Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and it also has many interesting books. In this series, we are sharing some of the books we like from Minnesota, or Minnesota authors.
We are mapping our literary journey around Minnesota, so you can see all the interesting places where our books are set. Follow our progress on our Google Map, accessible by clicking that link or searching for the title CMLE Reads Across Minnesota!
This is a guest post from CMLE member Violet Fox. Want to write a book review for us? Let us know!
I picked up While the Locust Slept because the author is a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Ojibwe, and I’ve been trying to learn more about the cultures of the Native peoples who were here in Minnesota before settlement (i.e., the Dakota and the Ojibwe). But there’s little about Ojibwe culture in this book, as the author was cut off from his people when, shortly after his birth, his mother was sent to an asylum in St. Peter and his father abandoned him. While the Locust Slept is an autobiographical memoir of Peter Razor’s childhood and adolescence as a ward of the State of Minnesota from 1930 through the mid-1940s.
Though school officials claimed that children would stay there no longer than three months, Razor grew up at the State Public School for Dependent and Neglected Children in Owatonna, living there from infancy to age fifteen. His Indian heritage and dark skin made him a favorite target for abusive employees at the school, and made it unlikely that a white family would adopt him. Razor’s straightforward prose makes it easy to imagine the cruelty (both intentional and unintentional) endured by a child who had only known life in an institutional setting.
At age fifteen, Razor, like many orphaned boys at the State School, was placed with a family living on a farm in Rushford, Minnesota. He was treated badly and underfed, by the family who took him in as a hired hand. Because he was quite intelligent, he was able to make passing grades at high school when he was allowed to attend. After a particularly severe beating, social services could no longer ignore the abuse and Razor was moved to the farm of a family who treated him kindly.
While the Locust Slept is a fascinating look into the history of Minnesota and how children were seen by the state’s social services not as requiring any nurturing, but merely as small adults who needed discipline above all to become useful members of society. It’s also a testament to the author’s resilience, though his difficult childhood was not without serious consequence—as an adult he suffered from anxiety and depression. Razor’s moving memoir is heartbreaking, but not a bleak read.
The State School in Owatonna was shut down in 1947 and the grounds are now home to the
Minnesota State Public School Orphanage Museum. You can take a self-guided tour to see the museum, one of the cottages where boys lived, and the cemetery where 198 State School children are buried. I’m planning on visiting this summer to learn more about this chapter of our state’s history.
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