In Our House, Dr. Seuss Was Contraband
My mother had a ban on pork, and I thought she was mad that I broke it. One afternoon four decades ago, when I was about 8, I walked into my family’s house after playing outside and saw my mother sitting in the yellow recliner with a book in her lap. She had found the copy of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham.
I knew that I was in trouble, because normally no one sat in the canary-colored La-Z-Boy, a throne reserved for my grandmother. Another member of the family occupying it automatically meant that something very serious had happened. Seeing the book she was holding, I briefly assumed that its subject was the problem; consuming unclean swine meats was a sin in our church.
But the real issue, I soon learned, was that Dr. Seuss was on our: Some of his works portrayed nonwhite people in a racist way. My mother went to what I now realize were enormous lengths to shield us from negative images of Black people, a seemingly impossible task for someone raising children in 1970s and ’80s South Carolina. The intensity of her displeasure over a Dr. Seuss book being in her home—and not even one of the objectionable titles—speaks to how much labor her plan required.
