Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 390
February 20, 2013
February 20, 2013: AmericanStudiers to Watch, Part Three
[One of my ongoing resolutions is to attend more conferences—for lots of reasons, but especially to connect with my fellow scholars. This week, I’ll be briefly highlighting some impressive AmericanStudiers I’ve recently had the chance to meet and see in action, both at November’s American Studies Association conference and at January’s Modern Language Association one. Would love to hear your suggestions for other AmericanStudiers to watch, and will compile the ongoing list for the weekend post!]
On three scholars who have found unique historical approaches to the role that images of childhood and identity play in our national narratives.The third and final ASA panel I’ll be highlighting here was organized by one of my Twitter-colleagues, Adam Golub, and featured three very complex takes on historical images and uses of childhood in American culture:1) Allison Curseen, a graduate student in English and African and African American Studies at Duke, presented a focus literary analysis of the opening chapter of Stephen Crane’s novella The Monster (1898), and specifically its portrayal of play, parenting, and the contrast between the pastoral and progress. She convincingly linked that chapter and text to many other turn of the 20th century contexts, including images of “boyville”and the progressive moment’s emphasis on reconstructing the nation through “play.”2) Nicholas Syrett, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Northern Colorado, used the prominent and controversial 1937 case of a 9 year old Tennesse “child bride” (and her 22 year old husband) to think about American narratives of childhood and adulthood, sexuality, gender, and contrasts to foreign, less “civilized” cultures through contemporary works such as Katherine Mayo’s Mother India (1927). While we can all understand the distaste with a 9 year old’s nuptials, it’s important to understand all of the contexts that inform any single controversy, and he did a great job framing many for this one.3) Rebecca Onion, another Twitter colleague and a graduate student in American Studies at the University of Texas, read 1970s stories and pieces in the environmental children’s magazine Ranger Rick, including some by science fiction author George Zebrowski, to discuss the relationships between animality and childhood, apocalyptic environmental messaging, and the Endangered Species Act(1973), among many other compelling connections to this fun but complex pop culture text.Each of these projects should produce rich and important AmericanStudies scholarship, and I’m excited to see where they go from here!Next scholars tomorrow,BenPS. Responses to these projects and scholars? Other AmericanStudiers you’d highlight?
On three scholars who have found unique historical approaches to the role that images of childhood and identity play in our national narratives.The third and final ASA panel I’ll be highlighting here was organized by one of my Twitter-colleagues, Adam Golub, and featured three very complex takes on historical images and uses of childhood in American culture:1) Allison Curseen, a graduate student in English and African and African American Studies at Duke, presented a focus literary analysis of the opening chapter of Stephen Crane’s novella The Monster (1898), and specifically its portrayal of play, parenting, and the contrast between the pastoral and progress. She convincingly linked that chapter and text to many other turn of the 20th century contexts, including images of “boyville”and the progressive moment’s emphasis on reconstructing the nation through “play.”2) Nicholas Syrett, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Northern Colorado, used the prominent and controversial 1937 case of a 9 year old Tennesse “child bride” (and her 22 year old husband) to think about American narratives of childhood and adulthood, sexuality, gender, and contrasts to foreign, less “civilized” cultures through contemporary works such as Katherine Mayo’s Mother India (1927). While we can all understand the distaste with a 9 year old’s nuptials, it’s important to understand all of the contexts that inform any single controversy, and he did a great job framing many for this one.3) Rebecca Onion, another Twitter colleague and a graduate student in American Studies at the University of Texas, read 1970s stories and pieces in the environmental children’s magazine Ranger Rick, including some by science fiction author George Zebrowski, to discuss the relationships between animality and childhood, apocalyptic environmental messaging, and the Endangered Species Act(1973), among many other compelling connections to this fun but complex pop culture text.Each of these projects should produce rich and important AmericanStudies scholarship, and I’m excited to see where they go from here!Next scholars tomorrow,BenPS. Responses to these projects and scholars? Other AmericanStudiers you’d highlight?
February 19, 2013
February 19, 2013: AmericanStudiers to Watch, Part Two
[One of my ongoing resolutions is to attend more conferences—for lots of reasons, but especially to connect with my fellow scholars. This week, I’ll be briefly highlighting some impressive AmericanStudiers I’ve recently had the chance to meet and see in action, both at November’s American Studies Association conference and at January’s Modern Language Association one. Would love to hear your suggestions for other AmericanStudiers to watch, and will compile the ongoing list for the weekend post!]
On three scholars whose very distinct interests and projects demonstrate that childhood studies is anything but child’s play.The second panel I attended at ASA was on race and childhood in American history and culture, and featured three diverse but all equally compelling and significant focal points:1) Mary Niall Mitchell, an Associate Professor of History a the University of New Orleans, presented on the complex and amazing American story at the heart of her new book project, currently titled The Real Ida May: Race, Fiction, and Daguerrotypes in a Story of Antislavery. It’s hard to do justice to the many sides and layers to the story of Mary Botts, the “white slave girl” who captured the attention of abolitionists, authors, and many others in antebellum Boston and America—but I’ll be very excited to read Mary’s engagement with them all!2) Lara Saguisag, a graduate student in Childhood Studies at Rutgers and also a published children’s book author in her own right, spoke on the complex, cross-cultural, and very American trend of racial “crossdressing” in turn of the 20thcentury “kid strips” such as the Katzenjammer Kids, Buster Brown, and Little Nemo in Slumberland. Her readings of the individual strips were wonderfully nuanced, but she also connected this trend to many other cultural and social contexts, making for an appropriately interdisciplinary AmericanStudies approach and topic for sure. 3) Philip Nel, Professor of English at Kansas State and one of the leading experts on children’s and young adult literature, gave a talk on a project that he has just begun, focusing on the practice of “whitewashing” in the marketing and cover art of children’s and young adult literature.The trend has ties to numerous complex issues, including publishing and audience, commercialization, and racial stereotyping and discrimination, and his project promises to develop these connections and add to our understanding of the social and cultural roles played by these far-from-insignificant genres. I can’t wait to see where these scholars take these compelling and vital American projects!Next scholars tomorrow,BenPS. Responses to these projects and scholars? Other AmericanStudiers you’d highlight?
On three scholars whose very distinct interests and projects demonstrate that childhood studies is anything but child’s play.The second panel I attended at ASA was on race and childhood in American history and culture, and featured three diverse but all equally compelling and significant focal points:1) Mary Niall Mitchell, an Associate Professor of History a the University of New Orleans, presented on the complex and amazing American story at the heart of her new book project, currently titled The Real Ida May: Race, Fiction, and Daguerrotypes in a Story of Antislavery. It’s hard to do justice to the many sides and layers to the story of Mary Botts, the “white slave girl” who captured the attention of abolitionists, authors, and many others in antebellum Boston and America—but I’ll be very excited to read Mary’s engagement with them all!2) Lara Saguisag, a graduate student in Childhood Studies at Rutgers and also a published children’s book author in her own right, spoke on the complex, cross-cultural, and very American trend of racial “crossdressing” in turn of the 20thcentury “kid strips” such as the Katzenjammer Kids, Buster Brown, and Little Nemo in Slumberland. Her readings of the individual strips were wonderfully nuanced, but she also connected this trend to many other cultural and social contexts, making for an appropriately interdisciplinary AmericanStudies approach and topic for sure. 3) Philip Nel, Professor of English at Kansas State and one of the leading experts on children’s and young adult literature, gave a talk on a project that he has just begun, focusing on the practice of “whitewashing” in the marketing and cover art of children’s and young adult literature.The trend has ties to numerous complex issues, including publishing and audience, commercialization, and racial stereotyping and discrimination, and his project promises to develop these connections and add to our understanding of the social and cultural roles played by these far-from-insignificant genres. I can’t wait to see where these scholars take these compelling and vital American projects!Next scholars tomorrow,BenPS. Responses to these projects and scholars? Other AmericanStudiers you’d highlight?
February 18, 2013
February 18, 2013: AmericanStudiers to Watch, Part One
[One of my ongoing resolutions is to attend more conferences—for lots of reasons, but especially to connect with my fellow scholars. This week, I’ll be briefly highlighting some impressive AmericanStudiers I’ve recently had the chance to meet and see in action, both at November’s American Studies Association conference and at January’s Modern Language Association one. Would love to hear your suggestions for other AmericanStudiers to watch, and will compile the ongoing list for the weekend post!]
On three talented young Native American Studiers and their interdisciplinary and cross-cultural projects.The first panel I had the chance to attend at the ASA Conference focused on images and narratives of Native Americans, and featured three graduate students who shared portions of their interesting and important dissertation research:1) AshleyWiersma of Michigan State gave a talk on the construction and development of the Noble Savage myth in both French and Anglo colonial-era discourses. She’s working with some very complex and interesting primary texts, including letters and journals written by missionaries such as Louis Hennepin and Father Buisson de St. Cosme and William Robertson’s History of America(1777). And she’s tying that historical work to the linguistic and philosophical development of concepts such as “civilization.”2) Marcel Garcia of Yale presented a paper on cultural retention, expression, and adaptation in California’s missions. He focused here specifically on the Ohlone tribe, the Spanish mission in their region, other European vessels who arrived there, and the multiple roles of dance for those communities. His emphasis on the vessels and arrivals was particularly rich, as it complicates any easy division of the community between the Ohlone and the Spanish.3) Ryan Hall, also of Yale, spoke about popular narratives and stereotypes of the Blackfeet, and specifically the multi-stage development of the concept of the “terrible Blackfeet, scourge of the upper Missouri.” This project connects to numerous interesting early to mid-19th century figures and texts, from Lewis and Clark and Colter’s Run to the Missouri Fur Company and Five Years a Captive among the Blackfeet Indians (1858). He also indicated his contuing work to find and incorporate additional Blackfeet voices, which will add even more layers to this cross-cultural American theme.Three young AmericanStudiers worth keeping an eye on for sure!Next scholars tomorrow,BenPS. Responses to these projects and scholars? Other AmericanStudiers you’d highlight?
On three talented young Native American Studiers and their interdisciplinary and cross-cultural projects.The first panel I had the chance to attend at the ASA Conference focused on images and narratives of Native Americans, and featured three graduate students who shared portions of their interesting and important dissertation research:1) AshleyWiersma of Michigan State gave a talk on the construction and development of the Noble Savage myth in both French and Anglo colonial-era discourses. She’s working with some very complex and interesting primary texts, including letters and journals written by missionaries such as Louis Hennepin and Father Buisson de St. Cosme and William Robertson’s History of America(1777). And she’s tying that historical work to the linguistic and philosophical development of concepts such as “civilization.”2) Marcel Garcia of Yale presented a paper on cultural retention, expression, and adaptation in California’s missions. He focused here specifically on the Ohlone tribe, the Spanish mission in their region, other European vessels who arrived there, and the multiple roles of dance for those communities. His emphasis on the vessels and arrivals was particularly rich, as it complicates any easy division of the community between the Ohlone and the Spanish.3) Ryan Hall, also of Yale, spoke about popular narratives and stereotypes of the Blackfeet, and specifically the multi-stage development of the concept of the “terrible Blackfeet, scourge of the upper Missouri.” This project connects to numerous interesting early to mid-19th century figures and texts, from Lewis and Clark and Colter’s Run to the Missouri Fur Company and Five Years a Captive among the Blackfeet Indians (1858). He also indicated his contuing work to find and incorporate additional Blackfeet voices, which will add even more layers to this cross-cultural American theme.Three young AmericanStudiers worth keeping an eye on for sure!Next scholars tomorrow,BenPS. Responses to these projects and scholars? Other AmericanStudiers you’d highlight?
February 16, 2013
February 16-17, 2013: Crowd-sourced Love
[In honor of Valentine’s Day, this week I’ve been highlighting a handful of the many things—moments, voices, interesting little details that mean a lot—that I love about America. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and loves of fellow AmericanStudiers—but there’s lots more to love, so add your thoughts, please!]
Amanda Couture shares the Sylvia Plath love, for the poems highlighted in that post as well as for “Ariel.”Jeff Renye highlights another favorite moment from an American film, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”On Twitter, Barbara Pittman shares her love for “The last eight lines of Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself.’”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. You know you love it (whatever it may be)! So share it, please!
Amanda Couture shares the Sylvia Plath love, for the poems highlighted in that post as well as for “Ariel.”Jeff Renye highlights another favorite moment from an American film, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”On Twitter, Barbara Pittman shares her love for “The last eight lines of Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself.’”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. You know you love it (whatever it may be)! So share it, please!
February 15, 2013
February 15, 2013: I Love Memento’s Closing Monologue
[In honor of Valentine’s Day, this week I’ll be highlighting a handful of the many things—moments, voices, interesting little details that mean a lot—that I love about America. I’d love if it you’d share some of your loves for the heart-y weekend post!]
[Also, another FYI: this post, while not quite as spoilerific as yesterday’s, will focus on some key elements to the final sequence in Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (2000). Which if you haven’t seen, go watch and then come on back. I’ll be here.]On the dark, cynical, and unquestionably human final words of a contemporary American classic.I might be stretching things a bit by calling Memento (2000) an American classic—after all, it was directed by ; adapted from a short story, “Memento Mori,” by his equally English brother Jonathan; and stars Aussie Guy Pearce and Canadian Carrie-Anne Moss in two of the three principal roles. But I’m sticking to my guns, and not just because the film is set in the western United States (specifically Nevada, I believe, based on the glimpses we get of license plates; key earlier events and flashbacks take place in California). To me, some of the film’s central themes, while unquestionably universal in significance, echo particularly American narratives: the idea, or perhaps the myth, of the self-made man, creating himself anew out of will and ambition, writing his own future on a blank page (or, in this case, his own body); the Western film trope of a lone warrior, a quiet and threatening man with seemingly no identity or past, traveling on a quest for justice and/or revenge, and entering and changing a corrupt town in the process. In those and other core ways, Memento is deeply and importantly American.Given that Americanness, and given that it’s a mystery—if a highly unconventional and postmodern one to be sure—it’s likely no surprise that I love the film. But compared to most of the loves I’ve shared this week, and compared to my general AmericanStudying attitude for that matter, Memento is also strikingly dark and cynical; it takes that tone throughout, but most especially in its final revelations and in the interior monologue with which it concludes (that scene is more spoilerific than I’m going to be here, so don’t watch if you haven’t seen the film!). That monologue’s middle section feels logical and rational enough, particularly the lines “I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still here.” But it begins with the speaker, protagonist Leonard Shelby, making one of the most blatantly and purposefully self-deceptive and disturbing choices ever put on film, while thinking, ““Do I lie to myself to be happy? … Yes I will.” And so when Leonard (and the film) ends by arguing, “We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different,” it seems, in the specific context of what he has done and is doing, who and what he has been revealed to be, to be a profoundly pessimistic perspective on human nature and identity.Maybe it is that pessimistic—it’s okay if so, not everything can end on notes of hard-won hope, much as I enjoy the concept. The world’s more complex and multi-faceted than that. But if we take a step back from some of the specifics of what Leonard is doing at this moment, it’s also possible to read his actions here, and throughout the film, as purely and simply and definingly human. He’s trying to make meaning out of the world around him, out of the details of his own life (and most especially the hardest and toughest of them), out of what has happened and what is happening and what he hopes to make happen in the time to come. What Leonard does overtly—in those tattoos on his skin, in his photographs and note cards and wall hangings, in his constant interior monologue—is what we all do more subtly but just as constantly: read and respond to the world around us, and make it part of our developing narratives and stories and identities. Granted, I hope that we can do it in less destructive ways than Leonard; he does have that unique condition to contend with, after all (spoilers there too!). But we all do it, and one of the things I love most about Memento is its ability to hold that mirror up to us and how we move through the world.Crowd-sourced loves this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for that weekend post?
[Also, another FYI: this post, while not quite as spoilerific as yesterday’s, will focus on some key elements to the final sequence in Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (2000). Which if you haven’t seen, go watch and then come on back. I’ll be here.]On the dark, cynical, and unquestionably human final words of a contemporary American classic.I might be stretching things a bit by calling Memento (2000) an American classic—after all, it was directed by ; adapted from a short story, “Memento Mori,” by his equally English brother Jonathan; and stars Aussie Guy Pearce and Canadian Carrie-Anne Moss in two of the three principal roles. But I’m sticking to my guns, and not just because the film is set in the western United States (specifically Nevada, I believe, based on the glimpses we get of license plates; key earlier events and flashbacks take place in California). To me, some of the film’s central themes, while unquestionably universal in significance, echo particularly American narratives: the idea, or perhaps the myth, of the self-made man, creating himself anew out of will and ambition, writing his own future on a blank page (or, in this case, his own body); the Western film trope of a lone warrior, a quiet and threatening man with seemingly no identity or past, traveling on a quest for justice and/or revenge, and entering and changing a corrupt town in the process. In those and other core ways, Memento is deeply and importantly American.Given that Americanness, and given that it’s a mystery—if a highly unconventional and postmodern one to be sure—it’s likely no surprise that I love the film. But compared to most of the loves I’ve shared this week, and compared to my general AmericanStudying attitude for that matter, Memento is also strikingly dark and cynical; it takes that tone throughout, but most especially in its final revelations and in the interior monologue with which it concludes (that scene is more spoilerific than I’m going to be here, so don’t watch if you haven’t seen the film!). That monologue’s middle section feels logical and rational enough, particularly the lines “I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still here.” But it begins with the speaker, protagonist Leonard Shelby, making one of the most blatantly and purposefully self-deceptive and disturbing choices ever put on film, while thinking, ““Do I lie to myself to be happy? … Yes I will.” And so when Leonard (and the film) ends by arguing, “We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no different,” it seems, in the specific context of what he has done and is doing, who and what he has been revealed to be, to be a profoundly pessimistic perspective on human nature and identity.Maybe it is that pessimistic—it’s okay if so, not everything can end on notes of hard-won hope, much as I enjoy the concept. The world’s more complex and multi-faceted than that. But if we take a step back from some of the specifics of what Leonard is doing at this moment, it’s also possible to read his actions here, and throughout the film, as purely and simply and definingly human. He’s trying to make meaning out of the world around him, out of the details of his own life (and most especially the hardest and toughest of them), out of what has happened and what is happening and what he hopes to make happen in the time to come. What Leonard does overtly—in those tattoos on his skin, in his photographs and note cards and wall hangings, in his constant interior monologue—is what we all do more subtly but just as constantly: read and respond to the world around us, and make it part of our developing narratives and stories and identities. Granted, I hope that we can do it in less destructive ways than Leonard; he does have that unique condition to contend with, after all (spoilers there too!). But we all do it, and one of the things I love most about Memento is its ability to hold that mirror up to us and how we move through the world.Crowd-sourced loves this weekend,BenPS. So what do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for that weekend post?
February 14, 2013
February 14, 2013: I Love Three Pages in Ceremony
[In honor of Valentine’s Day, this week I’ll be highlighting a handful of the many things—moments, voices, interesting little details that mean a lot—that I love about America. I’d love if it you’d share some of your loves for the heart-y weekend post!]
[Also, just FYI: this post will be spoiling the heck out of the climax to its focal text, Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony (1977). If you haven’t read it, well, go do so ASAP and then meet me back here!]On the climactic decision and its aftermath that together exemplify everything I love about America and American literature.There are lots of reasons why we read fiction: to see aspects of our identities reflected yet also to connect to experiences and lives different from our own; to learn about dark and painful realities yet also to be inspired by what can be; to be entertained and comforted yet also to be challenged and forced to grow; to remember and to imagine; and so many more. When I think about the American novels that I’d put at the top of my list—an ever-changing category, but certainly including The Marrow of Tradition ; The Awakening ; My Ántonia ; Absalom, Absalom!; and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—what tends to link them is that they achieve many of these goals and effects. And I’m not sure any American novel comes closer to achieving all of them than Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977), a work both specific to its worlds and contexts (Laguna Pueblo Native American culture, World War II veteran experiences, the Southwest United States) and universally relevant, both traditional and postmodern, both historical and supernatural, both tragic and inspiring.Every element and moment of Silko’s novel contributes to those aspects and effects, but I’d say they all coalesce in one climactic and amazing three-page section. As I wrote in this post, the section begins with the protagonist, Tayo, making a utopian choice: faced with a situation in which it’s practically impossible for him not to respond with violence (particularly since he has done so in an parallel yet not as extreme earlier moment), Tayo instead courageously resists that impulse, and the forces of evil, prejudice, and destruction (within his community, nationally, and spiritually) that lie behind it. Having done so, he comes over the next two pages to a series of powerful and crucial epiphanies and revelations: about history and heritage, his family and his identity, the reservation and the nation, his long-lost mother and his own life and future, about, in short, every central character, setting, and theme in the novel. I’ve taught Silko’s novel at least ten separate times now, and I’ll freely admit to getting choked up each and every time I read this section. It’s a beautiful and powerful moment on many levels, but I suppose if I had to boil it down, I would do so through a quote from another inspiring American scene in a work I love: President Andrew Shepherd’s climactic speech in The American President (1995). The speech is full of great lines, but I’m thinking specifically of this one: “America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ‘cause it’s gonna put up a fight.” To be clear, I don’t mean to suggest that Tayo, or any Native American, has to “earn” his or her American citizenship any more fully than any of the rest of us. Quite the opposite, I’d say that Tayo here exemplifies a concept both Shepherd and I would apply to all Americans: that if we hope to reach our ideals, our best selves—as individuals, as communities, and as a nation—well, to quote my favorite line from this section in Silko’s novel, “The only thing is: it has never been easy.” It’s far easier to give in to the worst of what we have been or can be, whether that means meeting violence and hate with the same, getting cynical and pessimistic about the future, settling for far less than we can be, or any other understandable but limiting and ultimately destructive choice. But as Tayo and Silko demonstrate in this amazing section, the hard way is the better, and the American, way.My last American love (for the week) tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for the weekend post?
[Also, just FYI: this post will be spoiling the heck out of the climax to its focal text, Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony (1977). If you haven’t read it, well, go do so ASAP and then meet me back here!]On the climactic decision and its aftermath that together exemplify everything I love about America and American literature.There are lots of reasons why we read fiction: to see aspects of our identities reflected yet also to connect to experiences and lives different from our own; to learn about dark and painful realities yet also to be inspired by what can be; to be entertained and comforted yet also to be challenged and forced to grow; to remember and to imagine; and so many more. When I think about the American novels that I’d put at the top of my list—an ever-changing category, but certainly including The Marrow of Tradition ; The Awakening ; My Ántonia ; Absalom, Absalom!; and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—what tends to link them is that they achieve many of these goals and effects. And I’m not sure any American novel comes closer to achieving all of them than Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977), a work both specific to its worlds and contexts (Laguna Pueblo Native American culture, World War II veteran experiences, the Southwest United States) and universally relevant, both traditional and postmodern, both historical and supernatural, both tragic and inspiring.Every element and moment of Silko’s novel contributes to those aspects and effects, but I’d say they all coalesce in one climactic and amazing three-page section. As I wrote in this post, the section begins with the protagonist, Tayo, making a utopian choice: faced with a situation in which it’s practically impossible for him not to respond with violence (particularly since he has done so in an parallel yet not as extreme earlier moment), Tayo instead courageously resists that impulse, and the forces of evil, prejudice, and destruction (within his community, nationally, and spiritually) that lie behind it. Having done so, he comes over the next two pages to a series of powerful and crucial epiphanies and revelations: about history and heritage, his family and his identity, the reservation and the nation, his long-lost mother and his own life and future, about, in short, every central character, setting, and theme in the novel. I’ve taught Silko’s novel at least ten separate times now, and I’ll freely admit to getting choked up each and every time I read this section. It’s a beautiful and powerful moment on many levels, but I suppose if I had to boil it down, I would do so through a quote from another inspiring American scene in a work I love: President Andrew Shepherd’s climactic speech in The American President (1995). The speech is full of great lines, but I’m thinking specifically of this one: “America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ‘cause it’s gonna put up a fight.” To be clear, I don’t mean to suggest that Tayo, or any Native American, has to “earn” his or her American citizenship any more fully than any of the rest of us. Quite the opposite, I’d say that Tayo here exemplifies a concept both Shepherd and I would apply to all Americans: that if we hope to reach our ideals, our best selves—as individuals, as communities, and as a nation—well, to quote my favorite line from this section in Silko’s novel, “The only thing is: it has never been easy.” It’s far easier to give in to the worst of what we have been or can be, whether that means meeting violence and hate with the same, getting cynical and pessimistic about the future, settling for far less than we can be, or any other understandable but limiting and ultimately destructive choice. But as Tayo and Silko demonstrate in this amazing section, the hard way is the better, and the American, way.My last American love (for the week) tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for the weekend post?
February 13, 2013
February 13, 2013: I Love Plath’s Most Personal Poem
[In honor of Valentine’s Day, this week I’ll be highlighting a handful of the many things—moments, voices, interesting little details that mean a lot—that I love about America. I’d love if it you’d share some of your loves for the heart-y weekend post!]
On the text that expresses the universal experience of new parenthood as well as any I’ve encountered—while still being clearly its unique and talented author’s handiwork.First I have to ask you to check out a couple of past posts: this one, on the incredible challenges of parenting in general and motherhood in particular; and this one, on Sylvia Plath’s much more varied and rich body of works than we often give her credit for. I’ll understand if you skip right to the next paragraph, but I’d love for you to have a sense of both of those posts before I move forward here. Thanks!Welcome back. Given those two posts, it’ll likely come as no surprise that the poem of Plath’s on which this post focuses, “Morning Song”(1961), is about motherhood; new motherhood, and the experience of new parenting overall, to be exact. I’ve seen critical arguments that the poem is bleak or cynical, but I don’t think that’s nearly the whole story; instead I’d argue that it captures, in its six three-line stanzas, the many different emotions and sides to new parenting, from those darkest responses (which are definitely there, especially with a first newborn, whether we like to admit it or not) to the more awed and amazed and powerfully inspired ones. To me, the poem’s best stanza, and its most Plath-ian metaphor, captures those multi-faceted responses pitch-perfectly: “I’m no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind’s hand.” But if that doesn’t seem amazed enough, the next stanza (and these two occupy the poem’s midpoint) moves more toward those emotions: “All night your moth-breath / Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: / A far sea moves in my ear.”Great stuff. But in my title I called this Plath’s most personal poem—and given that this is the poet who wrote about her suicide attempts (“Lady Lazarus”) and her love-hate relationships with her dead father and estranged husband (“Daddy”), among many many many other profoundly personal topics, that might seem to be a stretch. But to my mind, those poems are personal yet performative, the confessional mode as a combination of diary and one woman show. That’s not a bad thing, but neither is it raw or intimate enough to be truly personal. Whereas in “Morning Song,” written when Plath’s first child (her daughter Frieda) was 8 months old, I believe we’re getting something far more immediate, a genuine reflection (note again that cloud-mirror metaphor) of all that Plath was experiencing and feeling in that first year as a mother. Granted, she still turned it into a dense and complex poem; but that was Plath. I love her, and I love this poem most of all.My next American love tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for the weekend post?
On the text that expresses the universal experience of new parenthood as well as any I’ve encountered—while still being clearly its unique and talented author’s handiwork.First I have to ask you to check out a couple of past posts: this one, on the incredible challenges of parenting in general and motherhood in particular; and this one, on Sylvia Plath’s much more varied and rich body of works than we often give her credit for. I’ll understand if you skip right to the next paragraph, but I’d love for you to have a sense of both of those posts before I move forward here. Thanks!Welcome back. Given those two posts, it’ll likely come as no surprise that the poem of Plath’s on which this post focuses, “Morning Song”(1961), is about motherhood; new motherhood, and the experience of new parenting overall, to be exact. I’ve seen critical arguments that the poem is bleak or cynical, but I don’t think that’s nearly the whole story; instead I’d argue that it captures, in its six three-line stanzas, the many different emotions and sides to new parenting, from those darkest responses (which are definitely there, especially with a first newborn, whether we like to admit it or not) to the more awed and amazed and powerfully inspired ones. To me, the poem’s best stanza, and its most Plath-ian metaphor, captures those multi-faceted responses pitch-perfectly: “I’m no more your mother / Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow / Effacement at the wind’s hand.” But if that doesn’t seem amazed enough, the next stanza (and these two occupy the poem’s midpoint) moves more toward those emotions: “All night your moth-breath / Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen: / A far sea moves in my ear.”Great stuff. But in my title I called this Plath’s most personal poem—and given that this is the poet who wrote about her suicide attempts (“Lady Lazarus”) and her love-hate relationships with her dead father and estranged husband (“Daddy”), among many many many other profoundly personal topics, that might seem to be a stretch. But to my mind, those poems are personal yet performative, the confessional mode as a combination of diary and one woman show. That’s not a bad thing, but neither is it raw or intimate enough to be truly personal. Whereas in “Morning Song,” written when Plath’s first child (her daughter Frieda) was 8 months old, I believe we’re getting something far more immediate, a genuine reflection (note again that cloud-mirror metaphor) of all that Plath was experiencing and feeling in that first year as a mother. Granted, she still turned it into a dense and complex poem; but that was Plath. I love her, and I love this poem most of all.My next American love tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for the weekend post?
February 12, 2013
February 12, 2013: I Love Chesnutt in His Journals
[In honor of Valentine’s Day, this week I’ll be highlighting a handful of the many things—moments, voices, interesting little details that mean a lot—that I love about America. I’d love if it you’d share some of your loves for the heart-y weekend post!]
On the honesty, self-reflection, and unabashed ambition contained in the personal journals of my favorite American author.I daresay most of us—including this AmericanStudier to be sure—have kept a youthful journal (or diary, as I called it), have recorded in secret, for our eyes only, our fears and hopes, our doubts and goals, and above all our constant romantic frustrations and failures (no, just me?). But the private journal of a young professional writer? That’s an entirely different proposition. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, in his essay “Nature” (1836), that “I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me”; while he was arguing that that is the case for all people, I would say that it’s infinitely more true for those who hope that their writing will find a public audience. Even if the young professional writer doesn’t plan for his or her journal to be read—and honestly, it seems likely to me for many to secretly hope that they’ll become famous enough that it will—that journal nonetheless becomes an extension of the burgeoning career, a space where its possibilities and problems can be addressed, engaged with, given explicit shape and definition. And I don’t know of a more exemplary, nor more compelling and American, such young professional writer’s journal than that of Charles W. Chesnutt.When I give my brief introduction to Chesnutt in my American Literature II survey course (on the first of our four days with The Marrow of Tradition [1901]), I focus on many of the ways in which his life and identity existed on a complex border between different realities: born in Ohio, just before the Civil War, to parents who had been slaves in North Carolina, he then moved back to North Carolina after the war and lived there most of his adult life; born to African American parents but with both grandfathers white men (likely his parents’ owners), he was light-skinned enough to pass for white but apparently chose to self-identify as African American throughout his life; he began his career writing dialect historical fiction in the plantation tradition (although in a far more complex and subversive vein than most of the tradition’s authors), then shifted abruptly to contemporary political and social novels; and so on. One thing that makes Chesnutt’s journals so darn loveable is that he was apparently fully aware of those many complex liminal spaces he identified, and numerous moments reflect his nuanced engagement with them. One of the richest is when he takes on the task of revising and compiling a collection of African American spirituals for a charismatic local minister: Chesnutt on the one hand acknowledges that the spirituals represent a vernacular and somewhat lowbrow literary form, but on the other hand recognizes that they have a power denied much highbrow literature; he also both takes pride in his authorly role in revising and reshaping them (and the recognition he might receive) and yet admits that the minister is the real driving force behind the project (as well as in the community).It’s on that latter theme, Chesnutt’s hopes and fears, his goals and concerns, for his literary career, that I find the journals most impressive and loveable. “My principal object,” the 19 year old Chesnutt wrote in the first entry of the journal (in 1877), is to improve myself in the art of composition”; that meant in part specific readings of and responses to rhetorical and composition advice manuals, such as Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), but also and more crucially honest and yet deeply ambitious self-reflections on his strengths and weaknesses, his potential and challenges, and above all his goals and purposes, as a writer. Some of those reflections are full of the confidence required to make it as a professional writer: responding to Albion Tourgée’s A Fool’s Errand (1881), Chesnutt wonders, “Why could not a colored man write a far better book about the South?” Some are far more humble and poignant, as when Chesnutt admits that, despite having “so little experience in composition, … I think I must write a book.” Some are particularly ambitious and inspiring, as when Chesnutt frames two distinct yet interconnected social purposes for his career: “If I can exalt my race”; “The object of my writings would be the elevation of the whites.” And all, all these personal yet professional revelations, make me love Chesnutt that much more.My next American love tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for the weekend post?
On the honesty, self-reflection, and unabashed ambition contained in the personal journals of my favorite American author.I daresay most of us—including this AmericanStudier to be sure—have kept a youthful journal (or diary, as I called it), have recorded in secret, for our eyes only, our fears and hopes, our doubts and goals, and above all our constant romantic frustrations and failures (no, just me?). But the private journal of a young professional writer? That’s an entirely different proposition. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, in his essay “Nature” (1836), that “I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me”; while he was arguing that that is the case for all people, I would say that it’s infinitely more true for those who hope that their writing will find a public audience. Even if the young professional writer doesn’t plan for his or her journal to be read—and honestly, it seems likely to me for many to secretly hope that they’ll become famous enough that it will—that journal nonetheless becomes an extension of the burgeoning career, a space where its possibilities and problems can be addressed, engaged with, given explicit shape and definition. And I don’t know of a more exemplary, nor more compelling and American, such young professional writer’s journal than that of Charles W. Chesnutt.When I give my brief introduction to Chesnutt in my American Literature II survey course (on the first of our four days with The Marrow of Tradition [1901]), I focus on many of the ways in which his life and identity existed on a complex border between different realities: born in Ohio, just before the Civil War, to parents who had been slaves in North Carolina, he then moved back to North Carolina after the war and lived there most of his adult life; born to African American parents but with both grandfathers white men (likely his parents’ owners), he was light-skinned enough to pass for white but apparently chose to self-identify as African American throughout his life; he began his career writing dialect historical fiction in the plantation tradition (although in a far more complex and subversive vein than most of the tradition’s authors), then shifted abruptly to contemporary political and social novels; and so on. One thing that makes Chesnutt’s journals so darn loveable is that he was apparently fully aware of those many complex liminal spaces he identified, and numerous moments reflect his nuanced engagement with them. One of the richest is when he takes on the task of revising and compiling a collection of African American spirituals for a charismatic local minister: Chesnutt on the one hand acknowledges that the spirituals represent a vernacular and somewhat lowbrow literary form, but on the other hand recognizes that they have a power denied much highbrow literature; he also both takes pride in his authorly role in revising and reshaping them (and the recognition he might receive) and yet admits that the minister is the real driving force behind the project (as well as in the community).It’s on that latter theme, Chesnutt’s hopes and fears, his goals and concerns, for his literary career, that I find the journals most impressive and loveable. “My principal object,” the 19 year old Chesnutt wrote in the first entry of the journal (in 1877), is to improve myself in the art of composition”; that meant in part specific readings of and responses to rhetorical and composition advice manuals, such as Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), but also and more crucially honest and yet deeply ambitious self-reflections on his strengths and weaknesses, his potential and challenges, and above all his goals and purposes, as a writer. Some of those reflections are full of the confidence required to make it as a professional writer: responding to Albion Tourgée’s A Fool’s Errand (1881), Chesnutt wonders, “Why could not a colored man write a far better book about the South?” Some are far more humble and poignant, as when Chesnutt admits that, despite having “so little experience in composition, … I think I must write a book.” Some are particularly ambitious and inspiring, as when Chesnutt frames two distinct yet interconnected social purposes for his career: “If I can exalt my race”; “The object of my writings would be the elevation of the whites.” And all, all these personal yet professional revelations, make me love Chesnutt that much more.My next American love tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for the weekend post?
February 11, 2013
February 11, 2013: I Love the Shaws
[In honor of Valentine’s Day, this week I’ll be highlighting a handful of the many things—moments, voices, interesting little details that mean a lot—that I love about America. I’d love if it you’d share some of your loves for the heart-y weekend post!]
Why I love one of America’s most striking and impressive parental decisions.I’m sure there are lots of reasons to love Francis George Shaw and Sarah Blake Sturgis Shaw. The Bostonian couple were devoted and passionate abolitionists, which despite popular misconceptions was far from a widespread or popular position in mid-19th century New England (much less New York, where they moved in the early 1850s). They befriended and supported some of the era’s most innovative, interesting, and impressive literary, cultural, and social figures, both while living adjacent to Brook Farm and in their later neighborhood on Staten Island. And they cleary did a wonderful job raising their five children to carry on their progressive identities and perspectives, at least if their only son, Robert Gould Shaw, is any indication—even if we leave aside Shaw’s decision to command the 54th Massachusetts, one of the nation’s first official African American regiments, Robert’s letters reveal a young man of unique and impressive maturity, insight, openmindedness, and character.But honestly, even if I learned that the Shaws kept a torture chamber in their basement where they practiced ritualistic Satanism on innocent passers-by, I’d still love them, thanks to the exemplary and profoundly American decision they made at one of their toughest and darkest moments. When Robert was killed during the regiment’s unsuccessful assault on South Carolina’s Fort Wagner, the Confederate forces buried him with the rest of the regiment’s dead; “with his niggers,” as the fort’s commander, future South Carolina Governor Johnson Hagood, replied when a Union general wrote to inquire about what had happened to Shaw’s body. When Shaw’s fellow regimental officers wrote to his grieving parents to ask if they wanted to press for his body to be disinterred and brought back North for a full burial with honors, Francis wrote back, “We would not have his body removed from where it lies surrounded by his brave and devoted soldiers, if we could accomplish it by a word. Please to bear this in mind and also, let it be known, so that, even in case there should be an opportunity, his remains may not be disturbed.”If it wasn’t easy to be an abolitionist in the best of circumstances, which certainly the wealthy Shaw family often experienced—and, again, it most definitely wasn’t—I can only imagine how incredibly difficult it was in this horrifically difficult moment. And it’s not like the alternative decision would have been necessarily a negative one—who could critique the Shaws if they asked for their only son’s body to be returned home, to have the chance to bury him and pay full tribute to all he had done and sacrificed? But they chose instead to honor what lay behind those actions: his principles, his ideals, and his powerfully American sense of community, which were of course also their own but which Robert had taken to another and even more striking level. (And which would be echoed in Saint-Gaudens’ amazing Shaw Memorial a few decades later.) As a parent, I respect that choice so much, and hope that I would have the courage and conviction to do the same. As an American, well, I just plain love the Shaws.My next American love tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for the weekend post?
Why I love one of America’s most striking and impressive parental decisions.I’m sure there are lots of reasons to love Francis George Shaw and Sarah Blake Sturgis Shaw. The Bostonian couple were devoted and passionate abolitionists, which despite popular misconceptions was far from a widespread or popular position in mid-19th century New England (much less New York, where they moved in the early 1850s). They befriended and supported some of the era’s most innovative, interesting, and impressive literary, cultural, and social figures, both while living adjacent to Brook Farm and in their later neighborhood on Staten Island. And they cleary did a wonderful job raising their five children to carry on their progressive identities and perspectives, at least if their only son, Robert Gould Shaw, is any indication—even if we leave aside Shaw’s decision to command the 54th Massachusetts, one of the nation’s first official African American regiments, Robert’s letters reveal a young man of unique and impressive maturity, insight, openmindedness, and character.But honestly, even if I learned that the Shaws kept a torture chamber in their basement where they practiced ritualistic Satanism on innocent passers-by, I’d still love them, thanks to the exemplary and profoundly American decision they made at one of their toughest and darkest moments. When Robert was killed during the regiment’s unsuccessful assault on South Carolina’s Fort Wagner, the Confederate forces buried him with the rest of the regiment’s dead; “with his niggers,” as the fort’s commander, future South Carolina Governor Johnson Hagood, replied when a Union general wrote to inquire about what had happened to Shaw’s body. When Shaw’s fellow regimental officers wrote to his grieving parents to ask if they wanted to press for his body to be disinterred and brought back North for a full burial with honors, Francis wrote back, “We would not have his body removed from where it lies surrounded by his brave and devoted soldiers, if we could accomplish it by a word. Please to bear this in mind and also, let it be known, so that, even in case there should be an opportunity, his remains may not be disturbed.”If it wasn’t easy to be an abolitionist in the best of circumstances, which certainly the wealthy Shaw family often experienced—and, again, it most definitely wasn’t—I can only imagine how incredibly difficult it was in this horrifically difficult moment. And it’s not like the alternative decision would have been necessarily a negative one—who could critique the Shaws if they asked for their only son’s body to be returned home, to have the chance to bury him and pay full tribute to all he had done and sacrificed? But they chose instead to honor what lay behind those actions: his principles, his ideals, and his powerfully American sense of community, which were of course also their own but which Robert had taken to another and even more striking level. (And which would be echoed in Saint-Gaudens’ amazing Shaw Memorial a few decades later.) As a parent, I respect that choice so much, and hope that I would have the courage and conviction to do the same. As an American, well, I just plain love the Shaws.My next American love tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Responses to this post? Loves you’d share for the weekend post?
February 9, 2013
February 9-10, 2013: Crowd-sourced Remembering
[Last year, to honor Black History Month—which was created by my first Memory Day nominee!—, I remembered amazing African American writers: Lucille Clifton, Harlem Renaissance authors, Anna Julia Cooper, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and David Walker. This year, I have focused on complex and compelling historical conversations. This crowd-sourced post is drawm from the responses and suggestions of fellow Black History- and AmericanStudiers—please add yours below!]
Matt Goguen suggests, “Zora Neale Hurston, not only for her most known work Their Eyes Were Watching God but for her extensive work with the WPAduring the Great Depression and cultural/folklore fieldwork.”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Thoughts you’d add to these?
Matt Goguen suggests, “Zora Neale Hurston, not only for her most known work Their Eyes Were Watching God but for her extensive work with the WPAduring the Great Depression and cultural/folklore fieldwork.”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Thoughts you’d add to these?
Benjamin A. Railton's Blog
- Benjamin A. Railton's profile
- 2 followers
Benjamin A. Railton isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
