Tikki Tikki Tembo and Racism

(Another one taken from the library Fronter page, where it was filed under year 5 and above this one from a few weeks back.)

Sorting books in the library today I came across a wonderful book by Arlene Mosel and Blair Lent called Tikki Tikki Tembo. The book is funny and sweet, and tells the story of two brothers growing up in China a long long time ago. The story is an example of what is called an origin myth, which means that it provides a mythical explanation for the way something is in the world we know today, here, the fact that Chinese names tend to be very short, which, now and again, may seem strange to Westeners or speakers of other languages (this was certainly true when the story was first written, or ‘retold’ to use the word on the front of the book).

The book is lovely, but the main reason I write about it today is that it is controversial and gives us opportunity to think about many different features of the stories we know and which help to build up our ideas about the world we live in. The story is a retelling of an older story. According to some people, the story was originally Japanese. The fact that it was moved to a Chinese setting is offensive to some readers because the two cultures are so different. The intentionally absurd long name given to the first-born son, Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo, is considered by some to be culturally offensive because it gives the impression that Chinese consists of nonsense syllables.

Such cultural sensitivities are understandable, although I wonder if many of those mentioned above were more of a concern years ago before Chinese people were such an established part of the culture of countries such as The United States where the book has won many awards, and before Chinese culture became more widely known. Sadly, some very ignorant and indeed obviously racist stereotypes of Chinese people were common in American popular culture at around the time the book was published, as is clear from this clip from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. I don’t know. On first reading it the story struck me as charming and harmless, at least in the manner it is likely to be read now, but as I look more into it, and read some of the comments on the Good Reads page I link to above, I am less sure (one comment says it is “not necessarily racist but very ignorant”). Whatever the facts of this, I think the story may be very useful not least because it allows us to explore some of these issues. It is important for us as we read it, however, to be aware that these issues exist, and to give them some real thought rather than simply laughing along at the twists and turns of the story itself.

I will be writing much more about the origins of the stories we know and the debates surrounding their wider meaning. At your age and level, it is important for you to build up an understanding about how meaning is constructed not only on the surface of the writing you read, but also in the layers beneath it. One of the things I will writing about in this area will be Wikipedia and Google, surely the two most widely used sources of the text we read. On this occasion, the Wikipedia article on Tikki Tikki Tembo is a great jumping-off point to look into some of the themes I mention above. I would be interested to hear your thoughts, and indeed, perhaps, the thoughts of your parents on this book and others which you, or they, might consider to be in some way offensive or problematic.

Acknowledging such problems is sometimes fatal to a work. We cannot, I hope, uncritically love a work we believe to be racist. In the same way as the people we know and love, and we ourselves, have our faults, however, the works of art we love, and the artists and writers we respect, have theirs. Roald Dahl was a grumpy old thing, for example, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is chock-full of pretty nasty stereotypes. Sometimes it is possible to bear such things in mind, and love these works and authors for the things they do get right. Bruce Lee was a childhood hero of mine, but despite the racism inherent in the one scene of Breakfast at Tiffany‘s that made him so angry in the clip I link to above, I quite like that film too for the things it does get right.