The Two Lives of Asa Carter
Radio Diaries
Radio Diaries & Radiotopia
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2017
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Asa Carter and Forrest Carter couldn’t have been more different. But they shared a secret.
The Education of Little Tree, by Forrest Carter, is an iconic best-selling book, with a message about living in harmony with nature, and compassion for people of all kinds. But there’s a very different story behind the book. It begins with the most infamous racist political speech in American History. This week on the Radio Diaries Podcast, the true story of the untrue story of The Education of Little Tree.
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| 0:00.0 | Radiotopia |
| 0:01.9 | From PRX |
| 0:05.2 | From PRX's Radiotopia, this is Radio Diaries. |
| 0:08.6 | I'm Joe Richmond. |
| 0:10.0 | Today on the podcast, we're bringing you a story we produced for this American life. |
| 0:14.1 | At the center of this story is a book called The Education of Little Tree. |
| 0:18.9 | In the book, a boy named Little Tree is five when his parents die. He then goes to live in the woods with his Cherokee grandparents who teach him to respect the earth, to take only what he needs from nature, and to appreciate the fundamental human virtues of respect and tolerance. The education of little tree was first published in the mid-1970s |
| 0:37.6 | as an autobiography by Forrest Carter. |
| 0:40.3 | It's been a staple of high school English and history classes for decades. |
| 0:44.2 | I really liked it. |
| 0:45.1 | I found that I really connected to Little Tree. |
| 0:47.5 | I felt like he was a lot like me, sort of... |
| 0:49.7 | We're both trying to become better people. |
| 0:52.9 | I'm trying to learn to be a good person, become who I am, be a man. |
| 0:57.7 | But so was Little Tried. |
| 1:00.9 | That's a student from Masconomic Regional High School in Topstfield, Massachusetts, where students have gathered to discuss the book after their sophomore English class. |
| 1:09.5 | Now, there's one thing I should tell you about the education of literature, |
| 1:12.7 | a thing that some of you may already be aware of. |
| 1:15.1 | The book is a lie. |
| 1:16.6 | It's not an autobiography. |
| 1:18.5 | It's all made up. |
| 1:20.2 | Today, the true story of the untrue story of the education of little tree. |
... |
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