My Favorite (Insidious) Childhood Story

When I was little, my favorite story did not come in the form of a book - at least, I didn't know it did; I found out much later, when I was grown and already questioning my childhood and the racist tendencies of my family. The name of the story as I heard it was "Pamenondas," and it was just a silly story about a funny little boy who couldn't seem to get anything right. And, I can't honestly say that had we not moved away from Texas before I started school, I ever would have discovered the stereotypes growing through this tale like creeping weeds.

Even having moved, and long after I began to think of myself as a "colorblind," non-racist liberal, it did not occur to me to examine the story until someone else pointed out the hypocrisy of not doing so, but I still hadn't seen the book, so it was easy to determine that this someone must be "overreacting." Still, being a good "White Liberal," I decided never to tell the story to my children or talk about it at all (still not to examine it, or myself).

Then I was assigned a literacy narrative in a graduate class, and, given the prominence of the story in my childhood (I asked my grandmother for the story nearly every time I saw her when I was small), I couldn't avoid looking at it any longer.

I searched the internet and found, not Pamenondas, but Epamninondas and His Auntie - a 1907 story by Sara Cone Bryant. I found a copy online and was appalled - this is not at all what I had pictured in my head as my grandmother told the story:


Epaminondas and His Auntie

But, what did I imagine? That's the question.

One of the things I always thought - even having learned through an intensely painful teenage encounter with my grandmother (which I will address another time) how racist she could be- was that there was nothing specifically "racial" about this story. The protagonist was just an absentminded child who did funny things; the child could have come from any ethnic background. Of course my grandmother told it with using an exaggeration of her own Southern accent, but that could be explained away as her attempt to amuse her grandchild. But, no matter how I turned it over in my head, the fact remained that - even without having seen Bryant's book - I always knew 'Pamenondas was black. And, after seeing the book cover, I know without a doubt this is what my grandmother pictured in her mind's eye when she was telling the story. I now wonder how long I've really known.