Introducing: Wilder

Jack Kerouac but make it a girl with braids. Carrie Bradshaw, but without the sex, and also braids. An American Icon. An American Odyssey. American propaganda. Violently so, in some cases. Laura Ingalls Wilder is evergreen. For better or worse. Since the first Little House book was published in 1932, generations of readers have flocked to Laura’s cozy stories of the Ingalls family settling the Western frontier. The series inspired a TV show, pageants, and entire fashion lines. Behind this franchise is a woman who experienced almost a full century of American history. She’d made her first trips in a covered wagon, and eventually flew on a jet plane. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life and legacy remain as powerful, mesmerizing, controversial, and violent as the America she represents. In a country currently at odds with itself and its history could there be a better time for an exploration of this woman? Listen to Wilder on the iHeartRadio App or wherever you get your podcasts. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-wilder-112847598/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
She's a Hollywood Western. She's Jack Kerouac, but in a
n ap dress with braids.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
She is one of the most important American children's authors
of the twentieth century.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
She's the basis for a television show still watched around
the world. I literally wake up in the middle of
the night and go, somebody somewhere is watching Little as
the Brow.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Women will come up to me, cry and saying, my
childhood was miserable. In Little House in the Prairie was
my escape.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
She's been called a hero, a racist, a feminist, and
a propagandist.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Consider a Native child in their classroom reading it aloud,
and they come to that sentence, the only good Indian
is a dead Indian.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
She is Laura Ingles Wilder. Did you know she was
a real person. In the nineteen thirties, Laura Ingles Wylder
wrote the nine Little House on the Prairie books based
on her childhood on the American Frontier Way or another.
She's been with us ever since. Oh I love I
loved that.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
I loved Little House on the Prairie.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's just a perfect book. I've loved Laura for as
long as I can remember. As a kid, I used
to map out her travels on my parents Atlas, and
I'm not alone. Every summer, thousands of people from around
the world pilgrimage to her little houses in tiny towns
from the middle of the country. Now I'm going too.

(01:30):
We're literally on the prairie. I went in search of Laura,
the real Laura. Who is this person I love so much?
Should I love her? The story of Laura is just
as complicated as the story of America, because she is
America for better and worse.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
So if we pretend the past was not as controversial
and difficult and racist as it was, then how are
we going to deal with the racist issues were grappling
with today in.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
A country currently at odds with itself and its history.
Could there be a better time for this exploration? There's
never been a better time than now. I'm Glennys McNichol,
and this is Wilder. Listen to Wilder on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.