I love Astrid Lindgren (pt. 1)

I love Astrid Lindgren. With the deep, all-consuming love I have for my very favorite authors. I love Astrid Lindgren the same way I love Madeleine L’Engel; because each time I open a book by one of those women, I am transported back to the first time I accessed the secret world inside.

I love Astrid Lindgren and its not all about Pippi. In fact, its very little about Pippi, though I love her, too. For me, Astrid Lindgren is about Ronia. I understand the appeal of Pippi Longstocking, her silly clothes and fun adventures. Her irreverent, almost accidental feminism. But Ronia is another beast entirely.

Ronia the Robber's Daughter is probably my favorite heroine. She is dearer to me than any “Paperbag Princess” or reimagined fairy tale. Lindgren makes no apologies for the femininity of Matt the Robber’s only child. She is as wild as Sendak’s Max as she runs through the magical forest surrounding her house. No one tries to stop her because she is a girl, nor is that fact even emphasized in the text. Her gender is secondary to her other qualities – her ferocious courage, her stubborn will, her deep love for her parents, the robbers and her only playmate, the son of her father’s arch-enemy.

The world that Lindgren creates for us is perfect. It is similar enough to the world that we know that it is easy to leap into the imaginary. The harpies and grey dwarves that lurk in the forest are believable foes. The wild horses that Matt and Ronia tame are perfectly perched on the edge of fantasy.

I love Ronia because she is not afraid of knowing what she wants or of doing what needs to be done. She is guided by love and compassion, but never sacrifices herself. I imagine her beautiful and wild-haired (I often contemplate getting her image tattooed to my shoulder). And she could kick Cinderella’s butt.

I guess some people were excited to hear that J.K. Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay. I guess there's a way to read it in which it sounds like one small step for wizards and one giant leap for gay people. I just didn't see it that way, though.

"It would be like...."one of my kids started during one of the million conversations at school that followed Rowling's announcement, "it would be like if she said, 'Oh, Harry and Hermione totally made out. I just didn't write it." It would be like that. Exactly like that. Once you write a text or paint a painting or film a movie, its out of your hands. Anything that's not explicit, and even things that are, are up to the audience to decipher. Its why Jackson Pollock never said, "This one's about a dead cat." and why we're free to read between the lines of Hays Code era movies for covert references to queer lives.

But it was more than that, too. I couldn't figure it out. Shouldn't I pleased to learn that one of my favorite children's book characters was queer? Wasn't this a step in the right direction? Why did it make me so uncomfortable? I couldn't put my finger on it.

Luckily, John Cloud could:

"Why couldn't he tell us himself? The Potter books add up to more than 800,000 words before Dumbledore dies in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and yet Rowling couldn't spare two of those words—"I'm gay"—to help define a central character's emotional identity? We can only conclude that Dumbledore saw his homosexuality as shameful and inappropriate to mention among his colleagues and students. His silence suggests a lack of personal integrity that is completely out of character."

And that was it, really. If Dumbledore was gay, we would have known. He wouldn't have been ashamed. Or closeted. Or silent. Dumbledore fought for what was right. He was not one to hide.

I wish Dumbledore had really been gay. Like, in the books. Where I know him. That would have been awesome.