Mything Mandela by Deborah Menkart

This section focuses on a picture book about Nelson Mandela. However, Deborah Menkart examines the inaccuracies of the images and stories represented in the book. Mandela is portrayed as “lovable, platitudinous cardboard character” that saved the country on his own. In fact, Nelson joined a movement to protect the poor and powerless, and even says that no one person can free a country. The book has no representation of the history of African resistance to European colonizers, which dates back as far as 1500. The book portrays the African ancestors as violent aggressors that created the war, when in reality they were only resisting colonization. The chapter makes a comparison to the way Native Americans are wrongly portrayed throughout history as seeking violence against the settlers. Maybe the violence of the apartheid regime should not be present in the book, but their is certainly danger in watering down the history. Menkart mentions that the book should show the unfairness of segregation between whites and blacks. She notes that children can recognize unfairness from an early age, and the topics of fairness and equality should be displayed in the story. The book does not reference South African Freedom Fighters, such as “Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Lillian Ngoyi, Ruth First, Joe Slovo, the thousands of children who fought for liberation, and many more are replaced by unspecific “ancestors.”  Rather, the book uses the term “ancestors” rather than specifying names of the Freedom Fighters. Towards the end, Menkart explains the danger in the way the book was finished. In the end, Mandela has a fist in the air and the text says “South Africa was free at last.” This “happy ending” does not portray reality - while the aparthaid and legal segregation was ended, it did not mark the end of inequality. Similar to the way the Civil Rights Movement is portrayed in US History books. Deborah Menkart also notes that the way Mandela is pictured, like other Freedom Fighters such as Gandhi, MLK Jr., Rosa Parks, and Cesar Chavez, teaches kids to search for the next “savior”, kind of a one person saving grace of inequality. The danger is that it does not represent the power of a movement and the countless number of people that contribute to these movements. It makes it seem like one person creates change alone, and that there is no space for each individual to contribute. Finally, she acknowledges the danger of kids learning the truth, or history, later in life. “If we don’t address the mythmaking in children’s books, especially biographies, we avoid the many lessons that can be learned from Nelson Mandela’s life, including intellect, commitment, bravery, and humanity as part of a collective struggle.” She also notes that so much of what we learn from history, and remember throughout our lives, are from these picture books. Therefore, we need to stop watering down the truth and begin showing the collective struggle of those who contributed to change.