devotion to Laura and the
enormous distances people will travel to visit her has always
fascinated me. And I remember I once said to you,
could you think of another woman people would drive so
far to see? And I just wonder if you remember
what you said.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Carrie Bradshaw, my friends.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Exactly two of us is through the West Village for
cupcakes or two uses across the prairie for I don't know,
pigtails and prairie dresses. But the thing is that Carrie
isn't real and Laura is and all this like sort
of talk of tour buses reminds me of something we
kept hearing about over and over again in Walnut Grove.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
This used to be the destination stop for Japanese.
Speaker 8 (28:20):
There's a little house on the prairie Japanese fan Club.
We've had a bus group of like forty that came
strictly from Japan to Walnut Grove.
Speaker 7 (28:29):
I did visit this Bai Fuss game here Walnut Girl,
almost twenty years ago. So yeah, I think I saw
some Japanese writing in the gift shops or something. Yes,
so I thought, oh, you know, Japanese to be able
to come here.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Like many, I assumed Laura's Japanese fan base stemmed from
the television show. This is true, but like so much
of history, it turns out it was far more complicated.
Speaker 7 (28:55):
I just realized that it was not as in us
was I.
Speaker 9 (29:03):
Thought.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
So far, we've been telling the charming, optimistic version of
Laura's story, but like all stories, it's complicated. There's a darker,
even harmful side to Laura. We'll get to it after
the break. There's a lot of ways to look at America.
(29:26):
There's the optimistic view that we see in Walnut Grove,
the story of people coming to America and building a
new life. And then there's the darker, often violent, far
more complicated story. Something similar happens with Laura. As a kid.
She's magical, and then you dig a little deeper and
it gets a lot less simple.
Speaker 7 (29:51):
I think I was like a second thought, great, and
I just got captured. I'm fairly in love with all
the sensory details. It was so different. The scale of
the story was so different from where I grew up
in like a small I understounded by the ocean.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Keiko Stomi was born in Japan and emigrated to America
in her late twenties. She's now a librarian in Cloque, Minnesota.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
I am originally from Sika, Japan, and this is my
seventeenth year living in the United States.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Keiko was the same age as me, and when she
was growing up in Japan, she also loved the Little
House books and the TV show.
Speaker 7 (30:32):
So we were only able to watch two TVs per week,
and Little House Series TV series was on the Nippon
National Television NHK Saturday evening at six pm. I still remember,
and this was one of the shows my mom allowed
to watch me and my brother, so that was kind
(30:56):
of special.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
As I said, I'd known about Laura's Japanese fan base
for a long time, and I'd always assumed it was
from the TV show. Turns out it runs deeper than that,
all the way back to World War Two.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
I just realized that it was not as innocent as
I originally thought. It was curriculated to you know, bring
that literature for a Saddin is a political reasons and
I don't know. It kind of gave me a little
(31:30):
mixed feeding about how it was introduced.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
What Keiko's referring to here takes us all the way
back to World War Two. Following Hiroshima Nagasaki, General Douglas MacArthur,
the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, replaced
the Japanese government approved reading list with his own on
that list was the sixth book in the Little House series,
The Long Winter. The Long Winter is about the infamous
(32:01):
hard Winter of eighteen eighty one. It's an actual historical event.
There's history books written about it. It has its own
Wikipedia page. That winter impacted large parts of the entire
Great Plains. The town of De Smet South Dakota was
snowed in for nine months, Trains stopped, everyone nearly starved.
(32:21):
It's the darkest of the books, the hardest to read,
and some would argue Laura's best and the terrible winter
that followed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A lot of the suffering
that the book describes was being felt at the time
by the Japanese population. Laura would get fan mail from Japan,
and she treasured it. The lour Engles Wilder Museum in Mansfield,
(32:43):
Missouri found a letter from a fourteen year old Japanese
girl tucked into Laura's personal copy of the Japanese translation
of The Long Winter. But the Long Winter was also
approved by the occupying American Army. It definitely wasn't an
innocent choice.
Speaker 7 (32:58):
I thought, it is very interesting how children's liturature can
be utilized for political reasons, and how it can take
a role to shift people's mind to a democratic minds,
and how Japanese people understand the American people's mind and
(33:18):
the way of living. And so it brought my horizon
and it was not as innocent.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
As I hoped. It goes without saying Laura's legacy of
bringing people together and inspiring travels one of her charms,
but there are obviously ways this can be insidious too.
We actually came to Keiko because of an article she
published in twenty nineteen in the Pine not News titled
at the library Libraries put Little House Series in new light.
(33:45):
In the piece, Keiko writes that she's no longer comfortable
recommending the books to others, not because of their history
in Japan, but because of their representation of Native Americans.
One particular passage stood out to.
Speaker 7 (33:57):
Her mother, Caroline. It picked It mentioned about the Native people,
Indigenous people like a sting it linga in the house.
I remembered that, and I remembered how the illestuation portrayed
really premiatively of the Indigenous people.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
The scene Keiko's remembering is from the book Little House
on the Prairie. It's a third book in the series,
depending on which box that you own, and it tells
the story of the Engles moving from Wisconsin to what
Laura calls Indian Territory, which was in reality the Osage
Diminished Reserve and is now the state of Kansas. The
chapter is titled Indians in the House, and it and
(34:40):
this book are the most controversial in the series, particularly
for their depiction of Native Americans.
Speaker 7 (34:46):
I took that. I took that as a kid, but
I didn't really think of that impact of it. So
as the adult, you know, I can see what did
it do to my mind? I think it gave me
a very simple view over the Indigenous people.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
This criticism of Laura is far from new. It happened
during her lifetime, but it has definitely increased in the
last two decades.
Speaker 9 (35:14):
Consider a Native child in their classroom and they come
to that sentence, the only good Indian is a dead Indian.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
That's doctor Debbie Reese. She's a highly regarded scholar of
Native American studies and for the past two decades has
run a blog called American Indians and Children's Literature.
Speaker 9 (35:33):
My name is Debbie Reese. I am tribally enrolled at
nambe Ouwingai, which is a sovereign native nation in what
is currently known as the state of New Mexico.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I first became aware of doctor Reece way back in
two thousand and six during some sort of little house
internet rabbit hole had gone down. This was still when
I was surprised that other people were as interested in
the books as I was. Doctor Reese's blog may make
you rethink many beloved childhood class in ways that are
often uncomfortable.
Speaker 9 (36:03):
I started thinking, Okay, what's in those books that's helping
shape what people think about who we are. The books
that our parents give to us are ones that we
have an emotional attachment to.
Speaker 10 (36:14):
So I was.
Speaker 9 (36:14):
Finding in those kinds of books that are readily available
lots of problematic imagery of who Native people are according
to a white point of view that is really stereotyped
and romantic and just wrong, over and over in every direction.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
In two thousand and six, doctor Reese wrote about the
Little House Books. Here's some of what she said. I
suggest you take a second look at Little House, note
the ways that Native peoples are described, and consider whether
or not the book ought to be set aside and used,
perhaps in context where readers are able to think critically
about racism and colonization. Seems pretty reasonable. No, Still, people's
(36:52):
passion for these books and for Laura runs deep. Obviously.
Exhibit A is person you're currently listening to criticizing these
books was for a lot of people like taking a
childhood photo album of your most treasured memories and setting
it on fire. But doctor rees argues that these books
don't belong in schools anymore at all.
Speaker 9 (37:16):
I think the harm is too great because it's not
just that harm, it's the context of larger, more widespread harms.
So it's just one more thing that Native children have
to endure, and it's one more saying that non Native
children goes through that affirms those mistaken ideas that they
get just as a matter of life in the United States.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
So this is what we're reckoning with on the road
with Laura. People who love her, who travel miles sometimes
cross oceans to visit her, and people who argue she
no longer has a place on our shelves, and me,
a person who won't let her go, but who is
also trying to figure out how to love her.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
So, Glennis McNichol, you have been handed the assignment that
you've dreamt about since you were eight years old. You
get to travel to all of the Laura Ingalls houses
across the country and report out who this woman was,
her significance to culture, all of it. This, I mean,
this is your dream. But I got to tell you,
(38:19):
I also think that it is going to be really hard.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yes, And the truth is I think it should be hard.
I think that when you hold something this fundamental to
yourself and the thing you were holding is this complicated
and has been in many ways harmful to people, one
of the responsibilities of this sort of love is that
(38:46):
you have to be honest with yourself about the thing
you are loving. Like it's not even a question of like,
should Laura be canceled. I'm not capable of canceling Laura.
Like she's too integral to who I am and what
I am. So if you can't get rid of the
person or the thing that you love, you have to
(39:07):
look at it and really understand who I'm loving, to
grasp the ways in which they are flawed, and to
be really really honest about that.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
I think what I'm starting to realize is that the
many ways that Laura seems flawed are also the many
ways that America is flawed. And you're now getting your
dream assignment. But it's like, be careful what you wish for,
which is also a very American thing. Be careful what
(39:42):
you wish for in the American dream because there is
always another side to it.
Speaker 7 (39:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I don't know if Canadians have American dreams, but if
I do, then in many ways, for me, Laura is
my America and dream. I wanted to be a writer
living the life that I'm writing about, and I wanted
to be on the road and to be having adventures,
and that's exactly what we're doing. Laura's story is one
(40:14):
of movement. The only way to really find her is
to be on the road. I also happen to believe
you can only really know America from the road, but
enjoying the American road is an experience that is often
limited to a certain group of people. Lost in books
like On the Road in Little House are the groups
of people who aren't able to freely take these journeys.
And what about the people who were present before America
(40:36):
actually had roads on this trip. We're hoping to get
the whole story. Next week, We're going to look at
the story Laura tells. We're going to go back to
where it all began. How Laura, at sixty three years old,
decided to take pen to paper and write down her
life story. What inspired her to do so, and how
exactly did a farm wife in rural Missouri find her
(40:57):
way into New York City publishing houses. That's next week
on Wilder. Wilder is written and hosted by me Glynnis McNichol.
Our story editors are Joe Piazza and Emily Meronoff. Our
senior producer is Emily Maranoff. Our producers are Mary Doo
(41:18):
and Sheena Zaki. Sound design and mixing by Amanda Rose Smith.
Our amazing theme and additional music was composed by Alise McCoy.
We are executive produced by me Joe Piazza, Nikki Tor
and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Bill and Walnut Grove
for connecting us with everyone, and Toko Lore for connecting
us with the MUNG community in Walnut Grove, and Raya
(41:40):
Anthony who calmly fielded our middle of the night, Middle
of Minnesota emergency travel requests. Please see our show notes
if you want to know more about the people we interviewed,
the places we visited, the books we mentioned. You can
also find our contact info there if you want to
write to us with your own thoughts and questions. Thank
you for listening, See you next week.
Speaker 9 (42:00):
The Bri
There are towns all over America you've never heard of. Oh,
welcome to independence. Oh my god, I just said that. Okay,
it's not twenty cars. They're not easy to get to.
The nearest airports are almost always hours away by car,
three hours of my destination. The roads wind through farmland, prairies, forests, mountains,
(00:30):
desolate spaces. The farthest feels like the smallest, most remote
place there. But every year the people come. They arrive
in droves. It's like something out of field of dreams.
A dirt lot becomes a parking lot, a prairie becomes
a stage.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I think there's so many cars here you would think
you were a county fair even you say.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Five hundred cars. Families pile out of cars and costumes
because they're fantastic. They're wearing dresses, aprons, bonnets. Of course
it too, and last summer we joined the pilgrimage and
came here too. We arrived in the middle of vast
(01:16):
fields to discover entire towns right out of the eighteen hundreds,
covered wagons, actual horses, a cow.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
They're all four aged cows, and that's why they're moderately
well mannered and only people's aprons.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Hundreds of thousands of people have flocked to these places
for nearly five decades, literally from all.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Over the world, people from like Italy, Germany, like Japan.
It's like really like all the way over there to hear,
Like y'all know about this place?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
What is bringing people here? What inspires this devotion? Or
should we say who?
Speaker 5 (01:59):
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Laura Ingalls Wilder,
and I'm here Laura Ingle Wilder's day.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the children's book series Little
House on the Prairie.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
When people ask me who Laura Ingles Wilder is.
Speaker 6 (02:20):
I usually tell them that she is one of the
most important American children's book authors of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Which was turned into the hit TV show Little House
on the Prairie. I literally wake up in the middle
of the night and go, somebody somewhere is watching the
last of the group. Laura is the subject of entire
academic fields of scholarship annual conferences. She has inspired fashion lines,
cultural trends, and entire lifestyle industry, and about seventy five
(02:55):
years after her death, thousands of people still flock to
tiny towns in the middle of nowhere to celebrate her.
I think I've been happy in a long time. This
right here, this is my childhood fantasy come to life.
(03:22):
Laura's books have been read by millions. In many ways,
her story is the American story of being on the
road as a young girl. She traveled thousands of miles
in a covered wagon her family in search of a
better life. She's a Hollywood Western She's Jack Kerouac, but
in a nap dress with braids.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It's almost this mascot of American settlers.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
She witnessed the birth of modern America, and she wrote
down everything she saw.
Speaker 7 (03:47):
Everybody who's lived from covered wagons to airplanes, is a
time machine. But not very many people wrote down what
their experience.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Was, or nearly everything. Her books are based on her life,
but in the process of telling her story, she erases
a lot of others.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
It requires putting yourself in the shoes of an individual
embedded and really complicated, sometimes violent systems.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
That mythology of the frontier, the mythology of manifest destiny.
I think the pressures of the narrative were really heavy.
If we pretend to past was not as controversial and
difficult and racist as it was, then, how are we
going to deal with the racist issues we're grappling with today.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
I didn't think about any of this when I read
these books as a kid. I just fell in love
with Laura and basically mainlined her story straight into my DNA,
which is where they stayed for a long time. But
with any kind of love comes responsibility. One of the
reasons for this trip is my desire to look honestly
at the thing I loved the most. What am I loving?
(04:56):
Should I love it? Will I still be able to
love it? On the other side, lor Anglees Wilder, whose
stories embody the best and the worst of America, who
seems to reincarnate with each generation. Her problems are still
our problems. But who is she really? And what can
she tell us about the America we live in today,
(05:20):
in a country currently at odds with itself and its history.
Could there be a better time for this exploration? There's
never been a better time than now. I'm Glennis McNichol,
and this is Wilder. This is my parents Atlas from
(06:14):
when I grew up. National Geographic Atlas of the World Revised,
third edition, and it comes in a box these days.
When I pick up a little House book, I'm immediately
time traveled into nineteen eighty two. I'm in Kitchener, Ontario,
an hour west of Toronto. I'm sitting on the brown
(06:34):
braided rug in my family's wood paneled living room. I'm
seven years old. In my memory, I would come downstairs,
would be like a Saturday morning, and every one would
be asleep in the house, and I'd pull this out
from the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the family
room because I would want to look at where Laura
(06:56):
Ingalls lived. There's nine books in the little House. In
the last five of them, she lives in a place
called De Smet South Dakota. Here it is, it's in
the middle of home in page two seventeen, almost near
the bottom, and it says dsmet Sdak and it says
thirty two D five. So page thirty two is a
double spread of what I now understand to be the
(07:18):
midwest of the United States of America. So my left
finger would be on five, my right finger me on D,
and then I'd pull them together to where they meet.
The joy and excitement of seeing where she lived on
an actual map was so gratifying to me and exciting
because she was a real person and this little tiny
(07:41):
entry on a map just seemed like proof to me
that it was possible to be an adventurous girl in
the world. And then I would try and hold my
finger here and then flip the pages back to the
one that showed the whole map of the United States
(08:05):
and find South Dakota. And then I'd look over because
on the big map the top of Canada shows and
I could find Toronto, and then just to left it, it
was Kitchener, where I lived, and I just remember trying
to like measure it with my hands. My hands are
much bigger nails, so it's like one hand with But
as a kid, it was like for me where I
(08:25):
was to Laura Engles where she was was like two
of my little seven year old hands, And that felt
super important to me that I could measure the distance
between the two of us, like here's where I existed
and here's where she existed, and I can see them
both on the same map and they're not that far apart.
This map was such a big deal to me, it
makes me want to cry looking at it. So obviously
(08:48):
I have an intense relationship to Laura. But when I
say Laura Ingles Wilder, what do you think of? What
about when I say little House on the prairie. Do
you see the yellow box set of books, or maybe
Melissa Gilbert with braids running down a grassy hill? Or
do you think of nothing at all? Why don't we
start with the basic facts. Laura Engleswilder was born in
(09:11):
a log cabin in Wisconsin on February seventh, eighteen sixty seven,
in the aftermath of the Civil War. She spent her
childhood on the American frontier, and by the time she
died in nineteen fifty seven at age ninety, she'd witnessed
the violent transformation of the American West. Her lifetime saw
the advent of electricity cars, two World Wars, television, and
(09:33):
Elvis Presley. She'd made her first trips in a covered wagon,
and three years before her death, she flew on a
jet plane. When I think about the arc of Laura's life,
I'm reminded of that line in Madmen, when Bert Cooper's secretary,
former Hellcat Eyeda Blankenship dies. She was born in eighteen
ninety eight in the barn. She died on the thirty
seventh floor of skyscraper.
Speaker 7 (09:56):
She's an astronaut.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Laura's an astronaut, a time traveler, or at least a
time traveling machine. For me, that time machine takes the
form of the Nine Little House Books, which roughly cover
her pioneer childhood during the years eighteen seventy through eighteen
eighty five, as she and her family traveled around the
American Midwest from Wisconsin to South Dakota. I didn't know
(10:20):
it when I was seven, but I wasn't just mapping
out laws journeys on my parents atlas. I was, in
some ways also mapping out my own future stories. I
would write trips I would take, often dragging along with
me unsuspecting friends.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
What I remember is like, Okay, the goal was to
get from New York to San Francisco as quickly as possible,
And suddenly you had re routed our journey to go
through southeastern South Dakota. And before I knew what was happening,
I was in a field in the middle of nowhere,
at the tail end of a Laura Ingels Wilder live
(10:58):
action role play pageant.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
This is Joe Piazza, writer, podcaster, and one of my
best friends and co producer of this podcast. In twenty fifteen,
I dragged her four hours off our route hoping to
see a pageant, but we didn't get there in time.
She was very tolerant.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
I'm always tolerant, my friend.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Yes, that's true. But my question is, were you surprised
when I did that. Did it feels like you discovered
some new side of me?
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah? Actually it did. I mean, you're one of my
best friends, but there were things I just didn't even
know about you before I discovered. You're deep and intense
and sometimes pathological. Love for Laura Engeles Wilder.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Feel like opening a closet in the house of one
of your best friends and being like, hm, oh.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
What's going on in Why are there all these headless
dolls in here?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I mean it kind of felt like that, but in
a nice way.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
I mean, from a very young age, it felt like
I had like not a lot of examples of how
to be in the world, and she was just sort
of how I located myself in the world. And the
fact she was a real life person. You know, I
was a big reader as a kid, and I think
a lot of people who love Laura have the same
experiences like you loved Anne Shirley and you loved Nancy Drew,
(12:13):
but of course their fictional characters, and Laura was real
and she was my age. When I read the books,
I literally thought she'd written these books when she was
six years old, and she sort of wanted to have
adventures and thought wolves were exciting, and she couldn't sit still,
and she had a temper, and you know, she idolized.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Her father and you idolized your father.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, definitely when I was that age. You know, that
sort of magnetic, larger than life character that you.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Don't see as a real human being until you're a
grown up and have been to lots and lots of therapy.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Exactly until you unpack that. But I think too, it's
been interesting realizing that she captured a lot of like
really complicated family dynamics before that was the norm for ya.
And she talks a lot about resentment to Ma, jealousy
over her older sister, and how Mary was prettier and smarter,
And I was like, oh, this is also my family dynamic,
(13:08):
and these are all the things I'm experiencing. And it
was the fact that I recognize those experiences and she
wrote them down and then people wanted to read about them.
It was like, oh, these things you're living are worthwhile.
The things you're experiencing, even as little kid, are interesting
to other people. And that to me was such a
big deal.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
The story of a young girl is interesting like that.
That's a gut punch, right, like, oh my gosh, I'm
I'm a child. The world kind of tells me I'm insignificant.
But her stories were worthy, and therefore I feel.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Worthy exactly, And they were worthy in like the smallest ways.
The first book in the series is Little House in
the Big Woods, and it's like of all the books,
that's like a fairy tale. And they're in a little
cabin in big woods and at the very very end,
Laura and Mary are in bed and playing the fiddle
by the fire, and the last line of that book
(14:04):
is I'm just gonna pull it out and read it
to you. She was glad that the cozy house and
paw Ma in the firelight and the music were now.
They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now.
It can never be a long time ago. Like even
me reading that to you right now, I get the chills.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I kind of have the chills, so philosophical. It's way
more philosophical than what I read in most children's books
Sweet Valley High.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Right, It's like imagine like feeding that to a six
year old because of course, part of the obsession of
Laura's she lived in the olden days, like she got
to travel by a horse and buggy and like put
her hair and braids and whatever. But like in that moment,
I really was like in my bedroom, in my bed thinking,
oh my god, is my now gonna be someone else's
(14:55):
olden days? And like my six year old head explodes,
and I immediately pull out a little diary that someone
had gave me in was like, well, I'm also going
to write my life down because obviously I have to
get this on paper lickety split. And I have that
diary still, and the first line of it is I
want to be a writer. I don't know what kind
of writer I want to be. Mom, And I went
(15:17):
to boggaining today. To boggaining is Canadian for sledding, and
that was like me thinking, like, maybe this is going
to be the olden days sometime too. I better start writing.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Little Glenness in the Suburbs. So from everything that you're
telling me, it actually does feel like Laura Ingles Wilder
and the things that she wrote remain endlessly relevant today
in lots of different ways.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
It certainly seems that way, and I think one of
the things we're trying to unpack when we do this
podcast is what it is about her that keeps her
relevant still because you know, the TV show is still on,
the books are still being read, people are still traveling
to see her, and like, what is it about those
descriptions and those revelations that make her life so visceral
(16:04):
we can still relate to it having gone back, you know,
for another reread for this podcast. What's so incredible is that, like,
the America that she's writing about in the late nineteenth
century also speaks to the America that we're in right now,
and in some ways it sort of speaks to where
we're all going.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
So let's get going.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
The thing is, while Laura and goes Welder may be
my on the road, she's not actually on the way
to anywhere. Her houses are literally in the middle of nowhere.
They are a pilgrimage and the truest sense of the word,
you have to want to go there, You have to
really want to go there to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas,
and South Dakota. And that's what we're doing. We're going
(16:51):
on the Great Laura road Trip to figure out what
this hold is that Laura has on her readers and
on America and what we're supposed to do with it.
So let's set the scene. Like any good road trip,
there's a cast of characters. Me obsessive Joe, who knows
very little about lor Engeles Wilder, and our producer Emily,
(17:12):
a millennial who loved the TV show which she watched
on DVD. We started in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, the side
of the book on the banks of Plum Creek and
even more famously the setting of the TV show. Well,
actually we started on the way to Walnut Grove. You're
based off towards Walnut Grove because we realized the pageant
was tonight and not tomorrow, as we had organized our
(17:34):
entire triporeal But.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
You know what, you texted me in a panic, and
I really urgot that shit you did.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And honestly this was thrilling for me. Becaus the TV
fan representative, He's like, oh my god, I've really strained
to Walnut Grove.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Guys, what we need to pay attention what we're in
Walnut Grove.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Walnut Grove. Walnut Grove was the first place we ran
into the reality that Laura's past really is our Now
we'll get to it after the break. Also, we need
to figure out with the pageants.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Well, great, let's take a picture. Okay, describe what you're seeing.
(18:28):
I mean, there's so First off, there's so many cars here.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, you would think you were a county fair.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And now it looks like there's a whole little house
on that Curry TV set.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
It does look like that. So, after racing across empty
farmland into the setting sun, we finally arrived in Walnut
Grove to discover the pageant parking lot was already almost full.
Are sing Oh wait, I'm sorry, but look Charles.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The parking lanes are named after character.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
We quickly realized that every detail of the pageant had
little house branding on it. Nothing had been left untouched.
We're parked in Mary, are we? Yeah? I think we're
parked in Caroline. Past the gates. The concession looks like
a professional kitchen. The water bottles are branded with little
house logos. There are Mom Pop bathrooms, and then just
beyond there is a huge stage.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
This is Walnut Grove, a busy growing village on the
edge of.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It looks like the set for a TV show.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
And supplies.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Tonight's pageant is based on the banks of Plum Creek.
The fourth book in the Little House series, it takes
place in Walnut Grove, although the town is not actually
mentioned in the books. Because Walnut Grove is also where
the TV show is set, it makes sense that their
pageant is the most Hollywood, the flashiest.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
This is better send. Some off Broadways did.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Sets roll out on hydraulics. Their effects are not what
you'd expect in a tiny town in the corner of
seemingly empty farmland. Real fire. There was so much energy.
It was clear. The crowd was dazzled and so were we.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Really really exceeded my expectations.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah, it was spectacular. It was spectacular rock. The whole
day actually has been fairly spectacular. And we came back
to town the next morning and we got to see it
in daylight. It looked a little different.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
There's a lot of empty store friends, American Legion Insurance
and real estate.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
It was a lot quieter. I don't mean just small
town quiet. I mean it was a bit too quiet.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
This town looks like a zombie apocalypse hit.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
It does. So I'm curious what struck you the most
about Walnut Grove when we first got there for the pageant.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
I mean, honestly that it was a total ghost town.
Most of the businesses were closed and they looked like
they had been for a really long time. We saw
no people, There was no real commerce, just a couple
couple of shops that were open, and we had to
stay at a hotel that was thirty minutes away because
(21:14):
Walnut Grove didn't have one.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Like we know, the town is only seven hundred and
fifty people, but like the pageant, felt like it was
such a huge community effort. When we drove in the
next thing and it was like completely empty, it was
just so striking.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
But we did eventually find some people and they were
all in the gift shop.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
They were all in the gift shop for the Lower
Angles Wilder Museum. I mean all of them, Like we
met the entire town in the gift shop. I have
family that has lived here for a really long time,
like great grandparents and my grandmo who used to work
here on my mom's side, there's a farm, and I
think it's a century farm this year, mister Lson, Ye, yeah,
(21:55):
were fantastic.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
I never thought you were a twenty one year old.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
We meant have been surprised. But the gift shop is
used to a crowd over the whole year.
Speaker 8 (22:05):
We can get up between ten thousand to probably twelve
thousand a year. We've had twenty thousand in one year.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
In addition to all the locals, there's also fans just
passing through, like a pair of motorcycle ladies we met
who were driving across the country days. I read all
the books when I was little so and then there
were the people you might describe as professional fans. And
one of the things I'm really interested in is Laura's
(22:32):
life as a farm woman later on, and that's actually
what my program was about.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It was in the kitchen with Laura.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
The truth is we could have stayed in the gift
shop all day, and we had to leave after an
hour because we had an important appointment with Bill Richards,
the director of the pageant. On our way to meet him,
we noticed something we hadn't seen before. It's what is
this mural? What's Boo Baye Foods?
Speaker 9 (22:57):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
On the side of Boobay food it's the only grocery
store in town, was a mural. It was a fifteen
foot high painting of a pioneer woman linking arms with
someone wearing what appeared to be a traditional Southeast Asian outfit.
Was a pioneer woman, Laura, who was the person she
was linking arms with.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
The little grocery store d early kind of price.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah, boo buye boobuye. That means butterfly.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
We asked Bill about it when we met with him
back at the set of the pageant, and he told
us there was a large Mung community in Walnut Grove.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Has there been a large munk the mun community early
two thousand. At one time the Munk community was one
third of our school.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Really yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
The Mung are a Southeast Asian ethnic group who do
not have a nation. They're historically a refugee community and
have settled all over the world, including the United States.
There is an estimated sixty six thousand Munk living in
Minnesota and they make up a little under half of
Walnut Grove's population. The mural we passed at Boo Bay
Foods is a tribute to their settling here.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And it's interesting because they say the town.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
In my mind, the story of the Mung and Walnut
Grove shouldn't surprise us. Immigration is the story of all
American towns, even if that story does not always make
it into the history books. So it's not that surprising
that there are among in Walnut Grove. But what is
surprising is why there's a large population there.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
And the story is that as they were looking around,
why did they come here to talk about us?
Speaker 2 (24:25):
They read Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
To be honest, when Bill told us this, we were skeptical.
It seemed a little too scripted, like an episode a
Little House in the Prairie, a very special episode. But
it turns out Bill was right that much like Laura
and her family had settled into this prairie town looking
for new opportunities and a nice place to live, so
had this other immigrant community. More than a century later.
Speaker 10 (24:50):
Yes, Harry, who owns THEE Boo By Store, has started
loved the show, read the books.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
That's Sean Yang. He was the first Mong council member
in Walnut Grove. In his relative of Harry Yang, who
opened Bubai Foods back in the early two thousands. Harry's
family lived closer to the Twin Cities, but there had
been an economic downturn, the housing crisis was starting to
bubble up, crime had risen. He was looking for a
quiet place to move his family, and.
Speaker 10 (25:15):
So he asked his wife and his kids where should
we move to? And his daughter suggests that how about
we try Little House in Prairie. And he's like, what
is that? And so she explained to him. She show
him the show. He watched a couple episodes, but they
took a trip down there, and he decides to sit
it down in Warner Grove as suggested by his daughter.
(25:38):
He is the pioneer of the Monks in southwest Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Here the monk have a very family oriented culture. So
with one family came a bunch of families who settled
not just in Walnut Grove, but all around southwest Minnesota.
Speaker 10 (25:52):
We did account it was about thirty thirty five families
to one hundred and thirty some families in twenty and
eight to twenty twelve, so that was a big jump.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
So suddenly in the early two thousands, seventy five years
after the first Little housebook was published, nearly four decades
after the show first aired, this quiet rural town was bustling.
Sean really confirmed that the mun gave the town new life.
Speaker 10 (26:20):
One of my neighbors says that the town is live
again because all of these kids are out there playing, biking.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
So when the Mung families began to settle on Walnut Grove,
the communities embraced them, and according to Bill, this was
partly thanks to Laura too.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
And I think one of the reasons that Walnut could
handle it maybe better. I mean, let's not say that
they handled it well initially. There's always this oh us
them kind of thing, but because we've had so many
different groups coming through here, so in.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Many ways, Laura paved the way for the Mung and
Walnut Grove. And it's not lost on Sean that there
are parallels with Laura in the story of the Monk.
Speaker 10 (26:55):
I think we could relate to Laura's story very very much.
It's how hard is to adapt into the environment, and
so we're trying to teach the other kids, how can
you learn from Laura's legacy and make that your own legacy.
If Laura from her time, if she could make such
an impact on it, how can we as community most
(27:17):
that forward.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
To me, it's inspiring how Laura's story keeps inspiring movement.
I mean, even in this small town that seemed pretty
desolate to us, there's still something special that happened here
because of Laura.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
I know. I mean the devotion to Laura and the
enormous distances people will travel to visit her has always
fascinated me. And I remember I once said to you,
could you think of another woman people would drive so
far to see? And I just wonder if you remember
what you said.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Carrie Bradshaw, my friends.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Exactly two of us is through the West Village for
cupcakes or two uses across the prairie for I don't know,
pigtails and prairie dresses. But the thing is that Carrie
isn't real and Laura is and all this like sort
of talk of tour buses reminds me of something we
kept hearing about over and over again in Walnut Grove.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
This used to be the destination stop for Japanese.
Speaker 8 (28:20):
There's a little house on the prairie Japanese fan Club.
We've had a bus group of like forty that came
strictly from Japan to Walnut Grove.
Speaker 7 (28:29):
I did visit this Bai Fuss game here Walnut Girl,
almost twenty years ago. So yeah, I think I saw
some Japanese writing in the gift shops or something. Yes,
so I thought, oh, you know, Japanese to be able
to come here.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Like many, I assumed Laura's Japanese fan base stemmed from
the television show. This is true, but like so much
of history, it turns out it was far more complicated.
Speaker 7 (28:55):
I just realized that it was not as in us
was I.
Speaker 9 (29:03):
Thought.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
So far, we've been telling the charming, optimistic version of
Laura's story, but like all stories, it's complicated. There's a darker,
even harmful side to Laura. We'll get to it after
the break. There's a lot of ways to look at America.
(29:26):
There's the optimistic view that we see in Walnut Grove,
the story of people coming to America and building a
new life. And then there's the darker, often violent, far
more complicated story. Something similar happens with Laura. As a kid.
She's magical, and then you dig a little deeper and
it gets a lot less simple.
Speaker 7 (29:51):
I think I was like a second thought, great, and
I just got captured. I'm fairly in love with all
the sensory details. It was so different. The scale of
the story was so different from where I grew up
in like a small I understounded by the ocean.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Keiko Stomi was born in Japan and emigrated to America
in her late twenties. She's now a librarian in Cloque, Minnesota.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
I am originally from Sika, Japan, and this is my
seventeenth year living in the United States.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Keiko was the same age as me, and when she
was growing up in Japan, she also loved the Little
House books and the TV show.
Speaker 7 (30:32):
So we were only able to watch two TVs per week,
and Little House Series TV series was on the Nippon
National Television NHK Saturday evening at six pm. I still remember,
and this was one of the shows my mom allowed
to watch me and my brother, so that was kind
(30:56):
of special.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
As I said, I'd known about Laura's Japanese fan base
for a long time, and I'd always assumed it was
from the TV show. Turns out it runs deeper than that,
all the way back to World War Two.
Speaker 7 (31:09):
I just realized that it was not as innocent as
I originally thought. It was curriculated to you know, bring
that literature for a Saddin is a political reasons and
I don't know. It kind of gave me a little
(31:30):
mixed feeding about how it was introduced.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
What Keiko's referring to here takes us all the way
back to World War Two. Following Hiroshima Nagasaki, General Douglas MacArthur,
the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, replaced
the Japanese government approved reading list with his own on
that list was the sixth book in the Little House series,
The Long Winter. The Long Winter is about the infamous
(32:01):
hard Winter of eighteen eighty one. It's an actual historical event.
There's history books written about it. It has its own
Wikipedia page. That winter impacted large parts of the entire
Great Plains. The town of De Smet South Dakota was
snowed in for nine months, Trains stopped, everyone nearly starved.
(32:21):
It's the darkest of the books, the hardest to read,
and some would argue Laura's best and the terrible winter
that followed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A lot of the suffering
that the book describes was being felt at the time
by the Japanese population. Laura would get fan mail from Japan,
and she treasured it. The lour Engles Wilder Museum in Mansfield,
(32:43):
Missouri found a letter from a fourteen year old Japanese
girl tucked into Laura's personal copy of the Japanese translation
of The Long Winter. But the Long Winter was also
approved by the occupying American Army. It definitely wasn't an
innocent choice.
Speaker 7 (32:58):
I thought, it is very interesting how children's liturature can
be utilized for political reasons, and how it can take
a role to shift people's mind to a democratic minds,
and how Japanese people understand the American people's mind and
(33:18):
the way of living. And so it brought my horizon
and it was not as innocent.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
As I hoped. It goes without saying Laura's legacy of
bringing people together and inspiring travels one of her charms,
but there are obviously ways this can be insidious too.
We actually came to Keiko because of an article she
published in twenty nineteen in the Pine not News titled
at the library Libraries put Little House Series in new light.
(33:45):
In the piece, Keiko writes that she's no longer comfortable
recommending the books to others, not because of their history
in Japan, but because of their representation of Native Americans.
One particular passage stood out to.
Speaker 7 (33:57):
Her mother, Caroline. It picked It mentioned about the Native people,
Indigenous people like a sting it linga in the house.
I remembered that, and I remembered how the illestuation portrayed
really premiatively of the Indigenous people.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
The scene Keiko's remembering is from the book Little House
on the Prairie. It's a third book in the series,
depending on which box that you own, and it tells
the story of the Engles moving from Wisconsin to what
Laura calls Indian Territory, which was in reality the Osage
Diminished Reserve and is now the state of Kansas. The
chapter is titled Indians in the House, and it and
(34:40):
this book are the most controversial in the series, particularly
for their depiction of Native Americans.
Speaker 7 (34:46):
I took that. I took that as a kid, but
I didn't really think of that impact of it. So
as the adult, you know, I can see what did
it do to my mind? I think it gave me
a very simple view over the Indigenous people.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
This criticism of Laura is far from new. It happened
during her lifetime, but it has definitely increased in the
last two decades.
Speaker 9 (35:14):
Consider a Native child in their classroom and they come
to that sentence, the only good Indian is a dead Indian.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
That's doctor Debbie Reese. She's a highly regarded scholar of
Native American studies and for the past two decades has
run a blog called American Indians and Children's Literature.
Speaker 9 (35:33):
My name is Debbie Reese. I am tribally enrolled at
nambe Ouwingai, which is a sovereign native nation in what
is currently known as the state of New Mexico.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I first became aware of doctor Reece way back in
two thousand and six during some sort of little house
internet rabbit hole had gone down. This was still when
I was surprised that other people were as interested in
the books as I was. Doctor Reese's blog may make
you rethink many beloved childhood class in ways that are
often uncomfortable.
Speaker 9 (36:03):
I started thinking, Okay, what's in those books that's helping
shape what people think about who we are. The books
that our parents give to us are ones that we
have an emotional attachment to.
Speaker 10 (36:14):
So I was.
Speaker 9 (36:14):
Finding in those kinds of books that are readily available
lots of problematic imagery of who Native people are according
to a white point of view that is really stereotyped
and romantic and just wrong, over and over in every direction.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
In two thousand and six, doctor Reese wrote about the
Little House Books. Here's some of what she said. I
suggest you take a second look at Little House, note
the ways that Native peoples are described, and consider whether
or not the book ought to be set aside and used,
perhaps in context where readers are able to think critically
about racism and colonization. Seems pretty reasonable. No, Still, people's
(36:52):
passion for these books and for Laura runs deep. Obviously.
Exhibit A is person you're currently listening to criticizing these
books was for a lot of people like taking a
childhood photo album of your most treasured memories and setting
it on fire. But doctor rees argues that these books
don't belong in schools anymore at all.
Speaker 9 (37:16):
I think the harm is too great because it's not
just that harm, it's the context of larger, more widespread harms.
So it's just one more thing that Native children have
to endure, and it's one more saying that non Native
children goes through that affirms those mistaken ideas that they
get just as a matter of life in the United States.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
So this is what we're reckoning with on the road
with Laura. People who love her, who travel miles sometimes
cross oceans to visit her, and people who argue she
no longer has a place on our shelves, and me,
a person who won't let her go, but who is
also trying to figure out how to love her.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
So, Glennis McNichol, you have been handed the assignment that
you've dreamt about since you were eight years old. You
get to travel to all of the Laura Ingalls houses
across the country and report out who this woman was,
her significance to culture, all of it. This, I mean,
this is your dream. But I got to tell you,
(38:19):
I also think that it is going to be really hard.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yes, And the truth is I think it should be hard.
I think that when you hold something this fundamental to
yourself and the thing you were holding is this complicated
and has been in many ways harmful to people, one
of the responsibilities of this sort of love is that
(38:46):
you have to be honest with yourself about the thing
you are loving. Like it's not even a question of like,
should Laura be canceled. I'm not capable of canceling Laura.
Like she's too integral to who I am and what
I am. So if you can't get rid of the
person or the thing that you love, you have to
(39:07):
look at it and really understand who I'm loving, to
grasp the ways in which they are flawed, and to
be really really honest about that.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
I think what I'm starting to realize is that the
many ways that Laura seems flawed are also the many
ways that America is flawed. And you're now getting your
dream assignment. But it's like, be careful what you wish for,
which is also a very American thing. Be careful what
(39:42):
you wish for in the American dream because there is
always another side to it.
Speaker 7 (39:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
I don't know if Canadians have American dreams, but if
I do, then in many ways, for me, Laura is
my America and dream. I wanted to be a writer
living the life that I'm writing about, and I wanted
to be on the road and to be having adventures,
and that's exactly what we're doing. Laura's story is one
(40:14):
of movement. The only way to really find her is
to be on the road. I also happen to believe
you can only really know America from the road, but
enjoying the American road is an experience that is often
limited to a certain group of people. Lost in books
like On the Road in Little House are the groups
of people who aren't able to freely take these journeys.
And what about the people who were present before America
(40:36):
actually had roads on this trip. We're hoping to get
the whole story. Next week, We're going to look at
the story Laura tells. We're going to go back to
where it all began. How Laura, at sixty three years old,
decided to take pen to paper and write down her
life story. What inspired her to do so, and how
exactly did a farm wife in rural Missouri find her
(40:57):
way into New York City publishing houses. That's next week
on Wilder. Wilder is written and hosted by me Glynnis McNichol.
Our story editors are Joe Piazza and Emily Meronoff. Our
senior producer is Emily Maranoff. Our producers are Mary Doo
(41:18):
and Sheena Zaki. Sound design and mixing by Amanda Rose Smith.
Our amazing theme and additional music was composed by Alise McCoy.
We are executive produced by me Joe Piazza, Nikki Tor
and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Bill and Walnut Grove
for connecting us with everyone, and Toko Lore for connecting
us with the MUNG community in Walnut Grove, and Raya
(41:40):
Anthony who calmly fielded our middle of the night, Middle
of Minnesota emergency travel requests. Please see our show notes
if you want to know more about the people we interviewed,
the places we visited, the books we mentioned. You can
also find our contact info there if you want to
write to us with your own thoughts and questions. Thank
you for listening, See you next week.
Speaker 9 (42:00):
The Bri
Host
Glynnis MacNicol
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.