Speaker 1: There are towns all over America you've never heard of. Oh,
Speaker 1: welcome to independence. Oh my god, I just said that. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not twenty cars. They're not easy to get to.
Speaker 1: The nearest airports are almost always hours away by car,
Speaker 1: three hours of my destination. The roads wind through farmland, prairies, forests, mountains,
Speaker 1: desolate spaces. The farthest feels like the smallest, most remote
Speaker 1: place there. But every year the people come. They arrive
Speaker 1: in droves. It's like something out of field of dreams.
Speaker 1: A dirt lot becomes a parking lot, a prairie becomes
Speaker 1: a stage.
Speaker 2: I think there's so many cars here you would think
Speaker 2: you were a county fair even you say.
Speaker 1: Five hundred cars. Families pile out of cars and costumes
Speaker 1: because they're fantastic. They're wearing dresses, aprons, bonnets. Of course
Speaker 1: it too, and last summer we joined the pilgrimage and
Speaker 1: came here too. We arrived in the middle of vast
Speaker 1: fields to discover entire towns right out of the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: covered wagons, actual horses, a cow.
Speaker 3: They're all four aged cows, and that's why they're moderately
Speaker 3: well mannered and only people's aprons.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of people have flocked to these places
Speaker 1: for nearly five decades, literally from all.
Speaker 4: Over the world, people from like Italy, Germany, like Japan.
Speaker 4: It's like really like all the way over there to hear,
Speaker 4: Like y'all know about this place?
Speaker 1: What is bringing people here? What inspires this devotion? Or
Speaker 1: should we say who?
Speaker 5: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Laura Ingalls Wilder,
Speaker 5: and I'm here Laura Ingle Wilder's day.
Speaker 1: Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the children's book series Little
Speaker 1: House on the Prairie.
Speaker 2: When people ask me who Laura Ingles Wilder is.
Speaker 6: I usually tell them that she is one of the
Speaker 6: most important American children's book authors of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Which was turned into the hit TV show Little House
Speaker 1: on the Prairie. I literally wake up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night and go, somebody somewhere is watching the
Speaker 1: last of the group. Laura is the subject of entire
Speaker 1: academic fields of scholarship annual conferences. She has inspired fashion lines,
Speaker 1: cultural trends, and entire lifestyle industry, and about seventy five
Speaker 1: years after her death, thousands of people still flock to
Speaker 1: tiny towns in the middle of nowhere to celebrate her.
Speaker 1: I think I've been happy in a long time. This
Speaker 1: right here, this is my childhood fantasy come to life.
Speaker 1: Laura's books have been read by millions. In many ways,
Speaker 1: her story is the American story of being on the
Speaker 1: road as a young girl. She traveled thousands of miles
Speaker 1: in a covered wagon her family in search of a
Speaker 1: better life. She's a Hollywood Western She's Jack Kerouac, but
Speaker 1: in a nap dress with braids.
Speaker 2: It's almost this mascot of American settlers.
Speaker 1: She witnessed the birth of modern America, and she wrote
Speaker 1: down everything she saw.
Speaker 7: Everybody who's lived from covered wagons to airplanes, is a
Speaker 7: time machine. But not very many people wrote down what
Speaker 7: their experience.
Speaker 1: Was, or nearly everything. Her books are based on her life,
Speaker 1: but in the process of telling her story, she erases
Speaker 1: a lot of others.
Speaker 3: It requires putting yourself in the shoes of an individual
Speaker 3: embedded and really complicated, sometimes violent systems.
Speaker 6: That mythology of the frontier, the mythology of manifest destiny.
Speaker 6: I think the pressures of the narrative were really heavy.
Speaker 6: If we pretend to past was not as controversial and
Speaker 6: difficult and racist as it was, then, how are we
Speaker 6: going to deal with the racist issues we're grappling with today.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about any of this when I read
Speaker 1: these books as a kid. I just fell in love
Speaker 1: with Laura and basically mainlined her story straight into my DNA,
Speaker 1: which is where they stayed for a long time. But
Speaker 1: with any kind of love comes responsibility. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons for this trip is my desire to look honestly
Speaker 1: at the thing I loved the most. What am I loving?
Speaker 1: Should I love it? Will I still be able to
Speaker 1: love it? On the other side, lor Anglees Wilder, whose
Speaker 1: stories embody the best and the worst of America, who
Speaker 1: seems to reincarnate with each generation. Her problems are still
Speaker 1: our problems. But who is she really? And what can
Speaker 1: she tell us about the America we live in today,
Speaker 1: in a country currently at odds with itself and its history.
Speaker 1: Could there be a better time for this exploration? There's
Speaker 1: never been a better time than now. I'm Glennis McNichol,
Speaker 1: and this is Wilder. This is my parents Atlas from
Speaker 1: when I grew up. National Geographic Atlas of the World Revised,
Speaker 1: third edition, and it comes in a box these days.
Speaker 1: When I pick up a little House book, I'm immediately
Speaker 1: time traveled into nineteen eighty two. I'm in Kitchener, Ontario,
Speaker 1: an hour west of Toronto. I'm sitting on the brown
Speaker 1: braided rug in my family's wood paneled living room. I'm
Speaker 1: seven years old. In my memory, I would come downstairs,
Speaker 1: would be like a Saturday morning, and every one would
Speaker 1: be asleep in the house, and I'd pull this out
Speaker 1: from the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the family
Speaker 1: room because I would want to look at where Laura
Speaker 1: Ingalls lived. There's nine books in the little House. In
Speaker 1: the last five of them, she lives in a place
Speaker 1: called De Smet South Dakota. Here it is, it's in
Speaker 1: the middle of home in page two seventeen, almost near
Speaker 1: the bottom, and it says dsmet Sdak and it says
Speaker 1: thirty two D five. So page thirty two is a
Speaker 1: double spread of what I now understand to be the
Speaker 1: midwest of the United States of America. So my left
Speaker 1: finger would be on five, my right finger me on D,
Speaker 1: and then I'd pull them together to where they meet.
Speaker 1: The joy and excitement of seeing where she lived on
Speaker 1: an actual map was so gratifying to me and exciting
Speaker 1: because she was a real person and this little tiny
Speaker 1: entry on a map just seemed like proof to me
Speaker 1: that it was possible to be an adventurous girl in
Speaker 1: the world. And then I would try and hold my
Speaker 1: finger here and then flip the pages back to the
Speaker 1: one that showed the whole map of the United States
Speaker 1: and find South Dakota. And then I'd look over because
Speaker 1: on the big map the top of Canada shows and
Speaker 1: I could find Toronto, and then just to left it, it
Speaker 1: was Kitchener, where I lived, and I just remember trying
Speaker 1: to like measure it with my hands. My hands are
Speaker 1: much bigger nails, so it's like one hand with But
Speaker 1: as a kid, it was like for me where I
Speaker 1: was to Laura Engles where she was was like two
Speaker 1: of my little seven year old hands, And that felt
Speaker 1: super important to me that I could measure the distance
Speaker 1: between the two of us, like here's where I existed
Speaker 1: and here's where she existed, and I can see them
Speaker 1: both on the same map and they're not that far apart.
Speaker 1: This map was such a big deal to me, it
Speaker 1: makes me want to cry looking at it. So obviously
Speaker 1: I have an intense relationship to Laura. But when I
Speaker 1: say Laura Ingles Wilder, what do you think of? What
Speaker 1: about when I say little House on the prairie. Do
Speaker 1: you see the yellow box set of books, or maybe
Speaker 1: Melissa Gilbert with braids running down a grassy hill? Or
Speaker 1: do you think of nothing at all? Why don't we
Speaker 1: start with the basic facts. Laura Engleswilder was born in
Speaker 1: a log cabin in Wisconsin on February seventh, eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the Civil War. She spent her
Speaker 1: childhood on the American frontier, and by the time she
Speaker 1: died in nineteen fifty seven at age ninety, she'd witnessed
Speaker 1: the violent transformation of the American West. Her lifetime saw
Speaker 1: the advent of electricity cars, two World Wars, television, and
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley. She'd made her first trips in a covered wagon,
Speaker 1: and three years before her death, she flew on a
Speaker 1: jet plane. When I think about the arc of Laura's life,
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of that line in Madmen, when Bert Cooper's secretary,
Speaker 1: former Hellcat Eyeda Blankenship dies. She was born in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight in the barn. She died on the thirty
Speaker 1: seventh floor of skyscraper.
Speaker 7: She's an astronaut.
Speaker 1: Laura's an astronaut, a time traveler, or at least a
Speaker 1: time traveling machine. For me, that time machine takes the
Speaker 1: form of the Nine Little House Books, which roughly cover
Speaker 1: her pioneer childhood during the years eighteen seventy through eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, as she and her family traveled around the
Speaker 1: American Midwest from Wisconsin to South Dakota. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it when I was seven, but I wasn't just mapping
Speaker 1: out laws journeys on my parents atlas. I was, in
Speaker 1: some ways also mapping out my own future stories. I
Speaker 1: would write trips I would take, often dragging along with
Speaker 1: me unsuspecting friends.
Speaker 2: What I remember is like, Okay, the goal was to
Speaker 2: get from New York to San Francisco as quickly as possible,
Speaker 2: And suddenly you had re routed our journey to go
Speaker 2: through southeastern South Dakota. And before I knew what was happening,
Speaker 2: I was in a field in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 2: at the tail end of a Laura Ingels Wilder live
Speaker 2: action role play pageant.
Speaker 1: This is Joe Piazza, writer, podcaster, and one of my
Speaker 1: best friends and co producer of this podcast. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: I dragged her four hours off our route hoping to
Speaker 1: see a pageant, but we didn't get there in time.
Speaker 1: She was very tolerant.
Speaker 2: I'm always tolerant, my friend.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true. But my question is, were you surprised
Speaker 1: when I did that. Did it feels like you discovered
Speaker 1: some new side of me?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Actually it did. I mean, you're one of my
Speaker 2: best friends, but there were things I just didn't even
Speaker 2: know about you before I discovered. You're deep and intense
Speaker 2: and sometimes pathological. Love for Laura Engeles Wilder.
Speaker 1: Feel like opening a closet in the house of one
Speaker 1: of your best friends and being like, hm, oh.
Speaker 2: What's going on in Why are there all these headless
Speaker 2: dolls in here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean it kind of felt like that, but in
Speaker 2: a nice way.
Speaker 1: I mean, from a very young age, it felt like
Speaker 1: I had like not a lot of examples of how
Speaker 1: to be in the world, and she was just sort
Speaker 1: of how I located myself in the world. And the
Speaker 1: fact she was a real life person. You know, I
Speaker 1: was a big reader as a kid, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people who love Laura have the same
Speaker 1: experiences like you loved Anne Shirley and you loved Nancy Drew,
Speaker 1: but of course their fictional characters, and Laura was real
Speaker 1: and she was my age. When I read the books,
Speaker 1: I literally thought she'd written these books when she was
Speaker 1: six years old, and she sort of wanted to have
Speaker 1: adventures and thought wolves were exciting, and she couldn't sit still,
Speaker 1: and she had a temper, and you know, she idolized.
Speaker 2: Her father and you idolized your father.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely when I was that age. You know, that
Speaker 1: sort of magnetic, larger than life character that you.
Speaker 2: Don't see as a real human being until you're a
Speaker 2: grown up and have been to lots and lots of therapy.
Speaker 1: Exactly until you unpack that. But I think too, it's
Speaker 1: been interesting realizing that she captured a lot of like
Speaker 1: really complicated family dynamics before that was the norm for ya.
Speaker 1: And she talks a lot about resentment to Ma, jealousy
Speaker 1: over her older sister, and how Mary was prettier and smarter,
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, this is also my family dynamic,
Speaker 1: and these are all the things I'm experiencing. And it
Speaker 1: was the fact that I recognize those experiences and she
Speaker 1: wrote them down and then people wanted to read about them.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, these things you're living are worthwhile.
Speaker 1: The things you're experiencing, even as little kid, are interesting
Speaker 1: to other people. And that to me was such a
Speaker 1: big deal.
Speaker 2: The story of a young girl is interesting like that.
Speaker 2: That's a gut punch, right, like, oh my gosh, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm a child. The world kind of tells me I'm insignificant.
Speaker 2: But her stories were worthy, and therefore I feel.
Speaker 1: Worthy exactly, And they were worthy in like the smallest ways.
Speaker 1: The first book in the series is Little House in
Speaker 1: the Big Woods, and it's like of all the books,
Speaker 1: that's like a fairy tale. And they're in a little
Speaker 1: cabin in big woods and at the very very end,
Speaker 1: Laura and Mary are in bed and playing the fiddle
Speaker 1: by the fire, and the last line of that book
Speaker 1: is I'm just gonna pull it out and read it
Speaker 1: to you. She was glad that the cozy house and
Speaker 1: paw Ma in the firelight and the music were now.
Speaker 1: They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now.
Speaker 1: It can never be a long time ago. Like even
Speaker 1: me reading that to you right now, I get the chills.
Speaker 2: I kind of have the chills, so philosophical. It's way
Speaker 2: more philosophical than what I read in most children's books
Speaker 2: Sweet Valley High.
Speaker 1: Right, It's like imagine like feeding that to a six
Speaker 1: year old because of course, part of the obsession of
Speaker 1: Laura's she lived in the olden days, like she got
Speaker 1: to travel by a horse and buggy and like put
Speaker 1: her hair and braids and whatever. But like in that moment,
Speaker 1: I really was like in my bedroom, in my bed thinking,
Speaker 1: oh my god, is my now gonna be someone else's
Speaker 1: olden days? And like my six year old head explodes,
Speaker 1: and I immediately pull out a little diary that someone
Speaker 1: had gave me in was like, well, I'm also going
Speaker 1: to write my life down because obviously I have to
Speaker 1: get this on paper lickety split. And I have that
Speaker 1: diary still, and the first line of it is I
Speaker 1: want to be a writer. I don't know what kind
Speaker 1: of writer I want to be. Mom, And I went
Speaker 1: to boggaining today. To boggaining is Canadian for sledding, and
Speaker 1: that was like me thinking, like, maybe this is going
Speaker 1: to be the olden days sometime too. I better start writing.
Speaker 2: Little Glenness in the Suburbs. So from everything that you're
Speaker 2: telling me, it actually does feel like Laura Ingles Wilder
Speaker 2: and the things that she wrote remain endlessly relevant today
Speaker 2: in lots of different ways.
Speaker 1: It certainly seems that way, and I think one of
Speaker 1: the things we're trying to unpack when we do this
Speaker 1: podcast is what it is about her that keeps her
Speaker 1: relevant still because you know, the TV show is still on,
Speaker 1: the books are still being read, people are still traveling
Speaker 1: to see her, and like, what is it about those
Speaker 1: descriptions and those revelations that make her life so visceral
Speaker 1: we can still relate to it having gone back, you know,
Speaker 1: for another reread for this podcast. What's so incredible is that, like,
Speaker 1: the America that she's writing about in the late nineteenth
Speaker 1: century also speaks to the America that we're in right now,
Speaker 1: and in some ways it sort of speaks to where
Speaker 1: we're all going.
Speaker 2: So let's get going.
Speaker 1: The thing is, while Laura and goes Welder may be
Speaker 1: my on the road, she's not actually on the way
Speaker 1: to anywhere. Her houses are literally in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: They are a pilgrimage and the truest sense of the word,
Speaker 1: you have to want to go there, You have to
Speaker 1: really want to go there to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas,
Speaker 1: and South Dakota. And that's what we're doing. We're going
Speaker 1: on the Great Laura road Trip to figure out what
Speaker 1: this hold is that Laura has on her readers and
Speaker 1: on America and what we're supposed to do with it.
Speaker 1: So let's set the scene. Like any good road trip,
Speaker 1: there's a cast of characters. Me obsessive Joe, who knows
Speaker 1: very little about lor Engeles Wilder, and our producer Emily,
Speaker 1: a millennial who loved the TV show which she watched
Speaker 1: on DVD. We started in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, the side
Speaker 1: of the book on the banks of Plum Creek and
Speaker 1: even more famously the setting of the TV show. Well,
Speaker 1: actually we started on the way to Walnut Grove. You're
Speaker 1: based off towards Walnut Grove because we realized the pageant
Speaker 1: was tonight and not tomorrow, as we had organized our
Speaker 1: entire triporeal But.
Speaker 2: You know what, you texted me in a panic, and
Speaker 2: I really urgot that shit you did.
Speaker 1: And honestly this was thrilling for me. Becaus the TV
Speaker 1: fan representative, He's like, oh my god, I've really strained
Speaker 1: to Walnut Grove.
Speaker 2: Guys, what we need to pay attention what we're in
Speaker 2: Walnut Grove.
Speaker 1: Walnut Grove. Walnut Grove was the first place we ran
Speaker 1: into the reality that Laura's past really is our Now
Speaker 1: we'll get to it after the break. Also, we need
Speaker 1: to figure out with the pageants.
Speaker 2: Well, great, let's take a picture. Okay, describe what you're seeing.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so First off, there's so many cars here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you would think you were a county fair.
Speaker 2: And now it looks like there's a whole little house
Speaker 2: on that Curry TV set.
Speaker 1: It does look like that. So, after racing across empty
Speaker 1: farmland into the setting sun, we finally arrived in Walnut
Speaker 1: Grove to discover the pageant parking lot was already almost full.
Speaker 1: Are sing Oh wait, I'm sorry, but look Charles.
Speaker 2: The parking lanes are named after character.
Speaker 1: We quickly realized that every detail of the pageant had
Speaker 1: little house branding on it. Nothing had been left untouched.
Speaker 1: We're parked in Mary, are we? Yeah? I think we're
Speaker 1: parked in Caroline. Past the gates. The concession looks like
Speaker 1: a professional kitchen. The water bottles are branded with little
Speaker 1: house logos. There are Mom Pop bathrooms, and then just
Speaker 1: beyond there is a huge stage.
Speaker 5: This is Walnut Grove, a busy growing village on the
Speaker 5: edge of.
Speaker 1: It looks like the set for a TV show.
Speaker 5: And supplies.
Speaker 1: Tonight's pageant is based on the banks of Plum Creek.
Speaker 1: The fourth book in the Little House series, it takes
Speaker 1: place in Walnut Grove, although the town is not actually
Speaker 1: mentioned in the books. Because Walnut Grove is also where
Speaker 1: the TV show is set, it makes sense that their
Speaker 1: pageant is the most Hollywood, the flashiest.
Speaker 2: This is better send. Some off Broadways did.
Speaker 1: Sets roll out on hydraulics. Their effects are not what
Speaker 1: you'd expect in a tiny town in the corner of
Speaker 1: seemingly empty farmland. Real fire. There was so much energy.
Speaker 1: It was clear. The crowd was dazzled and so were we.
Speaker 2: Really really exceeded my expectations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was spectacular. It was spectacular rock. The whole
Speaker 1: day actually has been fairly spectacular. And we came back
Speaker 1: to town the next morning and we got to see it
Speaker 1: in daylight. It looked a little different.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of empty store friends, American Legion Insurance
Speaker 2: and real estate.
Speaker 1: It was a lot quieter. I don't mean just small
Speaker 1: town quiet. I mean it was a bit too quiet.
Speaker 2: This town looks like a zombie apocalypse hit.
Speaker 1: It does. So I'm curious what struck you the most
Speaker 1: about Walnut Grove when we first got there for the pageant.
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly that it was a total ghost town.
Speaker 2: Most of the businesses were closed and they looked like
Speaker 2: they had been for a really long time. We saw
Speaker 2: no people, There was no real commerce, just a couple
Speaker 2: couple of shops that were open, and we had to
Speaker 2: stay at a hotel that was thirty minutes away because
Speaker 2: Walnut Grove didn't have one.
Speaker 1: Like we know, the town is only seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty people, but like the pageant, felt like it was
Speaker 1: such a huge community effort. When we drove in the
Speaker 1: next thing and it was like completely empty, it was
Speaker 1: just so striking.
Speaker 2: But we did eventually find some people and they were
Speaker 2: all in the gift shop.
Speaker 1: They were all in the gift shop for the Lower
Speaker 1: Angles Wilder Museum. I mean all of them, Like we
Speaker 1: met the entire town in the gift shop. I have
Speaker 1: family that has lived here for a really long time,
Speaker 1: like great grandparents and my grandmo who used to work
Speaker 1: here on my mom's side, there's a farm, and I
Speaker 1: think it's a century farm this year, mister Lson, Ye, yeah,
Speaker 1: were fantastic.
Speaker 2: I never thought you were a twenty one year old.
Speaker 1: We meant have been surprised. But the gift shop is
Speaker 1: used to a crowd over the whole year.
Speaker 8: We can get up between ten thousand to probably twelve
Speaker 8: thousand a year. We've had twenty thousand in one year.
Speaker 1: In addition to all the locals, there's also fans just
Speaker 1: passing through, like a pair of motorcycle ladies we met
Speaker 1: who were driving across the country days. I read all
Speaker 1: the books when I was little so and then there
Speaker 1: were the people you might describe as professional fans. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I'm really interested in is Laura's
Speaker 1: life as a farm woman later on, and that's actually
Speaker 1: what my program was about.
Speaker 2: It was in the kitchen with Laura.
Speaker 1: The truth is we could have stayed in the gift
Speaker 1: shop all day, and we had to leave after an
Speaker 1: hour because we had an important appointment with Bill Richards,
Speaker 1: the director of the pageant. On our way to meet him,
Speaker 1: we noticed something we hadn't seen before. It's what is
Speaker 1: this mural? What's Boo Baye Foods?
Speaker 9: Oh.
Speaker 1: On the side of Boobay food it's the only grocery
Speaker 1: store in town, was a mural. It was a fifteen
Speaker 1: foot high painting of a pioneer woman linking arms with
Speaker 1: someone wearing what appeared to be a traditional Southeast Asian outfit.
Speaker 1: Was a pioneer woman, Laura, who was the person she
Speaker 1: was linking arms with.
Speaker 2: The little grocery store d early kind of price.
Speaker 3: Yeah, boo buye boobuye. That means butterfly.
Speaker 1: We asked Bill about it when we met with him
Speaker 1: back at the set of the pageant, and he told
Speaker 1: us there was a large Mung community in Walnut Grove.
Speaker 3: Has there been a large munk the mun community early
Speaker 3: two thousand. At one time the Munk community was one
Speaker 3: third of our school.
Speaker 2: Really yeah.
Speaker 1: The Mung are a Southeast Asian ethnic group who do
Speaker 1: not have a nation. They're historically a refugee community and
Speaker 1: have settled all over the world, including the United States.
Speaker 1: There is an estimated sixty six thousand Munk living in
Speaker 1: Minnesota and they make up a little under half of
Speaker 1: Walnut Grove's population. The mural we passed at Boo Bay
Speaker 1: Foods is a tribute to their settling here.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting because they say the town.
Speaker 1: In my mind, the story of the Mung and Walnut
Speaker 1: Grove shouldn't surprise us. Immigration is the story of all
Speaker 1: American towns, even if that story does not always make
Speaker 1: it into the history books. So it's not that surprising
Speaker 1: that there are among in Walnut Grove. But what is
Speaker 1: surprising is why there's a large population there.
Speaker 3: And the story is that as they were looking around,
Speaker 3: why did they come here to talk about us?
Speaker 2: They read Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Speaker 1: To be honest, when Bill told us this, we were skeptical.
Speaker 1: It seemed a little too scripted, like an episode a
Speaker 1: Little House in the Prairie, a very special episode. But
Speaker 1: it turns out Bill was right that much like Laura
Speaker 1: and her family had settled into this prairie town looking
Speaker 1: for new opportunities and a nice place to live, so
Speaker 1: had this other immigrant community. More than a century later.
Speaker 10: Yes, Harry, who owns THEE Boo By Store, has started
Speaker 10: loved the show, read the books.
Speaker 1: That's Sean Yang. He was the first Mong council member
Speaker 1: in Walnut Grove. In his relative of Harry Yang, who
Speaker 1: opened Bubai Foods back in the early two thousands. Harry's
Speaker 1: family lived closer to the Twin Cities, but there had
Speaker 1: been an economic downturn, the housing crisis was starting to
Speaker 1: bubble up, crime had risen. He was looking for a
Speaker 1: quiet place to move his family, and.
Speaker 10: So he asked his wife and his kids where should
Speaker 10: we move to? And his daughter suggests that how about
Speaker 10: we try Little House in Prairie. And he's like, what
Speaker 10: is that? And so she explained to him. She show
Speaker 10: him the show. He watched a couple episodes, but they
Speaker 10: took a trip down there, and he decides to sit
Speaker 10: it down in Warner Grove as suggested by his daughter.
Speaker 10: He is the pioneer of the Monks in southwest Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Here the monk have a very family oriented culture. So
Speaker 1: with one family came a bunch of families who settled
Speaker 1: not just in Walnut Grove, but all around southwest Minnesota.
Speaker 10: We did account it was about thirty thirty five families
Speaker 10: to one hundred and thirty some families in twenty and
Speaker 10: eight to twenty twelve, so that was a big jump.
Speaker 1: So suddenly in the early two thousands, seventy five years
Speaker 1: after the first Little housebook was published, nearly four decades
Speaker 1: after the show first aired, this quiet rural town was bustling.
Speaker 1: Sean really confirmed that the mun gave the town new life.
Speaker 10: One of my neighbors says that the town is live
Speaker 10: again because all of these kids are out there playing, biking.
Speaker 1: So when the Mung families began to settle on Walnut Grove,
Speaker 1: the communities embraced them, and according to Bill, this was
Speaker 1: partly thanks to Laura too.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the reasons that Walnut could
Speaker 3: handle it maybe better. I mean, let's not say that
Speaker 3: they handled it well initially. There's always this oh us
Speaker 3: them kind of thing, but because we've had so many
Speaker 3: different groups coming through here, so in.
Speaker 1: Many ways, Laura paved the way for the Mung and
Speaker 1: Walnut Grove. And it's not lost on Sean that there
Speaker 1: are parallels with Laura in the story of the Monk.
Speaker 10: I think we could relate to Laura's story very very much.
Speaker 10: It's how hard is to adapt into the environment, and
Speaker 10: so we're trying to teach the other kids, how can
Speaker 10: you learn from Laura's legacy and make that your own legacy.
Speaker 10: If Laura from her time, if she could make such
Speaker 10: an impact on it, how can we as community most
Speaker 10: that forward.
Speaker 2: To me, it's inspiring how Laura's story keeps inspiring movement.
Speaker 2: I mean, even in this small town that seemed pretty
Speaker 2: desolate to us, there's still something special that happened here
Speaker 2: because of Laura.
Speaker 1: I know. I mean the devotion to Laura and the
Speaker 1: enormous distances people will travel to visit her has always
Speaker 1: fascinated me. And I remember I once said to you,
Speaker 1: could you think of another woman people would drive so
Speaker 1: far to see? And I just wonder if you remember
Speaker 1: what you said.
Speaker 2: Carrie Bradshaw, my friends.
Speaker 1: Exactly two of us is through the West Village for
Speaker 1: cupcakes or two uses across the prairie for I don't know,
Speaker 1: pigtails and prairie dresses. But the thing is that Carrie
Speaker 1: isn't real and Laura is and all this like sort
Speaker 1: of talk of tour buses reminds me of something we
Speaker 1: kept hearing about over and over again in Walnut Grove.
Speaker 3: This used to be the destination stop for Japanese.
Speaker 8: There's a little house on the prairie Japanese fan Club.
Speaker 8: We've had a bus group of like forty that came
Speaker 8: strictly from Japan to Walnut Grove.
Speaker 7: I did visit this Bai Fuss game here Walnut Girl,
Speaker 7: almost twenty years ago. So yeah, I think I saw
Speaker 7: some Japanese writing in the gift shops or something. Yes,
Speaker 7: so I thought, oh, you know, Japanese to be able
Speaker 7: to come here.
Speaker 1: Like many, I assumed Laura's Japanese fan base stemmed from
Speaker 1: the television show. This is true, but like so much
Speaker 1: of history, it turns out it was far more complicated.
Speaker 7: I just realized that it was not as in us
Speaker 7: was I.
Speaker 9: Thought.
Speaker 1: So far, we've been telling the charming, optimistic version of
Speaker 1: Laura's story, but like all stories, it's complicated. There's a darker,
Speaker 1: even harmful side to Laura. We'll get to it after
Speaker 1: the break. There's a lot of ways to look at America.
Speaker 1: There's the optimistic view that we see in Walnut Grove,
Speaker 1: the story of people coming to America and building a
Speaker 1: new life. And then there's the darker, often violent, far
Speaker 1: more complicated story. Something similar happens with Laura. As a kid.
Speaker 1: She's magical, and then you dig a little deeper and
Speaker 1: it gets a lot less simple.
Speaker 7: I think I was like a second thought, great, and
Speaker 7: I just got captured. I'm fairly in love with all
Speaker 7: the sensory details. It was so different. The scale of
Speaker 7: the story was so different from where I grew up
Speaker 7: in like a small I understounded by the ocean.
Speaker 1: Keiko Stomi was born in Japan and emigrated to America
Speaker 1: in her late twenties. She's now a librarian in Cloque, Minnesota.
Speaker 7: I am originally from Sika, Japan, and this is my
Speaker 7: seventeenth year living in the United States.
Speaker 1: Keiko was the same age as me, and when she
Speaker 1: was growing up in Japan, she also loved the Little
Speaker 1: House books and the TV show.
Speaker 7: So we were only able to watch two TVs per week,
Speaker 7: and Little House Series TV series was on the Nippon
Speaker 7: National Television NHK Saturday evening at six pm. I still remember,
Speaker 7: and this was one of the shows my mom allowed
Speaker 7: to watch me and my brother, so that was kind
Speaker 7: of special.
Speaker 1: As I said, I'd known about Laura's Japanese fan base
Speaker 1: for a long time, and I'd always assumed it was
Speaker 1: from the TV show. Turns out it runs deeper than that,
Speaker 1: all the way back to World War Two.
Speaker 7: I just realized that it was not as innocent as
Speaker 7: I originally thought. It was curriculated to you know, bring
Speaker 7: that literature for a Saddin is a political reasons and
Speaker 7: I don't know. It kind of gave me a little
Speaker 7: mixed feeding about how it was introduced.
Speaker 1: What Keiko's referring to here takes us all the way
Speaker 1: back to World War Two. Following Hiroshima Nagasaki, General Douglas MacArthur,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, replaced
Speaker 1: the Japanese government approved reading list with his own on
Speaker 1: that list was the sixth book in the Little House series,
Speaker 1: The Long Winter. The Long Winter is about the infamous
Speaker 1: hard Winter of eighteen eighty one. It's an actual historical event.
Speaker 1: There's history books written about it. It has its own
Speaker 1: Wikipedia page. That winter impacted large parts of the entire
Speaker 1: Great Plains. The town of De Smet South Dakota was
Speaker 1: snowed in for nine months, Trains stopped, everyone nearly starved.
Speaker 1: It's the darkest of the books, the hardest to read,
Speaker 1: and some would argue Laura's best and the terrible winter
Speaker 1: that followed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A lot of the suffering
Speaker 1: that the book describes was being felt at the time
Speaker 1: by the Japanese population. Laura would get fan mail from Japan,
Speaker 1: and she treasured it. The lour Engles Wilder Museum in Mansfield,
Speaker 1: Missouri found a letter from a fourteen year old Japanese
Speaker 1: girl tucked into Laura's personal copy of the Japanese translation
Speaker 1: of The Long Winter. But the Long Winter was also
Speaker 1: approved by the occupying American Army. It definitely wasn't an
Speaker 1: innocent choice.
Speaker 7: I thought, it is very interesting how children's liturature can
Speaker 7: be utilized for political reasons, and how it can take
Speaker 7: a role to shift people's mind to a democratic minds,
Speaker 7: and how Japanese people understand the American people's mind and
Speaker 7: the way of living. And so it brought my horizon
Speaker 7: and it was not as innocent.
Speaker 1: As I hoped. It goes without saying Laura's legacy of
Speaker 1: bringing people together and inspiring travels one of her charms,
Speaker 1: but there are obviously ways this can be insidious too.
Speaker 1: We actually came to Keiko because of an article she
Speaker 1: published in twenty nineteen in the Pine not News titled
Speaker 1: at the library Libraries put Little House Series in new light.
Speaker 1: In the piece, Keiko writes that she's no longer comfortable
Speaker 1: recommending the books to others, not because of their history
Speaker 1: in Japan, but because of their representation of Native Americans.
Speaker 1: One particular passage stood out to.
Speaker 7: Her mother, Caroline. It picked It mentioned about the Native people,
Speaker 7: Indigenous people like a sting it linga in the house.
Speaker 7: I remembered that, and I remembered how the illestuation portrayed
Speaker 7: really premiatively of the Indigenous people.
Speaker 1: The scene Keiko's remembering is from the book Little House
Speaker 1: on the Prairie. It's a third book in the series,
Speaker 1: depending on which box that you own, and it tells
Speaker 1: the story of the Engles moving from Wisconsin to what
Speaker 1: Laura calls Indian Territory, which was in reality the Osage
Speaker 1: Diminished Reserve and is now the state of Kansas. The
Speaker 1: chapter is titled Indians in the House, and it and
Speaker 1: this book are the most controversial in the series, particularly
Speaker 1: for their depiction of Native Americans.
Speaker 7: I took that. I took that as a kid, but
Speaker 7: I didn't really think of that impact of it. So
Speaker 7: as the adult, you know, I can see what did
Speaker 7: it do to my mind? I think it gave me
Speaker 7: a very simple view over the Indigenous people.
Speaker 1: This criticism of Laura is far from new. It happened
Speaker 1: during her lifetime, but it has definitely increased in the
Speaker 1: last two decades.
Speaker 9: Consider a Native child in their classroom and they come
Speaker 9: to that sentence, the only good Indian is a dead Indian.
Speaker 1: That's doctor Debbie Reese. She's a highly regarded scholar of
Speaker 1: Native American studies and for the past two decades has
Speaker 1: run a blog called American Indians and Children's Literature.
Speaker 9: My name is Debbie Reese. I am tribally enrolled at
Speaker 9: nambe Ouwingai, which is a sovereign native nation in what
Speaker 9: is currently known as the state of New Mexico.
Speaker 1: I first became aware of doctor Reece way back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six during some sort of little house
Speaker 1: internet rabbit hole had gone down. This was still when
Speaker 1: I was surprised that other people were as interested in
Speaker 1: the books as I was. Doctor Reese's blog may make
Speaker 1: you rethink many beloved childhood class in ways that are
Speaker 1: often uncomfortable.
Speaker 9: I started thinking, Okay, what's in those books that's helping
Speaker 9: shape what people think about who we are. The books
Speaker 9: that our parents give to us are ones that we
Speaker 9: have an emotional attachment to.
Speaker 10: So I was.
Speaker 9: Finding in those kinds of books that are readily available
Speaker 9: lots of problematic imagery of who Native people are according
Speaker 9: to a white point of view that is really stereotyped
Speaker 9: and romantic and just wrong, over and over in every direction.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, doctor Reese wrote about the
Speaker 1: Little House Books. Here's some of what she said. I
Speaker 1: suggest you take a second look at Little House, note
Speaker 1: the ways that Native peoples are described, and consider whether
Speaker 1: or not the book ought to be set aside and used,
Speaker 1: perhaps in context where readers are able to think critically
Speaker 1: about racism and colonization. Seems pretty reasonable. No, Still, people's
Speaker 1: passion for these books and for Laura runs deep. Obviously.
Speaker 1: Exhibit A is person you're currently listening to criticizing these
Speaker 1: books was for a lot of people like taking a
Speaker 1: childhood photo album of your most treasured memories and setting
Speaker 1: it on fire. But doctor rees argues that these books
Speaker 1: don't belong in schools anymore at all.
Speaker 9: I think the harm is too great because it's not
Speaker 9: just that harm, it's the context of larger, more widespread harms.
Speaker 9: So it's just one more thing that Native children have
Speaker 9: to endure, and it's one more saying that non Native
Speaker 9: children goes through that affirms those mistaken ideas that they
Speaker 9: get just as a matter of life in the United States.
Speaker 1: So this is what we're reckoning with on the road
Speaker 1: with Laura. People who love her, who travel miles sometimes
Speaker 1: cross oceans to visit her, and people who argue she
Speaker 1: no longer has a place on our shelves, and me,
Speaker 1: a person who won't let her go, but who is
Speaker 1: also trying to figure out how to love her.
Speaker 2: So, Glennis McNichol, you have been handed the assignment that
Speaker 2: you've dreamt about since you were eight years old. You
Speaker 2: get to travel to all of the Laura Ingalls houses
Speaker 2: across the country and report out who this woman was,
Speaker 2: her significance to culture, all of it. This, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is your dream. But I got to tell you,
Speaker 2: I also think that it is going to be really hard.
Speaker 1: Yes, And the truth is I think it should be hard.
Speaker 1: I think that when you hold something this fundamental to
Speaker 1: yourself and the thing you were holding is this complicated
Speaker 1: and has been in many ways harmful to people, one
Speaker 1: of the responsibilities of this sort of love is that
Speaker 1: you have to be honest with yourself about the thing
Speaker 1: you are loving. Like it's not even a question of like,
Speaker 1: should Laura be canceled. I'm not capable of canceling Laura.
Speaker 1: Like she's too integral to who I am and what
Speaker 1: I am. So if you can't get rid of the
Speaker 1: person or the thing that you love, you have to
Speaker 1: look at it and really understand who I'm loving, to
Speaker 1: grasp the ways in which they are flawed, and to
Speaker 1: be really really honest about that.
Speaker 2: I think what I'm starting to realize is that the
Speaker 2: many ways that Laura seems flawed are also the many
Speaker 2: ways that America is flawed. And you're now getting your
Speaker 2: dream assignment. But it's like, be careful what you wish for,
Speaker 2: which is also a very American thing. Be careful what
Speaker 2: you wish for in the American dream because there is
Speaker 2: always another side to it.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Canadians have American dreams, but if
Speaker 1: I do, then in many ways, for me, Laura is
Speaker 1: my America and dream. I wanted to be a writer
Speaker 1: living the life that I'm writing about, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to be on the road and to be having adventures,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what we're doing. Laura's story is one
Speaker 1: of movement. The only way to really find her is
Speaker 1: to be on the road. I also happen to believe
Speaker 1: you can only really know America from the road, but
Speaker 1: enjoying the American road is an experience that is often
Speaker 1: limited to a certain group of people. Lost in books
Speaker 1: like On the Road in Little House are the groups
Speaker 1: of people who aren't able to freely take these journeys.
Speaker 1: And what about the people who were present before America
Speaker 1: actually had roads on this trip. We're hoping to get
Speaker 1: the whole story. Next week, We're going to look at
Speaker 1: the story Laura tells. We're going to go back to
Speaker 1: where it all began. How Laura, at sixty three years old,
Speaker 1: decided to take pen to paper and write down her
Speaker 1: life story. What inspired her to do so, and how
Speaker 1: exactly did a farm wife in rural Missouri find her
Speaker 1: way into New York City publishing houses. That's next week
Speaker 1: on Wilder. Wilder is written and hosted by me Glynnis McNichol.
Speaker 1: Our story editors are Joe Piazza and Emily Meronoff. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Emily Maranoff. Our producers are Mary Doo
Speaker 1: and Sheena Zaki. Sound design and mixing by Amanda Rose Smith.
Speaker 1: Our amazing theme and additional music was composed by Alise McCoy.
Speaker 1: We are executive produced by me Joe Piazza, Nikki Tor
Speaker 1: and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Bill and Walnut Grove
Speaker 1: for connecting us with everyone, and Toko Lore for connecting
Speaker 1: us with the MUNG community in Walnut Grove, and Raya
Speaker 1: Anthony who calmly fielded our middle of the night, Middle
Speaker 1: of Minnesota emergency travel requests. Please see our show notes
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the people we interviewed,
Speaker 1: the places we visited, the books we mentioned. You can
Speaker 1: also find our contact info there if you want to
Speaker 1: write to us with your own thoughts and questions. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, See you next week.
Speaker 9: The Bri