Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 403
October 27, 2012
October 27-28, 2012: Crowd-Sourcing American Adversity
[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I have highlighted a handful of such moments; this crowd-sourced post is drawn from responses to them and other ideas from fellow AmericanStudiers.]
Jeff Renye highlights the very complex case of Lance Armstrong, which represents at one and the same time (to my mind) a genuine triumph over adversity and a fraudulent version of same. Fellow AmericanStudier Matt Goguen is considering writing an analytical piece for the site on Armstrong, so stay tuned for that. But I’ll ask you all as well—what do you think about Armstrong and these questions?Since that was it for the crowd-sourced responses this week, I wanted to frame one more question to which I’d love to hear your responses, readers and fellow AmericanStudiers: which books, figures, stories, histories, do you turn to when you’re experiencing your own adversity? Who or what inspires you? Why?Next series next week,BenPS. So what do you think?10/27 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two unique, significant, and hugely talented 20thcentury American authors, Sylvia Plath and Maxine Hong Kingston.10/28 Memory Day nominee: Jonas Salk!
Jeff Renye highlights the very complex case of Lance Armstrong, which represents at one and the same time (to my mind) a genuine triumph over adversity and a fraudulent version of same. Fellow AmericanStudier Matt Goguen is considering writing an analytical piece for the site on Armstrong, so stay tuned for that. But I’ll ask you all as well—what do you think about Armstrong and these questions?Since that was it for the crowd-sourced responses this week, I wanted to frame one more question to which I’d love to hear your responses, readers and fellow AmericanStudiers: which books, figures, stories, histories, do you turn to when you’re experiencing your own adversity? Who or what inspires you? Why?Next series next week,BenPS. So what do you think?10/27 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two unique, significant, and hugely talented 20thcentury American authors, Sylvia Plath and Maxine Hong Kingston.10/28 Memory Day nominee: Jonas Salk!
October 26, 2012
October 26, 2012: Adverse Reactions, Part Five
[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of such moments, and would love to hear your nominations and thoughts for the weekend post.]
On the American leader who just plain exemplifies inspiring responses to adversity.
There are a lot of reasons why Abraham Lincoln consistently tops polls asking about the “best” or “greatest” American presidents, and I’m sure Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg will remind us of many in a couple months. But I would argue that virtually all of those reasons have one central element: they demonstrate the various and always impressive ways in which Lincoln responded to the most challenging and adverse moment in American history. Here are just a few examples:1) His words: Again and again, Lincoln found nearly perfect words with which to respond to our darkest moments. The Gettysburg Address is exhibit A, but I would also highlight both the First and Second Inaugurals as among the top five such speeches as well.
2) His actions: I know that there are pragmatic, and even cynical, ways to view the Emancipation Proclamation; I’m sure that the upcoming film, like the book on which it’s based, will explore those multiple sides to some degree. But the truth is that neither abolitionism nor emancipation were widely popular in the North, and that if nothing else (and there is much else), Lincoln’s choice to issue represented significant social and political risk.
3) His breadth: The harshest and most accurate critiques that can be leveled at Lincoln would have to do with the things he was willing to sacrifice in pursuing the war effort, with habeas corpus chief among them. Yet at the same time that he was pursuing that effort with explicit and understandable focus, he was also always thinking about the nation’s future and identity beyond. To highlight one example, Lincoln began pursuing the purchase of Alaska during the war, recognizing that America must continue to grow even as its unity remained in doubt.For those reasons, and many more, Lincoln will always be one of our most inspiring national figures, and a true exemplar of how we can and must try to turn our darkest moments—even those we bring upon ourselves—into brighter futures.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So last chance to add to that post: Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight? Thoughts on any of the week’s topics?10/26 Memory Day nominee: Mahalia Jackson, for the groundbreaking and powerful recordings that helped make her “The Queen of Gospel,” but also for her courageouscivil rights activism and advocacy.[image error]
On the American leader who just plain exemplifies inspiring responses to adversity.
There are a lot of reasons why Abraham Lincoln consistently tops polls asking about the “best” or “greatest” American presidents, and I’m sure Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg will remind us of many in a couple months. But I would argue that virtually all of those reasons have one central element: they demonstrate the various and always impressive ways in which Lincoln responded to the most challenging and adverse moment in American history. Here are just a few examples:1) His words: Again and again, Lincoln found nearly perfect words with which to respond to our darkest moments. The Gettysburg Address is exhibit A, but I would also highlight both the First and Second Inaugurals as among the top five such speeches as well.
2) His actions: I know that there are pragmatic, and even cynical, ways to view the Emancipation Proclamation; I’m sure that the upcoming film, like the book on which it’s based, will explore those multiple sides to some degree. But the truth is that neither abolitionism nor emancipation were widely popular in the North, and that if nothing else (and there is much else), Lincoln’s choice to issue represented significant social and political risk.
3) His breadth: The harshest and most accurate critiques that can be leveled at Lincoln would have to do with the things he was willing to sacrifice in pursuing the war effort, with habeas corpus chief among them. Yet at the same time that he was pursuing that effort with explicit and understandable focus, he was also always thinking about the nation’s future and identity beyond. To highlight one example, Lincoln began pursuing the purchase of Alaska during the war, recognizing that America must continue to grow even as its unity remained in doubt.For those reasons, and many more, Lincoln will always be one of our most inspiring national figures, and a true exemplar of how we can and must try to turn our darkest moments—even those we bring upon ourselves—into brighter futures.Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So last chance to add to that post: Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight? Thoughts on any of the week’s topics?10/26 Memory Day nominee: Mahalia Jackson, for the groundbreaking and powerful recordings that helped make her “The Queen of Gospel,” but also for her courageouscivil rights activism and advocacy.[image error]
October 25, 2012
October 25, 2012: Adverse Reactions, Part Four
[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of such moments, and would love to hear your nominations and thoughts for the weekend post.]
On two memoirs that deal very differently, but equally impressively, with tragic losses.Memoir, or as it’s often called within scholarly conversations “life writing (although the concept includes biographical as well as autobiographical works),” is a pretty complex and fraught literary genre. Even leaving aside the questions of veracity and authenticity that have been raised by numerous recent memoirs (most particularly James Frye’s A Million Little Pieces [2003] and the Oprah-related scandal it produced), the basic facts of any memoir are plenty complex enough: a person looking back at his or her life and trying to write about some of its events and themes for outside audiences, with various private and public motives, with all of the choices that go into any written work, with all that is potentially left out, and so on. Yet as long as we recognize all those factors, and thus treat memoirs as fundamentally creative works, the genre can also provide powerful and inspiring stories, narratives of individuals dealing with and working through (in many cases) difficult and adverse situations.Moreover, memoirs can highlight in their style and tone, as much as in their content and themes, the hugely varied and equally effective ways in which we can respond to such situations. To that end, I would point to two recent, justly celebrated memoirs, one by an already prominent writer and one that established its author on the literary scene, but both dealing centrally with tragic losses and the authors’ responses to them. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking(2005) details the author’s many stages and extremes in the year after the unexpected death of her husband of forty years, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, a period during which their daughter was also gravely ill. Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) traces the author’s many years of stewardship over his younger brother, an effort that Eggers undertook after their parents’ unexpected deaths within 32 days of one another (Eggers was 21 and his brother 8 at the time). Both number among the most compelling American memoirs I’ve read, and certainly among the most vital contributions to the genre in the early 21stcentury. Yet despite those many parallels, the two books could not be more different in their predominant styles and tones. Those differences are due in no small measure to their authors’ distinct voices: Didion has throughout her career written complex psychological, fragmented, and often stream of consciousness novelsand non-fiction, and adopts similar perspectives and themes for her memoir; whereas Eggers has become known as a founder of McSweeney’s , the editor of the Best American Non-Required Reading series, and other counter-cultural and satirical works, and brings that persona to both of his roles (as author and as main character) in his memoir. But I would also argue that the books’ differences reflect two distinct, if perhaps complementary, ways to write and work through loss and adversity: in Didion’s case, to allow each and every part of the experience its time and space, to engage with every emotion and response without judgment or fear (or at least not self-consciousness), and to chart that process in writing; and in Eggers’ case, to emphasize self-consciously the hyperbole itself, the extremes of adversity and of heroism in combating them, to find the humor but also certainly the pathos within those extremes, and to tell that story with charisma for his audience. Each, again, works very well on its own terms; together they offer a multi-part map to dealing with, and writing about, the worst of what people can experience.Next inspiring response to adversity tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/25 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering 20th century Americans who took America and the worldto entirely new placesand ideas, Richard Byrd and Henry Steele Commager.
On two memoirs that deal very differently, but equally impressively, with tragic losses.Memoir, or as it’s often called within scholarly conversations “life writing (although the concept includes biographical as well as autobiographical works),” is a pretty complex and fraught literary genre. Even leaving aside the questions of veracity and authenticity that have been raised by numerous recent memoirs (most particularly James Frye’s A Million Little Pieces [2003] and the Oprah-related scandal it produced), the basic facts of any memoir are plenty complex enough: a person looking back at his or her life and trying to write about some of its events and themes for outside audiences, with various private and public motives, with all of the choices that go into any written work, with all that is potentially left out, and so on. Yet as long as we recognize all those factors, and thus treat memoirs as fundamentally creative works, the genre can also provide powerful and inspiring stories, narratives of individuals dealing with and working through (in many cases) difficult and adverse situations.Moreover, memoirs can highlight in their style and tone, as much as in their content and themes, the hugely varied and equally effective ways in which we can respond to such situations. To that end, I would point to two recent, justly celebrated memoirs, one by an already prominent writer and one that established its author on the literary scene, but both dealing centrally with tragic losses and the authors’ responses to them. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking(2005) details the author’s many stages and extremes in the year after the unexpected death of her husband of forty years, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, a period during which their daughter was also gravely ill. Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) traces the author’s many years of stewardship over his younger brother, an effort that Eggers undertook after their parents’ unexpected deaths within 32 days of one another (Eggers was 21 and his brother 8 at the time). Both number among the most compelling American memoirs I’ve read, and certainly among the most vital contributions to the genre in the early 21stcentury. Yet despite those many parallels, the two books could not be more different in their predominant styles and tones. Those differences are due in no small measure to their authors’ distinct voices: Didion has throughout her career written complex psychological, fragmented, and often stream of consciousness novelsand non-fiction, and adopts similar perspectives and themes for her memoir; whereas Eggers has become known as a founder of McSweeney’s , the editor of the Best American Non-Required Reading series, and other counter-cultural and satirical works, and brings that persona to both of his roles (as author and as main character) in his memoir. But I would also argue that the books’ differences reflect two distinct, if perhaps complementary, ways to write and work through loss and adversity: in Didion’s case, to allow each and every part of the experience its time and space, to engage with every emotion and response without judgment or fear (or at least not self-consciousness), and to chart that process in writing; and in Eggers’ case, to emphasize self-consciously the hyperbole itself, the extremes of adversity and of heroism in combating them, to find the humor but also certainly the pathos within those extremes, and to tell that story with charisma for his audience. Each, again, works very well on its own terms; together they offer a multi-part map to dealing with, and writing about, the worst of what people can experience.Next inspiring response to adversity tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/25 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering 20th century Americans who took America and the worldto entirely new placesand ideas, Richard Byrd and Henry Steele Commager.
October 24, 2012
October 24, 2012: Adverse Reactions, Part Three
[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of such moments, and would love to hear your nominations and thoughts for the weekend post.]
On one of the best American examples of turning adversity into triumph—and a whole lot more.Thanks in no small measure to The Miracle Worker, both the 1957 William Gibson play and the 1962 Academy Award-winning film, I’d argue that most Americans have a good sense of the amazing life and story of Helen Keller. Left deaf and blind by an illness that hit her when she was just 19 months old, during a period (the early 1880s) when such childhood disabilities were even more affecting and challenging (to say the least) than they remain in our own era, Keller could very easily have become simply a tragic story of lost potential and family struggles, one of many in a century when childhood mortality rates were strikingly high. But thanks to dedicated parents, one truly pioneering and impressive teacher, and her own perseverance, Keller instead became, in the course of her nearly nine full decades of life, one of the nation’s foremost authors, lecturers, and activists.The specifics of how Keller learned to overcome her disabilities and becoming a highly functioning member of society (indeed, one who functioned at a higher level than almost all of her peers, of all physical abilities), which of course are the famous heart of The Miracle Worker, would be inspiring in any era; again, in her own late 19th century childhood they were that much more impressive still. It’s important to reiterate that she did not accomplish those triumphs on her own; or, rather, that two equally impressive women, her mother Kate Adams Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan, significantly contributed their own inspiring perspectives and perseverance to her life and triumphs. Taken together, the lives and efforts of these three women exemplify not only the most ideal response to a tragic (or at least very adverse) situation, but also the degree to which community and collaboration consistently offer the best possibilities for hope and progress in the face of such adversities.Yet I would also highlight one more individual and unique, and to my mind equally inspiring, aspect of Helen Keller’s life and identity: her socialism. While that political and social philosophy was not, in the late 19th and early 20th century moments when Keller first connected to it, nearly as controversial here in the United States as it became in the mid-20th century and remains in our own contemporary moment, neither of course was it in the American mainstream. (At least not overtly—as I have blogged elsewhere, the Pledge of Allegiance was authored in 1892 by an avowed socialist, to cite one subtle such presence.) But to my mind, what makes Keller’s socialism so impressive has nothing to do with political debates, and everything to do with what it reflects in her own trajectory: the fact that, having dealt with and overcome some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable, Keller gravitated toward a philosophy that was grounded in significant measure in sympathy for, and a focus on alleviating the condition of, all those in desperate situations. It would be easy to imagine Keller embracing the “self-made” mantra that was at the core of many Gilded Age American narratives, but she went instead in the exact opposite direction: recognizing in response to her own challenges and triumphs that any and all such successes depend on community and support. Next inspiring response to adversity tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/24 Memory Day nominee: Annie Edson Taylor, the Civil War widow and retired schoolteacher who capped an impressive and inspiring subsequent life of travel and adventure by becoming, at the age of 63, the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
On one of the best American examples of turning adversity into triumph—and a whole lot more.Thanks in no small measure to The Miracle Worker, both the 1957 William Gibson play and the 1962 Academy Award-winning film, I’d argue that most Americans have a good sense of the amazing life and story of Helen Keller. Left deaf and blind by an illness that hit her when she was just 19 months old, during a period (the early 1880s) when such childhood disabilities were even more affecting and challenging (to say the least) than they remain in our own era, Keller could very easily have become simply a tragic story of lost potential and family struggles, one of many in a century when childhood mortality rates were strikingly high. But thanks to dedicated parents, one truly pioneering and impressive teacher, and her own perseverance, Keller instead became, in the course of her nearly nine full decades of life, one of the nation’s foremost authors, lecturers, and activists.The specifics of how Keller learned to overcome her disabilities and becoming a highly functioning member of society (indeed, one who functioned at a higher level than almost all of her peers, of all physical abilities), which of course are the famous heart of The Miracle Worker, would be inspiring in any era; again, in her own late 19th century childhood they were that much more impressive still. It’s important to reiterate that she did not accomplish those triumphs on her own; or, rather, that two equally impressive women, her mother Kate Adams Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan, significantly contributed their own inspiring perspectives and perseverance to her life and triumphs. Taken together, the lives and efforts of these three women exemplify not only the most ideal response to a tragic (or at least very adverse) situation, but also the degree to which community and collaboration consistently offer the best possibilities for hope and progress in the face of such adversities.Yet I would also highlight one more individual and unique, and to my mind equally inspiring, aspect of Helen Keller’s life and identity: her socialism. While that political and social philosophy was not, in the late 19th and early 20th century moments when Keller first connected to it, nearly as controversial here in the United States as it became in the mid-20th century and remains in our own contemporary moment, neither of course was it in the American mainstream. (At least not overtly—as I have blogged elsewhere, the Pledge of Allegiance was authored in 1892 by an avowed socialist, to cite one subtle such presence.) But to my mind, what makes Keller’s socialism so impressive has nothing to do with political debates, and everything to do with what it reflects in her own trajectory: the fact that, having dealt with and overcome some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable, Keller gravitated toward a philosophy that was grounded in significant measure in sympathy for, and a focus on alleviating the condition of, all those in desperate situations. It would be easy to imagine Keller embracing the “self-made” mantra that was at the core of many Gilded Age American narratives, but she went instead in the exact opposite direction: recognizing in response to her own challenges and triumphs that any and all such successes depend on community and support. Next inspiring response to adversity tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/24 Memory Day nominee: Annie Edson Taylor, the Civil War widow and retired schoolteacher who capped an impressive and inspiring subsequent life of travel and adventure by becoming, at the age of 63, the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
October 23, 2012
October 23, 2012: Adverse Reactions, Part Two
[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of such moments, and would love to hear your nominations and thoughts for the weekend post.]
On the moments in which great tragedy turns to powerful activism.Earlier this year, I blogged about the Trayvon Martin shooting, and more exactly about the American narratives and realities of race to which that shooting connected. Preparations for the 2013 trial of Martin’s shooter, George Zimmerman, are underway in Florida, and so many of those narratives and realities have returned to the conversations and debates surrounding Zimmerman’s actions, Martin’s death, the media coverage in the aftermath, and more. Yet amid all those narratives and debates, and even amid the (what I hope are) more measured analyses such as those I offered in my initial post, it can be easy to lose sight of the case’s two simplest and most profound truths: the inarguable tragedy of Martin’s death, and of the death of any 17 year old; and what such a tragic loss means to those who knew and loved Martin, his parents most especially. Moreover, if we can focus on that tragedy and on Martin’s parents, we will do more than do justice to those horrors: we will be able to see how they are working to turn tragedy into activism, to respond to their loss not only with the inevitable grief and anger but with impassioned efforts to make the nation and world a better place. His parents have focused those efforts on the so-called Stand Your Ground Laws (also known as the Castle Doctrine), the laws that have been passed in more than twenty states over the last few years and that allow armed Americans to shoot and kill their fellow citizens in increasingly broadly defined situations of “self-defense” and thus avoid criminal charges or prosecution. Whether or not Zimmerman’s actions fell under Florida’s such law is an open question, and one on which his trial will certainly hinge; but Trayvon’s parents have not in any case limited their efforts to that question and case, choosing instead to challenge the legality and rationality of the laws throughout the nation. Whatever your position on the laws, I believe those efforts, to seek what his parents call “change for Trayvon,” embody the best kind of response to such an unthinkable loss and tragedy.In responding in that impressive way, Martin’s parents join a list of Americans who have done the same, turning tragedy into inspiring activism. Near the top of that list, for me, would be Jim and Sue Brady; Jim was the Reagan Press Secretary who was seriously wounded in and permanently disabled by the 1981 John Hinckley assassination attempt on the president, and in the years after that shooting, both Jim and Sue became vocal and committed activists for gun control and reform. Those efforts, which became known as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violenceand led to the passage of the 1993 Brady Bill, are of course as controversial and open to debate as any gun control measures, or any social and political activism at all for that matter. But I would hope, again, that all Americans and people, regardless of our positions on particular issues, can be inspired by Jim and Sue Brady, and by the way in which they responded to a great and defining tragedy with lifelong activism, not so much for themselves (no gun control legislation will change what happened to Jim nor ameliorate his present situation in any way) but for all their fellow Americans. Next inspiring response to adversity tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/23 Memory Day nominee: Johnny Carson, who redefined a television genre but whose influence on 20thcentury American culture and society went far beyond just late nights.
On the moments in which great tragedy turns to powerful activism.Earlier this year, I blogged about the Trayvon Martin shooting, and more exactly about the American narratives and realities of race to which that shooting connected. Preparations for the 2013 trial of Martin’s shooter, George Zimmerman, are underway in Florida, and so many of those narratives and realities have returned to the conversations and debates surrounding Zimmerman’s actions, Martin’s death, the media coverage in the aftermath, and more. Yet amid all those narratives and debates, and even amid the (what I hope are) more measured analyses such as those I offered in my initial post, it can be easy to lose sight of the case’s two simplest and most profound truths: the inarguable tragedy of Martin’s death, and of the death of any 17 year old; and what such a tragic loss means to those who knew and loved Martin, his parents most especially. Moreover, if we can focus on that tragedy and on Martin’s parents, we will do more than do justice to those horrors: we will be able to see how they are working to turn tragedy into activism, to respond to their loss not only with the inevitable grief and anger but with impassioned efforts to make the nation and world a better place. His parents have focused those efforts on the so-called Stand Your Ground Laws (also known as the Castle Doctrine), the laws that have been passed in more than twenty states over the last few years and that allow armed Americans to shoot and kill their fellow citizens in increasingly broadly defined situations of “self-defense” and thus avoid criminal charges or prosecution. Whether or not Zimmerman’s actions fell under Florida’s such law is an open question, and one on which his trial will certainly hinge; but Trayvon’s parents have not in any case limited their efforts to that question and case, choosing instead to challenge the legality and rationality of the laws throughout the nation. Whatever your position on the laws, I believe those efforts, to seek what his parents call “change for Trayvon,” embody the best kind of response to such an unthinkable loss and tragedy.In responding in that impressive way, Martin’s parents join a list of Americans who have done the same, turning tragedy into inspiring activism. Near the top of that list, for me, would be Jim and Sue Brady; Jim was the Reagan Press Secretary who was seriously wounded in and permanently disabled by the 1981 John Hinckley assassination attempt on the president, and in the years after that shooting, both Jim and Sue became vocal and committed activists for gun control and reform. Those efforts, which became known as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violenceand led to the passage of the 1993 Brady Bill, are of course as controversial and open to debate as any gun control measures, or any social and political activism at all for that matter. But I would hope, again, that all Americans and people, regardless of our positions on particular issues, can be inspired by Jim and Sue Brady, and by the way in which they responded to a great and defining tragedy with lifelong activism, not so much for themselves (no gun control legislation will change what happened to Jim nor ameliorate his present situation in any way) but for all their fellow Americans. Next inspiring response to adversity tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/23 Memory Day nominee: Johnny Carson, who redefined a television genre but whose influence on 20thcentury American culture and society went far beyond just late nights.
October 22, 2012
October 22, 2012: Adverse Reactions, Part One
[This AmericanStudier is going through a very, very tough time; at times like this, AmericanStudies becomes something different for me: a source of inspiration, an opportunity to remember some of the moments in which Americans have faced great adversity and responded with great power. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of such moments, and would love to hear your nominations and thoughts for the weekend post.]
On the powerful writings through which a prison became something more.One of the main premises underlying both my motivations in creating this blog and many of the topics with which I’ve dealt here—and, for that matter, much of my scholarly work and teaching more broadly—is that in focusing as we tend to on the overtly and easily inspirational and ideal aspects of our national histories and identities, we Americans elide not only the more difficult and dark sides but also some more genuinely and profoundly inspirational and ideal stories and voices. And I’m not sure any duality can better exemplify that premise than that between Ellis and Angel Islands. Ellis is a great example of an overtly and pretty easily inspirational and ideal site, and I don’t mean that in a dismissive way; while certainly there were more troubling aspects of Ellis (such as the medical tests and quarantines) that we have downplayed, there’s no doubt that the place does represent the point of arrival for many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of new Americans, and that it is thus without question the physical counterpart to and manifestation of Emma Lazarus’ poem, the first space in which those huddled masses could perhaps begin to breathe free and could certainly embark on the next stages of their American journeys. My own maternal great-grandparents most likely came to America through Ellis around the turn of the 20th century, so I get the place it holds in our individual and collective narratives for sure.Angel Island, in San Francisco Bay, served as the “Ellis Island of the West” (as it was sometimes known) for a much briefer time, from 1910 to 1940, although it is estimated that at least two hundred thousand and perhaps as many as a million immigrants (most but not all from China and Japan) were processed through it during those decades. Yet the realities of the immigration laws under which Angel existed—first the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and then the even more restrictive and xenophobic Asian Exclusion Act of 1924—made Angel Island into a much more complicated space than Ellis, one that at best entailed extensive interrogations and challenges to its arrivals and at worst (and much of the time) became a prison, one in which Asian immigrants could expect to live for years before they were offered the opportunity to travel to the mainland (if they were not simply turned away). And just as prisoners often carve their voices (or at least their chronologies) into their cell walls, so too did many of Angel Island’s inhabitants create an amazing body of impromptu communal poetry on its walls—those folk literary texts, which were collected and published as early as the 1930s and are given new voice for the 21st century at this site, are an amazing record of heartbreak and hope, of the squalid and painful conditions that greeted arrivals at Angel and yet the continuing faith with which they endured their years there and because of which they continued to fight for the chance to join the nation that lay outside its walls.Yet the story of Angel Island, like the story of Asian immigration in this time period (and really up until the 1965 immigration act) more generally, entailed more of the heartbreak than the hope for far too high of a percentage of those who experienced it. And it is those darker sides that are at the heart of one of America’s greatest short stories, Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free” (1912; most of it, although unfortunately not the conclusion, is available at page 93). Only the final, briefest and most devastating section of Far’s story is set on Angel Island itself (or a parallel holding station), since the story’s two adult characters (a Chinese American husband and wife) have been lucky enough to gain entry to the nation and begin to create a new life here, in San Francisco’s Chinatown; but since it is their infant son who has been detained upon his first arrival to America at the story’s opening (the wife returned to China to care for her dying mother-in-law and gave birth while there), it is quite literally the case that their family and future are likewise detained, held in a state of uncertainty and limbo as the story’s events play out. No paraphrase or summary can do justice to Far’s concluding section, nor to her story’s overall engagement with the ideals and the realities of American life through the lens of this fictional family and very real place and issue; but since that conclusion is apparently not available online, I will say that it is both understated and yet one of the most profoundly tragic moments in American literature, a moment that for any parent—and any empathetic person for that matter—brings home the human cost of the period’s exclusionary laws and of the worst possible meanings of Angel Island.The Chinese Exclusion Act and its aftermath created some of the most adverse and painful situations faced by immigrants and Americans; and yet, as both the Angel Island poetry and Far’s story illustrate in their own ways, in the midst of those most brutal experiences we can find some of the most inspiring and ideal American words, identities, and voices. More tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/22 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two nearly mythic American icons whose actual experiences and identities, while complex and controversial, also comprise some of the bravest choicesin our history, Daniel Booneand John Reed.
On the powerful writings through which a prison became something more.One of the main premises underlying both my motivations in creating this blog and many of the topics with which I’ve dealt here—and, for that matter, much of my scholarly work and teaching more broadly—is that in focusing as we tend to on the overtly and easily inspirational and ideal aspects of our national histories and identities, we Americans elide not only the more difficult and dark sides but also some more genuinely and profoundly inspirational and ideal stories and voices. And I’m not sure any duality can better exemplify that premise than that between Ellis and Angel Islands. Ellis is a great example of an overtly and pretty easily inspirational and ideal site, and I don’t mean that in a dismissive way; while certainly there were more troubling aspects of Ellis (such as the medical tests and quarantines) that we have downplayed, there’s no doubt that the place does represent the point of arrival for many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of new Americans, and that it is thus without question the physical counterpart to and manifestation of Emma Lazarus’ poem, the first space in which those huddled masses could perhaps begin to breathe free and could certainly embark on the next stages of their American journeys. My own maternal great-grandparents most likely came to America through Ellis around the turn of the 20th century, so I get the place it holds in our individual and collective narratives for sure.Angel Island, in San Francisco Bay, served as the “Ellis Island of the West” (as it was sometimes known) for a much briefer time, from 1910 to 1940, although it is estimated that at least two hundred thousand and perhaps as many as a million immigrants (most but not all from China and Japan) were processed through it during those decades. Yet the realities of the immigration laws under which Angel existed—first the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and then the even more restrictive and xenophobic Asian Exclusion Act of 1924—made Angel Island into a much more complicated space than Ellis, one that at best entailed extensive interrogations and challenges to its arrivals and at worst (and much of the time) became a prison, one in which Asian immigrants could expect to live for years before they were offered the opportunity to travel to the mainland (if they were not simply turned away). And just as prisoners often carve their voices (or at least their chronologies) into their cell walls, so too did many of Angel Island’s inhabitants create an amazing body of impromptu communal poetry on its walls—those folk literary texts, which were collected and published as early as the 1930s and are given new voice for the 21st century at this site, are an amazing record of heartbreak and hope, of the squalid and painful conditions that greeted arrivals at Angel and yet the continuing faith with which they endured their years there and because of which they continued to fight for the chance to join the nation that lay outside its walls.Yet the story of Angel Island, like the story of Asian immigration in this time period (and really up until the 1965 immigration act) more generally, entailed more of the heartbreak than the hope for far too high of a percentage of those who experienced it. And it is those darker sides that are at the heart of one of America’s greatest short stories, Sui Sin Far’s “In the Land of the Free” (1912; most of it, although unfortunately not the conclusion, is available at page 93). Only the final, briefest and most devastating section of Far’s story is set on Angel Island itself (or a parallel holding station), since the story’s two adult characters (a Chinese American husband and wife) have been lucky enough to gain entry to the nation and begin to create a new life here, in San Francisco’s Chinatown; but since it is their infant son who has been detained upon his first arrival to America at the story’s opening (the wife returned to China to care for her dying mother-in-law and gave birth while there), it is quite literally the case that their family and future are likewise detained, held in a state of uncertainty and limbo as the story’s events play out. No paraphrase or summary can do justice to Far’s concluding section, nor to her story’s overall engagement with the ideals and the realities of American life through the lens of this fictional family and very real place and issue; but since that conclusion is apparently not available online, I will say that it is both understated and yet one of the most profoundly tragic moments in American literature, a moment that for any parent—and any empathetic person for that matter—brings home the human cost of the period’s exclusionary laws and of the worst possible meanings of Angel Island.The Chinese Exclusion Act and its aftermath created some of the most adverse and painful situations faced by immigrants and Americans; and yet, as both the Angel Island poetry and Far’s story illustrate in their own ways, in the midst of those most brutal experiences we can find some of the most inspiring and ideal American words, identities, and voices. More tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think? Powerful responses to adversity you’d highlight?10/22 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two nearly mythic American icons whose actual experiences and identities, while complex and controversial, also comprise some of the bravest choicesin our history, Daniel Booneand John Reed.
October 20, 2012
October 20-21, 2012: Crowd-sourcing Children’s Books
[This week, I have the wonderful opportunity to be a Celebrity Reader—emphasis on the celebrity, right? Right?!—for both of my sons’ elementary school classes. So in honor of that occasion, I’ve featured blog posts on children’s books and authors and American Studies. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and perspectives of other American Studiers. Share yours below, please!]
In response to Monday’s Margaret Weis Brown post, Michelle Moravec notes that she “was just tweeting with someone about her other well known work The Runaway Bunny, aka the stalker mommy bunny book. I do wonder if the ’42 publication date relates to the persistent message that mama will not ever abandon baby bunny?”Brenda Elsey adds on that same post that “these books have incredible staying power. I think Runaway Bunny is both a mother and child fantasy of complete connection. Creepy, perhaps, but psychically satisfying to both. I nominate The Story of Ferdinand – every pacifist parent’s dream!”In response to Tuesday’s Ezra Jack Keats tribute, Tona Hangen writes, “Hear, hear for Ezra Jack Keats! The Snowy Day is a mid-century collage graphic marvel. The page where Peter discovers the snowball has melted makes me cry every time. I think it was one of the few from my own childhood that had matter-of-fact African American main characters in it. That, and Gyo Fujikawa’s lovingly multicultural books about babies.”And in response to Wednesday’s Mike Mulligan post, Tona writes, “Another of Burton's marvelous books that's a favorite of mine is The Little House , in which a sweet pink Cape Cod starts out as a rural house but eventually gets a big soul-draining city built around it. Like Mike Mulligan, her colored-pencil illustrations convey the bustle and dehumanization of the industrial urban landscape with perfection. It's a meditation on the city vs the country as a deep tension in American life.”In response to Thursday’s Maurice Sendak tribute, Matt Goguen writes, “I remember listening to an NPR interview with Sendak before he passed away. They were talking about his last book Bumble-Ardy and how he was able to write it during a particularly dark period of his life. The most poignant part of the interview came when Sendak said there were two lines in Bumble-Ardy that meant more to him than any other he had ever written. Bumble-Ardy is a pig that lives with his aunt and has never had a birthday party. Close to his ninth birthday, he invites many of the rowdy pigs in town to his aunt's home while she is at work and their party gets very out of hand. When Bumble-Ardy's aunt returns from work later and sees the big mess, she said ‘Okay, Smarty. You've had your party but never again.’ Bumble-Ardy replied ‘I promise, I swear, I'll never turn ten.’”On the same post, Irene Maryniuk writes, “On a much sillier note, the title Higgilety Piggledty Pop! Or, There Must be More to Life is a phrase that I and my siblings have continually used to describe bad days for over a decade. The phrase and the story just moved into our vocabulary. Now, it's code on the phone or in texts for when things aren't going well, but said with sweetness, not anger.”Nikolai Soudekrecommends Spike Jonze’s documentary on Sendak, Tell Them Anything You Want (2011; available in full at that website).In response to Friday’s Curious George post, Rob Gosselin writes, “When my boys were little I rented the original Flipper (1963) movie. My boys were like 6 and 4. In the first ten minutes the main character finds Flipper (a dolphin) washed up on the rocks with arrows shot in him. The father in the movie breaks out a shotgun to "take it out of its misery." Aims it and everything. Both of my sons freaked. That's when I learned to always preview, or preread, just about anything.”Amara highlights another childhood favorite, Doris Susan Smith’s The Travels of J.B. Rabbit (1982). Rob Gosselin adds, “Shel Silverstein. For so many reasons.” And Irene adds, “I was a big fan of Rosemary Wells’ characters--especially Max and Ruby. I realize they are now industry characters--stuffed animals and books galore, but back then, there was Morris' Disappearing Bag and six board books--or at least that's all the Kent Free Library owned. I realize now that I have a healthy dose of both Max and Ruby in me. Max is so off-kilter, gloriously free and inventive. He makes us laugh with his unique logic and sense of love. And Ruby is anxiety driven, worrying about Max and what everyone else will think. I now own a number of Max and Ruby books and can truly say my personality type could be classified as ‘MaxRuby.’”Monica Jackson adds, “The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is one of the greatest children's books, ever. By the way, this is my favorite topic (children's lit) along with young adult fiction. I could go on and on, but my favorites are: Number the Stars (ages 9-11, a great introduction to teaching children about the Holocaust), The Legend of the Bluebonnet (ages 6-9, Native American culture), Alice in Wonderland, Alice through the Looking Glass, Miss Nelson is Missing (ages 6-9, good for teaching positive behavior in school, lol), etc.”10/20 Memory Day nominee: John Dewey!10/21 Memory Day nominee: Ursula Le Guin, the pioneering science fiction and fantasy author who has also written eloquently about many of our most complex and important cultural questions.
In response to Monday’s Margaret Weis Brown post, Michelle Moravec notes that she “was just tweeting with someone about her other well known work The Runaway Bunny, aka the stalker mommy bunny book. I do wonder if the ’42 publication date relates to the persistent message that mama will not ever abandon baby bunny?”Brenda Elsey adds on that same post that “these books have incredible staying power. I think Runaway Bunny is both a mother and child fantasy of complete connection. Creepy, perhaps, but psychically satisfying to both. I nominate The Story of Ferdinand – every pacifist parent’s dream!”In response to Tuesday’s Ezra Jack Keats tribute, Tona Hangen writes, “Hear, hear for Ezra Jack Keats! The Snowy Day is a mid-century collage graphic marvel. The page where Peter discovers the snowball has melted makes me cry every time. I think it was one of the few from my own childhood that had matter-of-fact African American main characters in it. That, and Gyo Fujikawa’s lovingly multicultural books about babies.”And in response to Wednesday’s Mike Mulligan post, Tona writes, “Another of Burton's marvelous books that's a favorite of mine is The Little House , in which a sweet pink Cape Cod starts out as a rural house but eventually gets a big soul-draining city built around it. Like Mike Mulligan, her colored-pencil illustrations convey the bustle and dehumanization of the industrial urban landscape with perfection. It's a meditation on the city vs the country as a deep tension in American life.”In response to Thursday’s Maurice Sendak tribute, Matt Goguen writes, “I remember listening to an NPR interview with Sendak before he passed away. They were talking about his last book Bumble-Ardy and how he was able to write it during a particularly dark period of his life. The most poignant part of the interview came when Sendak said there were two lines in Bumble-Ardy that meant more to him than any other he had ever written. Bumble-Ardy is a pig that lives with his aunt and has never had a birthday party. Close to his ninth birthday, he invites many of the rowdy pigs in town to his aunt's home while she is at work and their party gets very out of hand. When Bumble-Ardy's aunt returns from work later and sees the big mess, she said ‘Okay, Smarty. You've had your party but never again.’ Bumble-Ardy replied ‘I promise, I swear, I'll never turn ten.’”On the same post, Irene Maryniuk writes, “On a much sillier note, the title Higgilety Piggledty Pop! Or, There Must be More to Life is a phrase that I and my siblings have continually used to describe bad days for over a decade. The phrase and the story just moved into our vocabulary. Now, it's code on the phone or in texts for when things aren't going well, but said with sweetness, not anger.”Nikolai Soudekrecommends Spike Jonze’s documentary on Sendak, Tell Them Anything You Want (2011; available in full at that website).In response to Friday’s Curious George post, Rob Gosselin writes, “When my boys were little I rented the original Flipper (1963) movie. My boys were like 6 and 4. In the first ten minutes the main character finds Flipper (a dolphin) washed up on the rocks with arrows shot in him. The father in the movie breaks out a shotgun to "take it out of its misery." Aims it and everything. Both of my sons freaked. That's when I learned to always preview, or preread, just about anything.”Amara highlights another childhood favorite, Doris Susan Smith’s The Travels of J.B. Rabbit (1982). Rob Gosselin adds, “Shel Silverstein. For so many reasons.” And Irene adds, “I was a big fan of Rosemary Wells’ characters--especially Max and Ruby. I realize they are now industry characters--stuffed animals and books galore, but back then, there was Morris' Disappearing Bag and six board books--or at least that's all the Kent Free Library owned. I realize now that I have a healthy dose of both Max and Ruby in me. Max is so off-kilter, gloriously free and inventive. He makes us laugh with his unique logic and sense of love. And Ruby is anxiety driven, worrying about Max and what everyone else will think. I now own a number of Max and Ruby books and can truly say my personality type could be classified as ‘MaxRuby.’”Monica Jackson adds, “The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is one of the greatest children's books, ever. By the way, this is my favorite topic (children's lit) along with young adult fiction. I could go on and on, but my favorites are: Number the Stars (ages 9-11, a great introduction to teaching children about the Holocaust), The Legend of the Bluebonnet (ages 6-9, Native American culture), Alice in Wonderland, Alice through the Looking Glass, Miss Nelson is Missing (ages 6-9, good for teaching positive behavior in school, lol), etc.”10/20 Memory Day nominee: John Dewey!10/21 Memory Day nominee: Ursula Le Guin, the pioneering science fiction and fantasy author who has also written eloquently about many of our most complex and important cultural questions.
October 19, 2012
October 19, 2012: Frustrating George
[This week, I have the wonderful opportunity to be a Celebrity Reader—emphasis on the celebrity, right? Right?!—for both of my sons’ elementary school classes. So in honor of that occasion, I’ll feature blog posts on children’s books and authors and American Studies. Please share your own favorite books and authors (or problematic ones—I’m looking at you, Curious George), and any other thoughts on children’s lit, for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
Two very different ways to look at a controversial children’s classic.There have been few moments more stunning in my first years as a Dad than the first time I read the original Curious George (1941), H.A. Rey’s classic, to my boys. Although I had read the book with my own parents many decades ago, I remembered George in the same way that I imagine most folks do—through the entirely unobjectionable PBS show, the many sequels and spin-off books, the merchandising, the great book and toy store in Harvard Square, and so on. So as I read through Rey’s first book, which begins with a happy-go-lucky George being brutally monkey-napped away from his jungle home by the Man with the Yellow Hat, includes George being taken to prison for innocently mis-dialing the fire department, and ends with the Man dropping him at the zoo (where of course he’ll be happier than he was in that jungle home), I had to stop reading multiple times to keep from swearing aloud (which never goes over well during story time).But since I’m an American Studier, and since the boys had enjoyed it and I knew I’d be reading it plenty more times, I immediately began thinking about how I could analyze Rey’s book. The obvious but not at all insignificant connection is to narratives of savagery and civilization, and more exactly (given George’s African home and, y’know, his color) to argumentsthat Africans were better off in places like America and Europe, even if they had been brought there against their will. Such arguments were still commonplace in Rey’s era—and indeed are still present in our own—and it’s difficult read the original Curious George and not see them echoed in George’s arc, and specifically the contrast between his jungle starting point and his zoo final destination. Rey complicates that arc in one and only one phrase, and a partial one at that: he notes that George is a bit sad as he is carried away from his jungle home, but highlights in the same sentence that he is likewise curious about what’s next. And that’s the last time, as far as we’re told anyway, that the monkey ever thinks about the place where he had grown up and was pictured happily swinging as the book opened.Again, there’s no way around that reading, and I’m not going to argue that Rey’s book is secretly subversive or anything (although I do my part, calling the Man George’s “frenemy”instead of his “friend” every time I read it to the boys). But neither is that narrative the only part of George’s story, nor, I would argue, the one that carried into the remainder of the series and the character’s overarching identity. In those terms I would emphasize instead two more inspiring qualities: George’s titular curiosity, his ability to approach each aspect of his evolving experiences with wonder and a desire to learn all he can (a characteristic which reminds me of another slave turned inspiring figure, Olaudah Equiano); and, more complicatedly but still impressively, his friendship with the Man. Granted, the Man initaited that relationship by kidnapping George in a sack. But in their broader lives together, the two consistently look out for each other, transcending all the differences in their identities and perspectives to become model cross-cultural friends. It’s fair to say that these qualities can positively impact the kids who encounter them—and can help the parents who read Rey’s book stay sane while they do so!Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So this is your final chance to share your responses, nominations, and perspectives for that weekend post!10/19 Memory Day nominee: John Woolman!
Two very different ways to look at a controversial children’s classic.There have been few moments more stunning in my first years as a Dad than the first time I read the original Curious George (1941), H.A. Rey’s classic, to my boys. Although I had read the book with my own parents many decades ago, I remembered George in the same way that I imagine most folks do—through the entirely unobjectionable PBS show, the many sequels and spin-off books, the merchandising, the great book and toy store in Harvard Square, and so on. So as I read through Rey’s first book, which begins with a happy-go-lucky George being brutally monkey-napped away from his jungle home by the Man with the Yellow Hat, includes George being taken to prison for innocently mis-dialing the fire department, and ends with the Man dropping him at the zoo (where of course he’ll be happier than he was in that jungle home), I had to stop reading multiple times to keep from swearing aloud (which never goes over well during story time).But since I’m an American Studier, and since the boys had enjoyed it and I knew I’d be reading it plenty more times, I immediately began thinking about how I could analyze Rey’s book. The obvious but not at all insignificant connection is to narratives of savagery and civilization, and more exactly (given George’s African home and, y’know, his color) to argumentsthat Africans were better off in places like America and Europe, even if they had been brought there against their will. Such arguments were still commonplace in Rey’s era—and indeed are still present in our own—and it’s difficult read the original Curious George and not see them echoed in George’s arc, and specifically the contrast between his jungle starting point and his zoo final destination. Rey complicates that arc in one and only one phrase, and a partial one at that: he notes that George is a bit sad as he is carried away from his jungle home, but highlights in the same sentence that he is likewise curious about what’s next. And that’s the last time, as far as we’re told anyway, that the monkey ever thinks about the place where he had grown up and was pictured happily swinging as the book opened.Again, there’s no way around that reading, and I’m not going to argue that Rey’s book is secretly subversive or anything (although I do my part, calling the Man George’s “frenemy”instead of his “friend” every time I read it to the boys). But neither is that narrative the only part of George’s story, nor, I would argue, the one that carried into the remainder of the series and the character’s overarching identity. In those terms I would emphasize instead two more inspiring qualities: George’s titular curiosity, his ability to approach each aspect of his evolving experiences with wonder and a desire to learn all he can (a characteristic which reminds me of another slave turned inspiring figure, Olaudah Equiano); and, more complicatedly but still impressively, his friendship with the Man. Granted, the Man initaited that relationship by kidnapping George in a sack. But in their broader lives together, the two consistently look out for each other, transcending all the differences in their identities and perspectives to become model cross-cultural friends. It’s fair to say that these qualities can positively impact the kids who encounter them—and can help the parents who read Rey’s book stay sane while they do so!Crowd-sourced post this weekend,BenPS. So this is your final chance to share your responses, nominations, and perspectives for that weekend post!10/19 Memory Day nominee: John Woolman!
October 18, 2012
October 18, 2012: Maurice Sendak
[This week, I have the wonderful opportunity to be a Celebrity Reader—emphasis on the celebrity, right? Right?!—for both of my sons’ elementary school classes. So in honor of that occasion, I’ll feature blog posts on children’s books and authors and American Studies. Please share your own favorite books and authors (or problematic ones—I’m looking at you, Curious George), and any other thoughts on children’s lit, for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
Those who know me, and more exactly know how I feel about William Faulkner, will know just how much of a compliment it is for me to say that Maurice Sendak was the Faulkner of children’s books.I don’t mean that in an American Studies way. Compared to Faulkner and his profound connection to a particular place and world, and likewise compared to the other children’s authors and books that have appeared in this space this week—Margaret Weis Brown and her educational advocacy, Ezra Jack Keats and The Snowy Day, Virginia Lee Burton and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel—Sendak and his works were particularly universal, connected to themes and images, narratives and emotions, that exist outside of any national tradition and, often, in the deepest cores of kids’ and all of our identities and lives. Does it make any difference where Max’s room is, what city Mickey’s night kitchen might emulate, where stubborn uncaring Pierre and his parents (and the lion) live? No, I don’t think it does.Instead, what made Sendak Faulkner-esque, for me, was his ability, particularly in Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, to create perhaps the closest thing to a true stream of consciousness style in children’s literature. Those books are pure representations of (respectively) the imagination and the dream, of the places where a child’s—and, again, all of our—mind and soul can go when inspired and given free reign. And whereas Faulkner’s stream of consciousness could be deeply discomfiting and frustrating, demanding multiple reads and intense analytical work, Sendak’s feels so right, so immediate, hits us—and doubly so hits kids, I have found—right where we live. If that’s not a gift, and a rare and powerful one, I don’t know what is.May you find all the wild things and morning cake you can handle, Mr. Sendak. An American author and artist whose works and words will live on forever. Final children’s book post tomorrow,BenPS. Well, my final post tomorrow. Remember to share your responses, nominations, perspectives for the weekend’s post!10/18 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two very very distinct but equally influential and significantAmerican artists, Helen Hunt Jackson and Chuck Berry.
Those who know me, and more exactly know how I feel about William Faulkner, will know just how much of a compliment it is for me to say that Maurice Sendak was the Faulkner of children’s books.I don’t mean that in an American Studies way. Compared to Faulkner and his profound connection to a particular place and world, and likewise compared to the other children’s authors and books that have appeared in this space this week—Margaret Weis Brown and her educational advocacy, Ezra Jack Keats and The Snowy Day, Virginia Lee Burton and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel—Sendak and his works were particularly universal, connected to themes and images, narratives and emotions, that exist outside of any national tradition and, often, in the deepest cores of kids’ and all of our identities and lives. Does it make any difference where Max’s room is, what city Mickey’s night kitchen might emulate, where stubborn uncaring Pierre and his parents (and the lion) live? No, I don’t think it does.Instead, what made Sendak Faulkner-esque, for me, was his ability, particularly in Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, to create perhaps the closest thing to a true stream of consciousness style in children’s literature. Those books are pure representations of (respectively) the imagination and the dream, of the places where a child’s—and, again, all of our—mind and soul can go when inspired and given free reign. And whereas Faulkner’s stream of consciousness could be deeply discomfiting and frustrating, demanding multiple reads and intense analytical work, Sendak’s feels so right, so immediate, hits us—and doubly so hits kids, I have found—right where we live. If that’s not a gift, and a rare and powerful one, I don’t know what is.May you find all the wild things and morning cake you can handle, Mr. Sendak. An American author and artist whose works and words will live on forever. Final children’s book post tomorrow,BenPS. Well, my final post tomorrow. Remember to share your responses, nominations, perspectives for the weekend’s post!10/18 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two very very distinct but equally influential and significantAmerican artists, Helen Hunt Jackson and Chuck Berry.
October 17, 2012
October 17, 2012: Mike Mulligan and His America
[This week, I have the wonderful opportunity to be a Celebrity Reader—emphasis on the celebrity, right? Right?!—for both of my sons’ elementary school classes. So in honor of that occasion, I’ll feature blog posts on children’s books and authors and American Studies. Please share your own favorite books and authors (or problematic ones—I’m looking at you, Curious George), and any other thoughts on children’s lit, for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
How an American Studies approach can help us dig into the many layers of one of our most enduring children’s books.When you have two young AmericanStudiers like I do, you spend a lot of time reading children’s books. Often the same books over and over again, in fact. While there are few things I would rather do, it’s nonetheless fair to say that an adult AmericanStudier’s mind occasionally wanders during the 234threading of a particular book; hence my thoughts on The Cat in the Hat and single motherhood in this post, for example. One of the boys’ favorites, for its construction-vehicle-focus, for its beautiful illustrations, and for its pitch-perfect narrative voice and storytelling, is Virginia Lee Burton’s Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939). And luckily for the American Studier who gets to read Mikeat least once a month, it also reveals, reflects, and carries forward a number of complex and significant American narratives and histories.Burton’s book was written and published during the Great Depression, and it certainly engages with that central historical context in interesting if somewhat conflicted ways. The nation-building work on public/infrastructure projects that Mike and Mary Ann do in the opening pages echoes the Works Progress Administration’s and other New Deal-era efforts, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Hoover Dam, and makes a case for the importance of labor and work more broadly; yet in Burton’s book those projects are apparently quickly forgotten, and Mike and Mary Ann find themselves unemployed, their own depression (in every sense, as they cry together over a landfill of discarded steam shovels) the text’s real starting point. Similarly, when they journey to the small town of Poppersville to bid on its city hall project, they encounter some of the worst as well as the best of communal relationships during an economic downturn—the penny-pinching, dog-eat-dog mentality of councilman Henry B. Swap is what gets Mike and Mary Ann the job in the first place and motivates at least some of the intense interest in their efforts, even if the community members do seem eventually to bond together in support of those (successful) efforts.Those conflicted themes are not only relevant to the Depression, however—they also reflect a couple of distinct but interconnected dualities out of which much of American populism, at least since the late 19th century Populist movement and party, has arisen. For one, American populism has vacillated significantly between a nostalgic embrace of idealized, seemingly lost historical communities and identities and a progressive push for future change; Burton’s book, with both the villain’s role played by new technologies and Mike and Mary Ann’s Popperville endpoint, seems to side with nostalgia and the past, although I might argue that Mike and Mary Ann have helped moved Popperville a bit more fully into the future in the process. Even if they have, though, they have done so in an explicitly rural, or at least small-town, setting, a world which has likewise been in complicated and often conflicted relationship with the urban throughout the history of America populism. But Mike and Mary Ann’s early identities and works certainly resonate with the urban contexts of the labor movement, and perhaps their arc in the book suggests that the worlds of urban and rural America could no longer afford, in the depression or in the 20th century more broadly, to remain separate in perspective or reality.Just some things to think about the next time you read a children’s book—no thanks necessary, it’s what we AmericanStudiers do. Next children’s author tomorrow,BenPS.Responses, nominations, perspectives for the weekend’s post? Share ‘em please!10/17 Memory Day nominees: A tie between of the most inspiring and impressive (if at times frustratingly circumscribed and critiqued) 19th century American women, Sophie Hayden and Sarah Winnemucca.
How an American Studies approach can help us dig into the many layers of one of our most enduring children’s books.When you have two young AmericanStudiers like I do, you spend a lot of time reading children’s books. Often the same books over and over again, in fact. While there are few things I would rather do, it’s nonetheless fair to say that an adult AmericanStudier’s mind occasionally wanders during the 234threading of a particular book; hence my thoughts on The Cat in the Hat and single motherhood in this post, for example. One of the boys’ favorites, for its construction-vehicle-focus, for its beautiful illustrations, and for its pitch-perfect narrative voice and storytelling, is Virginia Lee Burton’s Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939). And luckily for the American Studier who gets to read Mikeat least once a month, it also reveals, reflects, and carries forward a number of complex and significant American narratives and histories.Burton’s book was written and published during the Great Depression, and it certainly engages with that central historical context in interesting if somewhat conflicted ways. The nation-building work on public/infrastructure projects that Mike and Mary Ann do in the opening pages echoes the Works Progress Administration’s and other New Deal-era efforts, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Hoover Dam, and makes a case for the importance of labor and work more broadly; yet in Burton’s book those projects are apparently quickly forgotten, and Mike and Mary Ann find themselves unemployed, their own depression (in every sense, as they cry together over a landfill of discarded steam shovels) the text’s real starting point. Similarly, when they journey to the small town of Poppersville to bid on its city hall project, they encounter some of the worst as well as the best of communal relationships during an economic downturn—the penny-pinching, dog-eat-dog mentality of councilman Henry B. Swap is what gets Mike and Mary Ann the job in the first place and motivates at least some of the intense interest in their efforts, even if the community members do seem eventually to bond together in support of those (successful) efforts.Those conflicted themes are not only relevant to the Depression, however—they also reflect a couple of distinct but interconnected dualities out of which much of American populism, at least since the late 19th century Populist movement and party, has arisen. For one, American populism has vacillated significantly between a nostalgic embrace of idealized, seemingly lost historical communities and identities and a progressive push for future change; Burton’s book, with both the villain’s role played by new technologies and Mike and Mary Ann’s Popperville endpoint, seems to side with nostalgia and the past, although I might argue that Mike and Mary Ann have helped moved Popperville a bit more fully into the future in the process. Even if they have, though, they have done so in an explicitly rural, or at least small-town, setting, a world which has likewise been in complicated and often conflicted relationship with the urban throughout the history of America populism. But Mike and Mary Ann’s early identities and works certainly resonate with the urban contexts of the labor movement, and perhaps their arc in the book suggests that the worlds of urban and rural America could no longer afford, in the depression or in the 20th century more broadly, to remain separate in perspective or reality.Just some things to think about the next time you read a children’s book—no thanks necessary, it’s what we AmericanStudiers do. Next children’s author tomorrow,BenPS.Responses, nominations, perspectives for the weekend’s post? Share ‘em please!10/17 Memory Day nominees: A tie between of the most inspiring and impressive (if at times frustratingly circumscribed and critiqued) 19th century American women, Sophie Hayden and Sarah Winnemucca.
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