So, Oprah has removed The Education of Little Tree from her website. As well she should if it no longer belongs there. It doesn’t change the fact that she was once moved by the novel.

So was I.

And maybe all at the hands of a white supremacist.’

Author Sherman Alexie had this to say “‘Little Tree’ is a lovely little book, and I sometimes wonder if it is an act of romantic atonement by a guilt-ridden white supremacist, but ultimately I think it is the racial hypocrisy of a white supremacist.”

Before I found this quote, I’d had the same notion, about it being an act of atonement. After all, Forrest Carter, aka Asa Earl Carter, went to great lengths to hide his past in the later part of his life. Maybe there was no shame. Maybe he was just doing it to sell books. But I don’t want to think that. Not today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll too think that The Education of Little Tree was “racial hypocrisy,” but, today, I would like to think that it was meant as atonement, and that there is such a thing as redemption.