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Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place
2018 PEN America Literary Award Finalist!
In her first nonfiction collection, award-winning novelist Rilla Askew casts an unflinching eye on American history, both past and present. As she traverses a line between memoir and social commentary, Askew places herself—and indeed all Americans—in the role of witness to uncomfortable truths about who we are.
Through nine linked essays, Most Notes from a Wounded Place evokes a vivid impression of the United police violence and gun culture, ethnic cleansing and denied history, spellbinding landscapes and brutal weather. To render these conditions in the particulars of place, Askew spotlights the complex history of her home state. From the Trail of Tears to the Tulsa Race Riot to the Murrah Federal Building bombing, Oklahoma appears as a microcosm of our national saga. Yet no matter our location, Askew argues, we must own our contradictory selves—our violence and prejudices, as well as our hard work and generosity—so the wounds of division in our society can heal.
In these writings, Askew traces a personal journey that begins with her early years as an idealistic teenager mired in what she calls “the presumption of whiteness.” Later she emerges as a writer humble enough to see her own story as part of a larger historical and cultural narrative. With grace and authority she speaks honestly about the failures of the dominant culture in which she grew up, even as she expresses a sense of love for its people.
In the wake of increasing gun violence and heightened national debate about race relations and social inequality, Askew’s reflections could not be more relevant. With a novelist’s gift for storytelling, she paints a compelling portrait of a place and its resilient and ruthless, decent but self-deceiving, generous yet filled with prejudice—both the best and the worst of what it means to be American.
In her first nonfiction collection, award-winning novelist Rilla Askew casts an unflinching eye on American history, both past and present. As she traverses a line between memoir and social commentary, Askew places herself—and indeed all Americans—in the role of witness to uncomfortable truths about who we are.
Through nine linked essays, Most Notes from a Wounded Place evokes a vivid impression of the United police violence and gun culture, ethnic cleansing and denied history, spellbinding landscapes and brutal weather. To render these conditions in the particulars of place, Askew spotlights the complex history of her home state. From the Trail of Tears to the Tulsa Race Riot to the Murrah Federal Building bombing, Oklahoma appears as a microcosm of our national saga. Yet no matter our location, Askew argues, we must own our contradictory selves—our violence and prejudices, as well as our hard work and generosity—so the wounds of division in our society can heal.
In these writings, Askew traces a personal journey that begins with her early years as an idealistic teenager mired in what she calls “the presumption of whiteness.” Later she emerges as a writer humble enough to see her own story as part of a larger historical and cultural narrative. With grace and authority she speaks honestly about the failures of the dominant culture in which she grew up, even as she expresses a sense of love for its people.
In the wake of increasing gun violence and heightened national debate about race relations and social inequality, Askew’s reflections could not be more relevant. With a novelist’s gift for storytelling, she paints a compelling portrait of a place and its resilient and ruthless, decent but self-deceiving, generous yet filled with prejudice—both the best and the worst of what it means to be American.
- GenresNonfictionEssays
176 pages, Paperback
First published June 8, 2017
5 people are currently reading
115 people want to read
About the author
Rilla Askew
14 books133 followersRilla Askew's newest novel, PRIZE FOR THE FIRE, is about the 16th century English martyr Anne Askew. Rilla Askew received a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her first novel, THE MERCY SEAT, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dublin IMPAC Prize, was a Boston Globe Notable Book, and received the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage Award in 1998. Her acclaimed novel about the Tulsa Race Massacre, FIRE IN BEULAH, received the American Book Award and the Myers Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. She was a 2004 fellow at Civiella Ranieri in Umbertide, Italy, and in 2008 her novel HARPSONG received the Oklahoma Book Award, the Western Heritage Award, the WILLA Award from Women Writing the West, and the Violet Crown Award from the Writers League of Texas. Askew received the 2011 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book. Her novel KIND OF KIN deals with state immigration laws and was a finalist for the Western Spur Award, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC Prize. Her most recent book is a collection of creative nonfiction MOST AMERICAN: Notes From A Wounded Place. Kirkus Reviews calls Most American "An eloquently thoughtful memoir in essays." In nine linked works of creative nonfiction, Askew spotlights the complex history of her home state. From the Trail of Tears to the Tulsa Race Riot to the Murrah Federal Building bombing, Oklahoma appears as a microcosm of our national saga. Yet no matter our location, Askew argues, we must own the whole truth of our history if the wounds of division that separate us are ever to heal.
"Five generations of Rilla Askew's family have occupied southeastern Oklahoma. Celebrating this birthright, she has concocted of it her own Faulknerian kingdom. Askew is writing a mythic cycle, novels and stories that unsettle our view of the West's settling. In a continuous fictional mural populated with hardscrabble souls - credible, noble and flawed - Askew is completing the uncompleted crossing of the plains. Trusting prose that is disciplined, luxuriant and muscular, she is forging a chronicle as humane as it is elemental."
Allan Gurganus
May 20, 2009
American Academy of Arts and Letters
"Five generations of Rilla Askew's family have occupied southeastern Oklahoma. Celebrating this birthright, she has concocted of it her own Faulknerian kingdom. Askew is writing a mythic cycle, novels and stories that unsettle our view of the West's settling. In a continuous fictional mural populated with hardscrabble souls - credible, noble and flawed - Askew is completing the uncompleted crossing of the plains. Trusting prose that is disciplined, luxuriant and muscular, she is forging a chronicle as humane as it is elemental."
Allan Gurganus
May 20, 2009
American Academy of Arts and Letters
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 23, 2021
this was really good! a really fascinating look at oklahoma through a series of different lenses. I think this should be sent with every admission box to OU. the first few essays especially stood out to me. as an out-of-state student, this provided really interesting cultural and historical context for the state I've been living in for the past few years!
June 14, 2017
Since the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and countless other black women and men by police, racism has once again exploded in American media and psyches. As people of conscience, we bear painful witness to the unending violence of our racist culture. We seek understanding and maybe absolution, by reading the words of Black writers: Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
But white readers also need the voice and experience of a writer who has wrestled with the white journey through racism and speaks from personal experience to the deep denial of whiteness. Rilla Askew is such a voice. In Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place, she courageously shares her story as a white woman growing up and living through and with the blood and fire of America's racial history over the last century.
Most Americans contextualize the horror and violence of Black American experience squarely within the deluded denial that is the essence of the parallel white experience. Askew, the granddaughter of an Oklahoma history teacher, writes of being an adult when she first learned about the Tulsa Race Riot. In 1921 three hundred people, mostly black, were murdered. Tulsa's relative prosperous black commerce community, known as Black Wall street, was destroyed. "You think you know who you are, but you don't know. In all the years I had lived both in and near Tulsa, I had never heard one word about a race riot there. I had never heard about any kind of race trouble in Oklahoma at all. . .and all the while that sickening, bewildering feeling kept reeling in me, that sense of having been left out of something hugely important—of having been lied to. What else weren't they telling me? What else didn't I know?"
Askew's story is a map, a key, an opening to liberation from the pervasive, sticky, and engulfing ignorance of whiteness. I read Most American as a treasure hunt for her pivotal turnings: sitting alone on the couch in the living room of a black home swirling with smells of curried goat, stewed peas, Jamaican spices, and pounding rhythms of reggae. In James Brown's cozy back stage dressing room at the Tulsa Civic Center in 1969. The hard bench and bright lights of the police station where her black godchild was wrongly booked for theft. On disordered streets of Oklahoma City in the aftermath of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building and the tightly-packed pew of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan for James Baldwin's funeral.
The daughter and granddaughter of Southern Baptist deacons, Askew reminds us that ignorance is not the same as innocence; that the Old Hebrew understanding of repentance requires us to own our history; and that redemption must be earned. She reminds us that Beulah, sometime equated with heaven, or the Promised Land, means married. That we are all married: black, white, indigenous, Asian, Middle Eastern, African, and European; in this wounded place called America.
by D. Lauren Ross
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
But white readers also need the voice and experience of a writer who has wrestled with the white journey through racism and speaks from personal experience to the deep denial of whiteness. Rilla Askew is such a voice. In Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place, she courageously shares her story as a white woman growing up and living through and with the blood and fire of America's racial history over the last century.
Most Americans contextualize the horror and violence of Black American experience squarely within the deluded denial that is the essence of the parallel white experience. Askew, the granddaughter of an Oklahoma history teacher, writes of being an adult when she first learned about the Tulsa Race Riot. In 1921 three hundred people, mostly black, were murdered. Tulsa's relative prosperous black commerce community, known as Black Wall street, was destroyed. "You think you know who you are, but you don't know. In all the years I had lived both in and near Tulsa, I had never heard one word about a race riot there. I had never heard about any kind of race trouble in Oklahoma at all. . .and all the while that sickening, bewildering feeling kept reeling in me, that sense of having been left out of something hugely important—of having been lied to. What else weren't they telling me? What else didn't I know?"
Askew's story is a map, a key, an opening to liberation from the pervasive, sticky, and engulfing ignorance of whiteness. I read Most American as a treasure hunt for her pivotal turnings: sitting alone on the couch in the living room of a black home swirling with smells of curried goat, stewed peas, Jamaican spices, and pounding rhythms of reggae. In James Brown's cozy back stage dressing room at the Tulsa Civic Center in 1969. The hard bench and bright lights of the police station where her black godchild was wrongly booked for theft. On disordered streets of Oklahoma City in the aftermath of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building and the tightly-packed pew of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan for James Baldwin's funeral.
The daughter and granddaughter of Southern Baptist deacons, Askew reminds us that ignorance is not the same as innocence; that the Old Hebrew understanding of repentance requires us to own our history; and that redemption must be earned. She reminds us that Beulah, sometime equated with heaven, or the Promised Land, means married. That we are all married: black, white, indigenous, Asian, Middle Eastern, African, and European; in this wounded place called America.
by D. Lauren Ross
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
December 22, 2017
This is the first book of Askew's that I've read, but it won't be the last. I am intrigued by her perspective of Oklahoma, especially as a native who doesn't share the same pride as others from the state do.
What I mean by "pride" is the typical views held by white middle class Americans in regards to the issues of race and ethnic biases. She's so honest in Most American about all of her struggles as a white woman.
In many ways, I identify with her perspective and all of its jagged edges. It's one thing to be mindful of harmful worldviews and other to realize many of those closest to you aren't as torn up about it as you are.
What I mean by "pride" is the typical views held by white middle class Americans in regards to the issues of race and ethnic biases. She's so honest in Most American about all of her struggles as a white woman.
In many ways, I identify with her perspective and all of its jagged edges. It's one thing to be mindful of harmful worldviews and other to realize many of those closest to you aren't as torn up about it as you are.
June 22, 2017
A compelling series of stories about and deep reflection on growing up in Oklahoma. Her stories are come from a very personal place and give a glimpse into how a relationship to a place can and should change over time. The history of Oklahoma is more complex than I had ever know and Askew expertly weaves her own experiences with the greater historic moments of the state and the nation. It brought me a unique understanding of the area and challenged me to reflect on my own understanding of Massachusetts. I would highly recommend this book if you looking for a better sense of a different part of the US.
March 24, 2020
I dog-eared the hell out of this book, which echoes all the essays I always hoped I'd someday write about Oklahoma: how it feels to be around all that land, the discomfort of being white in Native America and a city as scarred as Tulsa, the normalcy of rattlesnakes and tornadoes. This made me keen for home in a way completely divorced from the people I know and love in Oklahoma (though admittedly I am wallowing in homesickness because it's an easier melancholy than Our Current Moment). I hope Askew and I cross paths someday--this is a stellar collection.
August 14, 2020
This author, Rilla Askew, is a beautifu talent. The issues she writes about in 2017 - racism, edited history, and events defining America's reality - are prophecy to what's happening today in 2020. Her insights and ability to perceive the undercurrents of what's blowing in the wind make this work of non fiction seem ethereal, even mystical. It was powerful medicine for my soul, rooted as it is in the red dirt of Oklahoma. All the stars.
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July 20, 2019I LOVE this author. I love her fiction, I love hearing her speak at events, and so, of course, I also loved her nonfiction. No surprise there, except that I *was* surprised, again, at how wonderfully she can write an Oklahoma experience, how much of my life I can recognize in her writing, how much of all life she shows us (Oklahomans, Americans, humans). We are lucky to have her!
January 9, 2018
Askew is an Oklahoma treasure. This collection of essays is brutal, heartfelt, and paints a picture of Oklahoma (and America at large) as it evolved during the 20th century.
May 9, 2018
As a proud Oklahoman, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of essays. Beautifully written by a Bartian classmate of my husband, I look forward to reading more of her work.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews