Showing posts with label JJ Flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JJ Flowers. Show all posts

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Beverly Slapin's review of JUAN PABLO AND THE BUTTERFLIES

Back in June, a reader wrote to ask me about Juan Pablo and the Butterflies by J. J. Flowers. I did a "have you seen" post about it and am glad to see that Beverly Slapin, of De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children, has a review up now. Here's some excerpts:
Abuela appears to be a shaman as well. She’s an all-in-one spiritual phenom, singularly embodying not only a whole culture’s metaphysics but also bits of other cultures—a mishmash of mythology and mysticism that the author invents. 
Still, it was the old woman’s shamanic powers that were a good deal more popular than her famous doctoring skill. Nothing made his abuela happier than taking away people’s aches and pains, their troubles and struggles. She took away the pain of childbirth as well as the opposite, the struggle of transitioning. She cured little Jose’s [sic / the nickname for “José” would be “Pepe,” not “little José”] poor hearing, but also his mother’s gambling problem, Ms. Sanchez’s strange rash, but also her husband’s infidelity, Mr. Hernandez’s high blood pressure, but also his depression. Occasionally she worked miracles, curing dementia, diabetes, and even many different cancers. People sought her out from hundreds of miles away. (p. 11)

And there's a subsection about playing Indian:


NOTE ABOUT “PLAYING INDIAN”
When Juan Pablo and Rocio were children: 
Following his abuela’s suggestion, he and Rocio had built an Indian tepee [sic] in the forest just beyond the meadow. No one else but his abuela knew about it. The tepee [sic] became their secret, a private tent where they passed the endless hours of childhood playing imaginary games: Indians—Rocio was the chief and he was the brave; hospital—Rocio was the doctor and he the patient; school—Rocio was the teacher and he the student; and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—finally, he was Harry Potter and Rocio was Hermione. But lately, as they began outgrowing imaginary games, they hiked up to the tepee [sic] just to read good books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Old Man and the Sea, but also The Fault in Our Stars and The Hunger Games. (p.21)
Since most Mexicans are of Mestizo heritage, they’re “Indians.” That Juan Pablo’s Indian abuela would encourage the Indian children to “play Indian” doesn’t make any internal cultural sense. And, as Indian children, why would they want to enact stereotypical Plains Indians? This is all the author’s cultural assumptions and does not apply to Mexican children who probably did not grow up watching “cowboys and Indians” on 1950s TV shoot-‘em-ups. (JP and Rocio’s “tepee” shows up in a later chapter, when Juan Pablo and Rocio are on the run and hide in this “wooden structure,” which a tipi is not.)
The author also inserts some miscellaneous stuff that misrepresents Indians and Mestizos:
If [JP] squinted against the light just so, he could see the narrowest of paths reaching around the cliff. Probably an old Indian path. Indians used to live here hundreds of years ago, after the Aztecs and before the Spaniards. (p. 81)

Go read the full review! There's a lot of detail there that you'll find helpful. 

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Debbie, have you seen JUAN PABLO AND THE BUTTERFLIES by JJ Flowers?

Eds. note: August 10, 2017--see excerpts of Beverly Slapin's review

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Today, a reader asked me about Juan Pablo and the Butterflies, by JJ Flowers. Out this year (2017) from Simon and Schuster, today's question rings a bell. I think someone asked about it before. Anyway--here's the description:

After facing a vicious drug cartel in Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly sanctuary, Juan Pablo and his best friend Rocio risk everything and try to escape the cartel’s henchmen—determined to pursue them at all costs—by following the butterflies’ migration all the way to California.

I did a quick look-inside and see three passages with the word "Indian" in them. Here is the first one:


The text is this: "Following his abuela's suggestion, he and Rocio had built an Indian tepee in the forest just beyond the meadow." This tepee is a secret. There, Juan Pablo and Rocio play imaginary games... like Indians. Rocio plays "the chief" and Juan Pablo plays "the brave. Like many of you, I'm wondering if kids in Mexico play Indian in the way that kids in the US do.

In the second passage, Juan Pablo and Rocio are on "an old Indian path." He thinks that Indians lived there after the Aztecs and before the Spaniards. I wonder who he's thinking the "Indians" were, exactly? There's a lot of Native nations in California... still there... not gone...

There's one more passage... about an "old Indian" prediction about spider webs.

If I get a copy of the book, I'll be back with a review. If you've got it and want to say a bit about it, please submit a comment.