Questions and Answers

The following post is rated R ,”Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian!”

In the last few months there has been a controversy raging following the publishing of Barbara Will’s book Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay, and the Vichy Dilemma.  In her book, Will delves into one of the aspects of Gertrude’s life that is recounted every few years in various books and articles: how did she and Alice as lesbian, American Jews survive in Nazi-occupied France during WWII?  Gertrude’s close friendship with Fay, a Vichy government sympathizer, and his role in preventing GertrudeandAlice from being rounded up by the Nazis is not new information. However, it is Will’s contention that Stein too held strong pro-Vichy and pro-Nazi sentiments that has caused a firestorm in a large contingency of the Stein Fan Club.

But now there is a new, potential controversy brewing regarding my picture book Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom.

The word “Pussy” is used four times in the book- pages 4, 13, 35, and 61 and is one of the many affectionate names GertrudeandAlice had for each other.

The second listing for the word on urbandictionary.com is:

pussy

1. Nice name for a cat

2.  Slang for women’s genitals

3. Cowardly

The first listing is X rated so you’ll have to check it out yourself.

I first heard concerns about the use of the word from a friend of the book’s illustrator Tom Hachtman who had just read the book, saw the word and asked: “Pussy? This book really isn’t for children, is it?” His reply with a laugh: “Children don’t have your dirty mind!”

Should I be concerned? What were the cat in the hat’s real intentions  or Miss Clavell’s when she turned out the lights? Not to mention all the goings on where the wild things are!

My first public reading of the book to a group of 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders in Oakland, CA was to happen a few weeks ago, but I had to postpone it temporarily.  However, I did get an e mail from the teacher who had invited me, asking me, at the request of the principal, if I would change “Pussy”  to “Pussycat” when I was reading the book to the children, “since the word now has developed a lot of negative connotations and our third graders are quite astute about picking up these things.” My, my the loss of innocence.

 

It’s not as if a form of the word hasn’t been used in a children’s story written more than 400 years ago. What the French called Le Maître Chat, or Le Chat Botté (Master Cat or The Booted Cat) , we know as Puss in Boots. But there must be incredible power in that “y” though Master and Booted Cat do sound a bit S&M.

Hey, GertrudeandAlice  had a rather steamy sexual relationship if their love notes to each other are any indication, not to mention some of Gertrude’s  works such as “Lifting Belly” which is not about a chef gingerly handling the evening’s pork appetizer! But did Alice’s nickname have sexual implications or was it truly just the feline diminutive which has been the name of thousands of cats in the English-speaking world:  lovable things that are warm and fuzzy?

Thank God Gertrude didn’t decide to use a diminutive version of the “C” word for her sweety!  Had she, this book really couldn’t have been published or shipped without a plain brown wrapper.  And the “lost generation” thought there were issues with Joyce’s Ulysses. Little did they know Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom would appear on the literary horizon 80 years later!

Is this just a tempest in one of Alice’s fine china teapots or a real controversy that the One Million Moms will glom onto to rid America of things that may taint our young?  Or a headline in both the newsprint and online editions of a mid-sized town in Illinois: “School Librarian Removes Lesbian Couple Children’s Book Because of Feline Reference!”  Or an unexpected PR opportunity that will warrant an NPR and CNN appearance resulting in the sale of hundreds of books?

Maybe in the second edition “Pussy” will have to change to “Mama Woojums,” Alice’s nickname whenever letters were exchanged between GertrudeandAlice and their friend Carl Van Vechten. (He was Papa Woojums and Gertrude was Baby Woojums.) But then again, how would urbandictionary.com  define “Woojums?”

 woojums

1. That which is left after the Woo has been expelled.

2. Native-American term for orgasm.

3. A  feeling of depression when home-made jam does not gel properly.

Never mind. I’ll just leave the “P-word.”  Rose is a rose is a rose, after all.

 

PS (courtesy of Tom Hachtman):

 

 

 

 

Tagged Barbara Will, Carl Van Vechten, Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom, Lifting Belly, Tom Hachtman, Ulysses