[I’ve long been
a fan of book
talks, but since my most recent book, We
the People: The 500-Year Battle over Who is American, is intended to be
my most public yet, I’ve redoubled my dedication to talking about it anywhere
and everywhere. Since I’m on sabbatical this fall and even more flexible, I
wanted to take this week to highlight some of my prior and upcoming talks, as
examples that I hope can lead to more such opportunities! I’ll travel and talk
anywhere and am happy to pay my own way for the chance to share these stories
and histories!]
On two ways in
which a particularly special setting helped reframe my book.
Libraries have
been (after academic spaces) the second most common setting for books talks of
mine (and I’m up for journeying to any library, in New England or beyond, to
give book talks this fall), from the Him
Mark Lai Branch of the San Francisco Public Library to my longtime hometown
Waltham’s Public Library and many others in between, but there was still
something unique about giving a talk at the Needham
Free Public Library. Starting with my second book, and
carrying right on through We the People,
significant portions of all my book projects (and this blog, and my grading, and
most other aspects of my professional life over the last decade-plus) have been
completed in that library; and since I’ve just moved back to Needham this
summer, to an apartment literally steps away from the library, I’m pretty sure
my ongoing work will happen in that space quite frequently as well. Change has
been a constant over my last decade, as I suppose it is for all of us in
various ways, but the Needham library has provided a consistent home base
throughout that period, and it was wonderful to have the chance to give a book
talk there.
That’s not just
about good feelings, either—giving a talk there produced some compelling
effects when it comes to my ongoing thinking about We the People. More exactly, talking about this book in the space
where I also wrote each of my prior three books pushed me to consider the
interconnections between these projects more than I had previously been able to
do. That’s straightforward enough when it comes to the Chinese Exclusion Act
book, since I have a chapter in We
the People on that era and on inclusive Chinese American responses to it.
But I likewise thought about connections to fourth and second books: with the
most recent, History
and Hope in American Literature, I thought about how that project’s
lens of “critical patriotism” applies not only to most of my inclusive figures
and stories, but also to what I’m trying to accomplish with this book itself; and
with Redefining American
Identity, I realized that I’ve been thinking about competing definitions
of America for about the last decade, and that We the People is thus not just the culmination (I hope and believe)
of my moves toward public scholarly writing, but also of that long period of
engagement with questions of national definition.
None of that, of
course, has been the most defining personal experience of mine over the last
decade-plus: that would be my sons, now 13 and 12 years old. And thanks to
their Mom being kind enough not only to attend this talk but to bring the boys
as well, I had the chance to share a book talk with them for the first time in
this special space. I can’t lie, their repeated “Dad, you’re god-tier!” after
the talk was definitely the best
feedback I’ve ever gotten. But they were a genuinely attentive audience, and
that was the really significant thing about this very neat aspect of the talk—that
it forced me to think about how I wanted to present my focal histories and
stories to a teen/pre-teen audience, how the talk and its topics might connect
with them without losing its possible connections to the other (all adult)
audience members. I’ve talked
with their elementary school classes before, but this was quite distinct,
an opportunity to think about differentiating my talk across multiple audiences
ages, about how to make clear the stakes and significance of these topics for
all those different cohorts. One more very exciting side to a unique and special
book talk.
Next book talk
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Ideas or
suggestions for future talks, in-person or online? I’d love to hear them!
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