Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 288

June 13, 2016: ApologyStudying: Lessons from Canada

[Inspired by two recent events about which I’ll write on Monday, a series on the complex question of whether and how America should apologize for historic wrongs. Leading up to a special weekend post where I’ll share some broader thoughts and for which I’m not at all sorry to ask for your contributions as well!]On a key difference between the U.S. and our northern neighbor, and what we could learn from it.Last month, Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau gave a speech in the House of Commons in which he directly and without qualification apologized for one of his nation’s darkest historical moments. “Today I rise in this House to offer an apology,” he began his remarks, “on behalf of the government of Canada, for our role in the Komagata Maru incident.” As detailed at length in the wonderful website available at the latter hyperlink, that 1914 Komagata Maru incident offers a concise illustration of the early 20thcentury, longstanding, exclusionary and bigoted policies of both Canada and the United States toward Asian arrivals and communities. In this excellent piece for The Nation, historian and public scholar Deepa Iyer explicitly frames Trudeau’s speech and apology as a potential teachable moment for the United States, an opportunity for us to contemplate whether and how we could better make amends for our own historic wrongs.As Iyer notes in her piece, and as my next few posts in this series will analyze, the U.S. has at times in recent decades offered official apologies for such wrongs. Yet those apologies have tended to come in the form of cautiously worded Congressional edicts, rather than overt statements by the chief executive along the lines of Trudeau’s blunt remarks; and I believe the difference reflects collective American narratives and fears of appearing weak or conciliatory on a global stage. Later in May we saw precisely those narratives re-emerge once more, this time on the occasion of President Obama’s historic visit to Hiroshima. Ahead of his remarks in that city, Obama and his team went out of their way to clarify that, even though his speech would call for a world without nuclear weapons, he would not be offering an apology for America’s 1945 nuclear bombing of the city (nor the subsequent and even more controversial bombing of Nagasaki). Given Mitt Romney’s 2012 critiques of Obama as a president who had too often “apologized for America,” this current emphasis can be read as a political strategy—but it’s nonetheless also in keeping with these broader national fears of a conciliatory chief executive.Hiroshima and its contexts are quite distinct from those surrounding the Komagata Maru, to be sure. Yet there is an American incident that’s strikingly similar to Canada’s, and one for which we have certainly never offered a formal apology: the 1939 voyage of the German steamship St. Louis. That Holocaust Museum piece describes in great detail just how fully the U.S. government (and the American people more broadly) met that community of Jewish refugees with indifference and inaction, and the results of those responses: most horrifically, the subsequent deaths in the Holocaust of 254 of the ship’s 937 passengers. Were Obama, or any American president, to stand up and offer a blunt and unqualified apology for this historic wrong, it wouldn’t change those horrific results in the slightest—but it would represent a step toward both better remembering this history and considering its echoes in the present. Given the contrast between Canada’s and America’s responses to Syrian refugees, that’s one more lesson we could stand to learn from our northern neighbor.Next ApologyStudying tomorrow,                     BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this topic and/or broader thoughts on American apologies for the weekend post are very welcome!

June 11-12, 2016: Crowd-sourced Beach Reads

[For this year’s installment of my annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight books I’m looking forward to checking out. That meant I had less to say about them—but fellow AmericanReaders have shared their thoughts on these and their own Beach Read recommendations for this crowd-sourced weekend post—add your own responses and recs, please!]James Danzlfollows up Tuesday’s post, writing, “I am so excited that Coates is writing the new Black Panther. I haven't checked it out yet, but it is on my list for the summer. As for other comic-related summer reading, I'm hoping to dig back into some Calvin and Hobbes, as it has always captured the wonder and possibility of childhood for me, with a cynical edge that is still overpowered in the end by creativity and discovery while allowing that cynicism to contribute to an understanding of the world. I think it manages to critique rote, repetitive, love-of-learning crushing classroom practices (whether you want to argue that they stem (right now) from ineffective/apathetic teachers (certainly a small group) or a system handcuffed by destructive policies like NCLB- the former drove me to take myself out of school in 3rd grade and become self-taught, while I know so many teachers who feel shackled by the latter. I'd argue for a little of column A and a lot of column B) while expressing a love of discovery and learning.”Max Cohen highlights these two webcomics: Strong Female Protagonist and Star Power .On Twitter, Mark Rice follows up Wednesday’s post, noting, “I teach The Round House every fall. It's fantastic.”Lara Schwartz follows up Thursday’s poetry post, writing, “Seamus Heaney's “Blackberry Picking” always kicks off my summer.” [BEN: Would make for a great two-fer with Plath’s “Blackberrying”!] Sharon Brubaker agrees, nominating “anything by Seamus Heaney.”More poetry: Heather Harvey nominates “all of Billy Collins,” while Jonathan Jena notes, “I like Shane Koyczan’s work.” Andrea Grenadier highlights “the dynamic duo (and former roommates in college) Galway Kinnell and W.S. Merwin.” Rob Gosselin writes that you “can never go wrong with this one.” Maria DiFrancesco nominates Kevin Young. Andrew DaSilva highlights “Rainer Maria Rilke: it’s short, easy, and makes ya think.” Samantha Bridgman nominates, “H.D.'s Sea Garden ... Or “Hermes of the Ways.” Or “Helen,” or really, anything by HD.” Jen Heller highlights, “Sharon Olds or Jane Kenyon.” And Jeff Renye shares this very neat “pop-up Kubla Khan, design and illustrations by Nick Bantock.” Also on the poetry kick, Nancy Caronia writes, “Have you read Sarah Freligh's Sad Math? If not, I think it would be a great read as an American Studier! And then, I believe George Guida has a new book of poems out. (I say, I think because I feel like he has five new books in all genres coming out.) Then, there is Patrick Donnelly's work. Yes, they are all friends, but the span the American experience! Enjoy!”Following up Friday’s post on memoirs and nonfiction, Emily Royalty-Bachelor nominates Disrupted by Dan Lyons and Endurance by Alfred Lansing. Andrew DaSilva highlights, “ True Compass by Ted Kennedy, A Common Struggle by Patrick Kennedy, and Shock by Kitty Dukakis to name a few...”Other Beach Read nominations:Seferine Baez writes, “I personally consider Eat Pray Love a pretty beachy read because it's reminiscent of vacationing, so it works whether you're at home or quite far away, but deeper since it's stacked up against some really intense personal moments for Liz. But told in short little light vignette-type sections that gets you invested without adopting her emotional scope which can be such a winding road. Memoir, yes, but fabulously told in that way that isn't begging you to echo her experience but maybe take something of your own away from it. Lots of self-discovery, pursuit of peace, personal philosophy, etc. Easy to pick up and put down whenever you have a moment.”On Twitter, Patrick Maley writes, “I am a brand new fan & student of classical music, so Barry Cooper’s biography is helping me make a new friend of Beethoven.”Rochelle Davis Gerber shares, “Taking the following this week: Gratitude by Oliver Sacks, The Good Death by Ann Neumann, and Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. Will let you know what I think.” [And I’ll update this post when she does!]Jason Flinkstrom writes, “currently reading/ listening to: Stranger Beside Me, Washington: A Life , The Master, The Story of World War II, Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon B Johnson , and on a lighter note, some fantasy, The Name of The Wind : Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1.”Shirley Wagner notes, “Mysteries for me - Keigo Higashino, Salvation of a Saint , set in modern day Japan; Douglas Corleone, three mysteries set in Hawaii including One Man’s Paradise ; Gillian Royes mysteries set in Jamaica - highly recommend The Goat Woman of Largo Bay ; Baksheesh by Esmahan Aykol.”Meghan Koslowski writes, “I'm currently reading Glory over Everything by Kathleen Grissom, which is a follow-up to The Kitchen House , and it's excellent thus far.”Jeff Renye highlights, “ The People's Republic of Amnesia , in honor of the recently (un-)celebrated June 4th Tiananmen Square protests. Fascinating how modern history can be obliterated and remembrance controlled. Louisa Lin does a very fine job in that book.”Adam Britt shares, “Teeters on the gross side, but I started reading The Red Market by Scott Carney recently. It details the history and trails of illegal body part and organ trafficking. Despite the content, it's been surprisingly informative on a topic I knew existed but didn't know much about.” He adds, “To offset the icky, I've been supplementing it with Oscar Wao , because I also need a depressing novel to break my heart.”Paige Wallace writes, “I know there's some kick back from the disabled community but I really enjoyed Me Before You by JoJo Moyes; unless people don't like sobbing on the beach... (I don't go to the beach so I wouldn't know.) In which case, maybe something more like Exquisite Hours by Joshua Humphreys, or anything by Neil Gaiman (Stardust, Neverwhere, Graveyard Book).” About Me Before You, Rochelle adds, “I'm going to read that too. I don't interpret it as anti-disabled, I work with people whose lives are changed every day like that in the trauma setting and I think autonomy of decision is of utmost importance.” (For more of that Facebook conversation about the book, see the relevant thread on this post.) And to continue the conversation, here’s a great blog post collecting much of the scholarly criticism of the book/film: https://crippledscholar.wordpress.com/2016/05/28/media-roundup-of-me-before-you-criticism/. And finally, here’s the Washington Post Book World’s 2016 summer reading list: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/entertainment/summer-reading-list-2016/. Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Thoughts on these books? Other Beach Reads you’d share?

June 10, 2016: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Cultural Memoirs

[For this year’s installment of my annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight books I’m looking forward to checking out. That means I’ll have less to say about them, of course—but I hope you’ll share your thoughts on these and/or your own Beach Read recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll go great with suntan lotion and iced beverages!]Three contemporary memoirs of race and heritage, culture and community, writing and identity that I’m excited to read this summer and make part of next semester’s senior seminar on analyzing 21st century American identity:1)      Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped (2013): Ward won the Pulitzer Prize for her amazing second novel, Salvage the Bones (2011). Two years later, she published this autoethnographic book, inspired by the tragic deaths of her brother and four other African American men, examining what those lives and deaths can help us see about identity, community, and culture in 21st century America. Seems like a perfect complement to Salvage, and I can’t wait to read the results of Ward turning her prodigious talents to nonfiction.2)      Charles Blow’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2014): Blow’s New York Times column deals with issues of race and ethnicity in America (among other topics) with an honesty and rigor matched by few fellow journalists. He’s already written a good bit about autobiographical topics in that space, as exemplified by this stunning piece on the illegitimate detention of his son by New Haven police. But Fire delves far deeper into Blow’s personal past and what it can help us understand about contemporary America, and I look forward to seeing where he takes his readers in this first longer-form work.3)      Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League (2015): I know the least about this book of these three, as it had largely been off my radar until I saw it on a new books shelf at the newly renovated, wonderful Fitchburg State University library. So I’ll just note that it looks like not only a compelling and inspiring individual story, but a great complement to the life and work of one of the most impressive contemporary Americans, Jose Antonio Vargas. Can’t wait to see what Peralta can add to the conversation!Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So one more time: thoughts on this book? Other Beach Reads you’d share?

June 9, 2016: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds

[For this year’s installment of my annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight books I’m looking forward to checking out. That means I’ll have less to say about them, of course—but I hope you’ll share your thoughts on these and/or your own Beach Read recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll go great with suntan lotion and iced beverages!]On a poetry collection you should pack right next to that page-turning thriller in your beach bag.I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: poetry collections make good beach reading too! As I wrote in those earlier posts, I get that poetry tends (for many readers) to conjure up images of classroom recitations or explication assignments, of Shakespearean sonnets and metres with funny classical names, of required rather than pleasure reading. But the most intimate and evocative poems not only bring their own very palpable pleasures, but also make for particularly effective bursts of beach reading, brief dives into the literary in between the games of Frisbee or strolls by the water’s edge. I don’t yet know much of anything about Ocean Vuong’s debut collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds that I didn’t read in this wonderful New York Times review, but the book sounds like it could very definitely offer those kinds of intimate and potent pleasures. I know that the Vietnam War and the refugee experience don’t exactly scream “pleasure read,” but one of my goals in these Beach Read series is to expand our conversation about what kinds of pleasures reading can give us, and the value of bringing them all with us on our vacations and escapes. Both the Ian Williams and the Langston Hughes collections I recommended in those earlier poetry posts are still worth a slot in your beach bag—and I look forward to bringing Vuong’s collection with me this time around.Last prospective Beach Reads tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this book? Other Beach Reads you’d share?

June 8, 2016: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Erdrich’s LaRose

[For this year’s installment of my annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight books I’m looking forward to checking out. That means I’ll have less to say about them, of course—but I hope you’ll share your thoughts on these and/or your own Beach Read recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll go great with suntan lotion and iced beverages!]On the difficulties of breaking reading and teaching habits, and a book that should help me do so.I really, really love Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1984; revised and expanded in 1993). That hyperlinked post says a lot about why; the chapter of my upcoming book that pairs the short story cycle/novel with Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977) will offer an even fuller analysis of how Erdrich’s debut novel portrays some of the darkest histories and contemporary issues facing Native American communities while coming to beautiful concluding images of hope for her youngest generation characters. I teach Love Medicine consistently in both my Major American Authors of the 20thCentury and Ethnic American Literature courses (paired with Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club in the latter class), and every time I do so I both find something new and meaningful in Erdrich’s work and draw out compelling student readings and ideas. So again, I really, really love Love Medicine.It’s obviously good to find books about which we feel so strongly, indeed it’s likely a goal for all of us who love to read, but there’s at least one limitation: it can make it a lot harder to broaden our horizons, especially when it comes to that particular author. I’ve read a number of Erdrich’s follow up novels, including The Beet Queen (1986) and Tracks (1988), and—perhaps because they quite simply aren’t Love Medicine, as no distinct work would ever be (even though they do feature some of the same characters and families)—they just didn’t grab me in the same way. So, both because of those reactions and because there’s only so much time in life and my list of books-to-read doesn’t seem to be getting any shorter, at a certain point I stopped reading Erdrich’s subsequent releases, even those—such as the Pulitzer-nominated, lynching-focused historical novel The Plague of Doves (2009) and the National Book Award winning The Round House (2012)—that I have every reason to believe I would enjoy and get a great deal out of.I’m not proud of that tendency, and fortunately Erdrich has recently released another acclaimed novel, LaRose , that offers me a chance to break the cycle. Beginning with a contemporary tragedy, this newest novel moves back through four distinct historical periods, tracing Native American histories and identities across these eras and stages in the lives of two intertwined families. Sounds like just the kind of multi-perspectival historical novel I love—but honestly, I didn’t need to know that to know that I should read more of Erdrich, give myself a chance to find more books that I really, really love and want to teach and share. Expect a full review here!Next prospective Beach Read tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this book? Other Beach Reads you’d share?

June 7, 2016: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Coates’ Black Panther

[For this year’s installment of my annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight books I’m looking forward to checking out. That means I’ll have less to say about them, of course—but I hope you’ll share your thoughts on these and/or your own Beach Read recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll go great with suntan lotion and iced beverages!]The comic book that’s gonna make me return to the genre after decades away.When I was around 10 I was a voracious comic book reader; I believe Superboy and Justice League of America were my favorites (perhaps also G.I. Joe , if that counts), but I had a ton of other titles as well. It was never a sole or central reading interest—even within the sub-genre of illustrated literature, I was at that age at least as interested in Tintin, Asterix, and (most shamefully from my current perspective) Garfield the cat as I was in comic books—and I don’t recall frequenting the comic book store to find the newest issues. But while those details might mean I don’t have the bonafides to call myself a true once or future fan, I can and would argue that comics were a formative genre through which this young AmericanStudier came to understand many elements of storytelling and world-building.By middle school I had carried my interest in those elements over to the genres of fantasy and science fiction, and a good deal of my adolescent pleasure reading would focus on them, to the exclusion of comics. When I worked in book stores during and just after my time in college, I realized how much the world of comic books had passed me by, how little I recognized even the series with which I had grown up, much less the plethora of new series that had entered the scene. (Or, just as likely, which had long been around but with which I had in my limited knowledge not been familiar.) As I’ve moved into my professional career, it’s only been when a particular book I was teaching demanded it—looking at superhero comics to help contextualize Watchmen , trying to read up on at least a fraction of the comics references in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao —that I’ve even dipped my toes into the comprehensive ocean that is 21st century comic books.Well, that’s all about to change, and the motivation is one that I share with many, many other AmericanStudiers and readers. The great Ta-Nehisi Coates, about whom I’ve written plenty in this space already, is two issues into his run with Black Panther , one of those long-running comic books about which I know far too little. The reviews have been uniformly positive, the sales have been off the charts, and, thanks at least in part to Coates’ successes, Ryan Coogler’s upcoming Black Panther film keeps adding amazing actors to its roster. Quite simply, it sounds like every fan of good storytelling needs to check out Coates’ work here (along with that of his collaborator/illustrator Brian Stelfreeze), and I’m excited to make a long overdue return to the world of comic books in the process.Next prospective Beach Read tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this book? Other Beach Reads you’d share?

June 6, 2016: AmericanStudies Beach Reads: Lahiri’s In Other Words

[For this year’s installment of my annual Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight books I’m looking forward to checking out. That means I’ll have less to say about them, of course—but I hope you’ll share your thoughts on these and/or your own Beach Read recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll go great with suntan lotion and iced beverages!]Two reasons I’m excited for Jhumpa Lahiri’s first nonfiction book, and why I’m somehow not quite sure.1)      It’s Jhumpa Lahiri!: I’ve written a good bit about Lahiri in this space, and for good reason: she’s one of my favorite contemporary authors, wrote a novel (The Namesake) that teaches as well as any book I’ve encountered to date, and is just prodigiously talented and interesting and thematically all the way up my alley and etc. Any new book by someone who fits all those criteria is welcome news, and likely to end up in my beach bag.2)      Cross-Cultural Multi-Lingual Goodness: The specific subject of Lahiri’s book is her lifelong and evolving relationship with Italian, her third language (after the Hindi of her parents’ homeland and the English of her own) and one in which the book itself is written (along with an accompanying English translation on every page). If you’re saying, “Ben, that sounds like somehow created a book designed to fit your ideas of cross-culturaland multi-lingualAmerican identity,” well, you’re not wrong.3)      And Yet: Ever since I heard about this new book of Lahiri’s, I’ve been somewhat more bothered by the idea of it than those reasons would indicate. Partly I imagine that’s about expectations—I love Lahiri’s fiction, both short and long, and was hoping her new publication would offer more of it. And partly, as best I can psychoanalyze myself, I think it’s about my hesitations with what I might call self-aggrandizing memoirs—the kinds that offer up the writer’s life and perspective as models for others to emulate. But I don’t know that Lahiri’s is one of those—and I do know, per reasons 1 and 2, that there will be a lot to like in it in any case!Next prospective Beach Read tomorrow,BenPS. Thoughts on this book? Other Beach Reads you’d share?

June 4-5, 2016: The 1876 Election and 2016

[Following up the week’s Decoration Dayseries, a special post on what could learn from one of our most destructive presidential elections.]On the worst and best lessons of a disastrous election.As I highlighted in my recent Reconstruction series, there were many factors that contributed to America’s post-Civil War failures and tragedies, to the ways in which the initial hope and promise of Reconstruction (particularly for the nation’s African American community) became instead the first steps toward the period known as “the nadir.” That process can’t be condensed into a single moment, not even a monumental presidential election. Yet at the same time, such elections can at the very least reflect—and of course can also extend and amplify—broader trends, and on multiple levels the 1876 election did so: from Rutherford B. Hayes’ triumph over more progressive candidates at the contested Republican National Convention to the controversial “crooked bargain” by which Hayes was awarded the presidency over Samuel Tilden in exchange for the removal of all Federal troops from the South and the final abandonment of both Reconstruction and African American rights. When The Nation opined, in an 1877 editorial , that “the negro will disappear from the field of national politics,” it was in direct response to this transformative (in the worst sense) 1876 election.Here in the continuing sesquicentennial of Reconstruction, and on the 140thanniversary of that disastrous election, I believe we could be in for a historic and horrific repeat. If Donald Trump were to be elected to the presidency, it wouldn’t just be the most ridiculous electoral result in American history (although yes); it would also signal a decisive repudiation of all that the election and presidential administration of Barack Obama has reflected and symbolized in our evolving national society and identity. That doesn’t mean that Obama’s presidency illustrated the achievement of some ideal, any more than Reconstruction meant all of the nation’s divisions and problems had been solved; yet such a realistic perspective shouldn’t keep us from recognizing and celebrating periods of possibility and progress, moments that encapsulate the better angels of our American nature. Such moments always bring out our worst devils as well, of course—in 1876 those worst devils truly took over national politics, and it’s quite possible to argue that they continued to dominate for at least the next quarter-century. It’d be hard for me to see a Trump victory and administration as anything other than another descent into the worst of what we’ve been and are.That hasn’t happened yet, though. And as I’ve contemplated what role public AmericanStudies scholars and scholarship can play in this evolving election season, it has become clearer and clearer to me that providing salient historical contexts has never been more significant. It’s easy, and to my mind not wrong, to do so with outside such contexts related to fascist movements around the globe. More difficult, but even more important, is the work of highlighting the American contexts for this moment, both to help us understand what’s happening and why, and (most hopefully but most crucially) to give us the ammunition we need to fight back. In 1876, there were very few prominent public venues for alternative voices, for those hoping to argue for and continue working toward the best angels and America. In 2016 there have never been more such spaces and opportunities, not only for public scholars but also and even more importantly for communal and democratic movements such as hashtag activism. We’re going to need all of our voices if we’re going to take the most vital lessons from 1876 and ensure that this election—and the decades to follow—won’t repeat the past.Next series begins Monday,BenPS. What do you think?

June 3, 2016: Decoration Day Histories: So What?

[Following up Monday’s Memorial Day special, a series on some of the complex American histories connected to the holiday’s original identity as Decoration Day.]On three ways to argue for remembering Decoration Day as well as Memorial Day.If someone (like, I dunno, an imaginary voice in my head to prompt this post…) were to ask me why we should better remember the histories I’ve traced in this week’s posts—were, that is, to respond with the “So what?” of today’s title—my first answer would be simple: because they happened. There are many things about history of which we can’t be sure, nuances or details that will always remain uncertain or in dispute. But there are many others that are in fact quite clear, and we just don’t remember them clearly: and the origins and initial meanings of Decoration Day are just such clear historical facts. Indeed, so clear were those Decoration Day starting points that most Southern states chose not to recognize the holiday at all in its early years. I can’t quite imagine a good-faith argument for not better remembering clear historical facts (especially when they’re as relevant as the origins of a holiday are on that holiday!), and I certainly don’t have any interest in engaging with such an argument.But there are also other, broader arguments for better remembering these histories. For one thing, the changes in the meanings and commemorations of Decoration Day, and then the gradual shift to Memorial Day, offer a potent illustration of the longstanding role and power of white supremacist perspectives (not necessarily in the most discriminatory or violent senses of the concept, but rather as captured by that Nation editorial’s point about the negro “disappearing from the field of national politics”) in shaping our national narratives, histories, and collective memories. In one of my recent adult learning classes I argued for what I called a more inclusive vs. a more exclusive version of American history, one that overtly pushes back on those kinds of narrow, exclusionary, white supremacist historical narratives in favor of a broader and (to my mind) far more accurate sense of all the American communities that have contributed to and been part of our identity and story. Remembering Decoration Day as well as Memorial Day would represent precisely such an inclusive rather than more exclusive version of American history.There’s also another way to think about and frame that argument. Throughout the last few years, conservatives have argued that the new Common Core and AP US History standards portray and teach a “negative” vision of American history, rather than the celebratory one for which these commentators argue instead. As those hyperlinked articles suggest, these arguments are at best oversimplified, at worst blatantly inaccurate. But it is fair to say that better remembering painful histories such as those of slavery, segregation, and lynching can be a difficult process, especially if we seek to make them more central to our collective national memories. So the more we can find inspiring moments and histories, voices and perspectives, that connect both to those painful histories and to more ideal visions of American identity and community, the more likely it is (I believe) that we will remember them. And I know of few American histories more inspiring than that of Decoration Day: its origins and purposes, its advocates like Frederick Douglass, and its strongest enduring meaning for the African American community—and, I would argue, for all of us.Special follow-up post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?

June 2, 2016: Decoration Day Histories: Rodman the Keeper

[Following up Monday’s Memorial Day special, a series on some of the complex American histories connected to the holiday’s original identity as Decoration Day.]On the text that helps us remember a community for whom Decoration Day’s meanings didn’t shift.In Monday’s post, I highlighted a brief but important scene in Constance Fenimore Woolson’s short story “Rodman the Keeper” (1880). John Rodman, Woolson’s protagonist, is a (Union) Civil War veteran who has taken a job overseeing a Union cemetery in the South; and in this brief but important scene, he observes a group of African Americans (likely former slaves) commemorate Decoration Day by leaving tributes to those fallen Union soldiers. Woolson’s narrator describes the event in evocative but somewhat patronizing terms: “They knew dimly that the men who lay beneath those mounds had done something wonderful for them and for their children; and so they came bringing their blossoms, with little intelligence but with much love.” But she gives the last word in this striking scene to one of the celebrants himself: “we’s kep’ de day now two years, sah, befo’ you came, sah, an we’s teachin’ de chil’en to keep it, sah.”“Rodman” is set sometime during Reconstruction—perhaps in 1870 specifically, since the first Decoration Day was celebrated in 1868 and the community has been keeping the day for two years—and, as I noted in yesterday’s post, by the 1876 end of that historical period the meaning of Decoration Day on the national level had begun to shift dramatically. But as historian David Blight has frequently noted, such as in the piece hyperlinked in my intro section above and as quoted in this article on Blight’s magisterial book Race and Reunion (2002), the holiday always had a different meaning for African Americans than for other American communities, and that meaning continued to resonate for that community through those broader national shifts. Indeed, it’s possible to argue that as the national meaning shifted away from the kinds of remembrance for which Frederick Douglass argued in his 1871 speech, it became that much more necessary and vital for African Americans to practice that form of critical commemoration (one, to correct Woolson’s well-intended but patronizing description, that included just as much intelligence as love).In an April 1877 editorial reflecting on the end of Reconstruction, the Nation magazine predicted happily that one effect of that shift would be that “the negro will disappear from the field of national politics. Henceforth the nation, as a nation, will have nothing more to do with him.” Besides representing one of the lowest points in that periodical’s long history, the editorial quite clearly illustrates why the post-Reconstruction national meaning of Decoration Day seems to have won out over the African American one (a shift that culminated, it could be argued, in the change of name to Memorial Day, which began being used as an alternative as early as 1882): because prominent, often white supremacist national voices wanted it to be so. Which is to say, it wasn’t inevitable that the shift would occur or the new meaning would win out—and while we can’t change what happened in our history, we nonetheless can (as I’ll argue at greater length tomorrow) push back and remember the original and, for the African American community, ongoing meaning of Decoration Day.Last Decoration Day history tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?