The nominee that
would help us think about some of the worst and best of where we started.
The roundtable’s
first presenter, Frank Hillson of
the University of Delaware, nominated Mary
Rowlandson’s personal narrative (originally titled The Sovereignty and Goodness of God). As Frank noted, the book was
perhaps America’s first best-seller, returned in full force in the
Revolutionary moment and has been in print ever sense, and helped originate one
of the nation’s (and perhaps
world’s) most defining and persistent literary genres, the captivity narrative.
Frank focused in
his talk (I was a harsh taskmaster and limited each speaker to about 8 minutes,
and I know each has plenty more to say of course) on one of the captivity
narrative’s principal features, the creation of a savage “other” against whom
the captive must struggle; as he noted, reading Rowlandson thus introduces us
to some of the ways in which European Americans have consistently created and
defined themselves against such cultural “others” since the first post-contact
decades. Certainly that’d be a vital takeaway for all American readers.
Yet there would
be more inspiring potential lessons as well, takeaways that Frank likewise
mentioned but one of which I wanted to reiterate here (and that I also discussed
in this earlier post). Despite her originating and to some degree
overarching emphases on cultural division and hostility, Rowlandson cannot help
but document the many cross-cultural kindnesses and, to my mind even more
importantly, social and economic relationships that develop between her and
many of the Wampanoags. While early (and general) American history did not go
in those unifying and inspiring directions nearly frequently enough, they were
nonetheless part
of our originating moments and community—and ones that we would do well to
remember. Rowlandson can help us do that too.
Next nominee
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Thoughts on
this nomination? Other nominees for an Even Bigger Read?
The Man Who Saw a Ghost: The Life and Work of Henry Fonda. Listening to it now and am really enchanted by how much Fonda's roles and life reflect and challenge the perception of the American male. Very good read, if a little dense. Lots of insights on Fonda's better half... John Ford!
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