A Dr. Seuss museum in Massachusetts has agreed to replace a mural showing a Chinese character with chopsticks, slanted eyes and a pointed hat after three authors said the depiction was racist and refused to attend a museum event in protest. The authors, Mo Willems, Mike Curato and Lisa Yee, said in a letter on Thursday that they would not attend a book festival on Oct. 14 at the Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum in Springfield, Mass., because of the “jarring racial stereotype” of the character from Dr. Seuss’s book “And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” “We find this caricature of ‘the
Chinaman’ deeply hurtful, and have concerns about children’s exposure to it,” the letter said. The authors published a copy of the letter on their social media accounts.The book in which the character appears, published in 1937, was the first by the author Theodor Geisel, who went on to become a giant of children’s literature under the name Dr. Seuss. “While the image may have been considered amusing to some when it was published 80 years ago, it is obviously offensive in 2017,” the authors said in their letter. READ MORE
