[Still spending much of my blog-time working on a new writing project, about which I promise to say more when it’s possible to do so (as I know you’re on the edge of your e-seats). So to follow up Monday’s Patriot’s Day post, I’m going to steal my title from Glenn Greenwald’s great book and briefly highlight five genuinely and impressively patriotic past Americans, one per century. Nominations very welcome as always!]
Today’s genuinely patriotic American is Tisquantum, better known by the Anglicized name “Squanto.”
It’s fair to say that the whole tone of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation—and also, quite literally, of the Pilgrims’ first experiences in America, as Bradford describes them at least—changes with the arrival of Squanto (paragraph 136 in that edition). From that first mention it’s clear that this is a man with a complex identity and perspective: he is described as “a native of this place” but also one who has “been in England,” and with his two languages he connects the Pilgrims to the local Wampanoag chief Massasoit, with whom they make their first peace treaty. And Bradford finds Squanto’s experiences, as a kidnapped slave turned explorer and translator, compelling enough to spend most of the rest of this chapter quoting another Englishman’s narrative of them.
Partly Bradford’s extended focus is due to his culturally myopic sense of Squanto as literally a gift from God, “a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectation.” Yet if we set aside the paternalism and, again, myopia necessary to define another person as an instrument for one’s own good, Bradford’s descriptions, coupled with the history provided in the extended narrative, can help us realize a striking and crucial fact: Squanto turned a horrific and traumatic set of experiences, ones based directly on cultural conflict and oppression, into a perspective and life that worked toward and indeed modeled cultural conversation and connection. He did so, it seems clear, for the good both of the Pilgrims and of the Wampanoags, and more exactly for the good of the new community that came into existence the second those two peoples met. What’s more patriotic than that?
As will be the case for all of this week’s focal figures, there’s plenty more, and more complexity and even tragedy, in Squanto’s story and what it symbolizes than I can get into here. The arc of the 17th century in Massachusetts was not, after all, toward justice. Yet if I have one overarching argument here, it’s the same one that’s at the heart of my fourth book: we can’t seek our ideal America, nor our ideal Americans, by eliding the darkest histories; instead we have to look to precisely those histories and find the genuine and impressive patriots who lived and engaged with and responded to them. Tisquantum’s a great place to start.
Next patriot tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Any nominations?
4/17 Memory Day nominees: Two American mythmakers, Alexander Cartwright (one of a few possible fathers of baseball, but certainly a pioneer of that defining American sport in any case) and Thornton Wilder (for his beautiful and bittersweet Our Town, his biting The Skin of Our Teeth, and much else besides).
[In honor of Patriot’s Day—a holiday up here in New England, at least—here’s a slightly revised repeat of my post from last year on patriotism.]
I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged about this moment before, but it bears repeating for two reasons I’ll elucidate below: one of my favorite literary exchanges of all time, and the one with which I begin the Introduction to my in-progress fourth book, occurs in the opening chapter of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (1996; the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series). Seven year-old Brandon “Bran” Stark is riding home with his father and brothers from his first experience witnessing one of his father’s most difficult duties as a lord, the execution of a criminal; his father insists that if he is to sentence men to die, he should be the one to execute them, and likewise insists that his sons learn of and witness this once they are old enough. Two of Bran’s brothers have been debating whether the man died bravely or as a coward, and when Bran asks his father which was true, his father turns the question around to him. “Can a man be brave when he is afraid?” Bran asks. “That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father replies. On the surface the line might seem obvious, an appeal to some of our very trite narratives about courage in the face of danger and the like. But to my mind the moment, like all of Martin’s amazingly dense and complex series, works instead to undermine our easy narratives and force us to confront more difficult and genuine truths. That is, I believe we tend to define bravery, courage, heroism as the absence of fear, as those individuals who in the face of danger do not feel the same limiting emotions that others do and so can rise to the occasion more fully. But Martin’s truth is quite the opposite—that bravery is instead something that is found through and then beyond fear, that it is only by admitting the darker and more potentially limiting realities that we can then strive for the brightest and most ideal possibilities. I find that insight so potent not only because of its potential to revise oversimplifying narratives and force us to confront a complex duality instead, but also because it posits a version of heroism that any individual can achieve—if everyone feels fear in the face of danger, then everyone has the potential to be brave as well.
HBO recently premiered the second season of their award-winning series A Game of Thrones; the first season covered all of that first book of Martin’s, the second has moved on to book two, and so on for subsequent seasons. I haven’t watched any of it yet, although I’m sure I will at some point, and I hear very good things. But if that’s one reason why I’m thinking about this exchange again today, the other is the Massachusetts-specific holiday that has me at home with the boys: Patriot’s Day. As with our narratives of courage and heroism, I believe that far too many of our ideals of patriotism focus on what I would call the easy kind: the patriotism that salutes a flag, that sings an anthem, that pledges allegiance, that says things like “God bless America” and “greatest country in the world” by rote. Whatever the communal value of such patriotism, it asks virtually nothing of individuals, and does even less to push a nation to be the best version of itself (if anything, it argues that the nation is already that best version). So in parallel to Martin’s line, I would argue for the harder and more genuine kind of patriotism, the kind that faces the darkest realities and strives for the brightest hope through that recognition, the kind that, when asked “Can an American be a patriot if he/she is critical of his/her country?,” replies, “That is the only time an American can be a patriot.” Happy Patriot’s Day! More tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
4/16 Memory Day nominee: Wilbur Wright, who with his brother Orville achieved one of the most significant breakthroughs in the histories of American and world technology, invention, and culture, and did it with style.
To round out the week of National Poetry Month posts, and in honor of tax day, here are five poems that will tax your powers of interpretation—but that pay high dividends if you allow yourself to be taxed. (And no, I won’t be saying anything about them—that’d be cheating!)
Anne Bradstreet, “Prologue” (1650)
Philip Freneau, “The Indian Burying Ground” (1787)
Emily Dickinson, “441” (c.1865)
Robert Hayden, “Middle Passage” (1962)
Kenneth Goldsmith, “Two poems from ‘The Day’” (2001)
Next series this coming week,
Ben
PS. Any poets or poems that tax you (in the best sense)?
4/14 Memory Day nominee: Anne Sullivan, the titular “Miracle Worker” without whose impressive perserverance and educational efforts Helen Keller might never have become the inspiring American she did.
4/15 Memory Day nominees: A tie between three very distinct and equally interesting and significant American men: Charles Willson Peale, Henry James, and A. Philip Randolph.
[I’m spending much of my blog-time this week working on a new writing project, about which more to come soon (when details become more finalized). So in honor of National Poetry Month, I’m going to highlight one amazing American poem per day this week, say one thing about why I love it, and then hope that you’ll a) read and enjoy; and b) share your own nominations in comments!]
Ian Williams’
“Not Saying” (2007)
On this Friday the 13th, I note one of the many ways in which I’ve been very lucky over the last ten years: getting to work alongside the amazing and talented Ian Williams.
Wrap-up post this weekend,
Ben
PS. Last request—favorite American poems (or poets)?!
4/13 Memory Day nominees: Thomas Jefferson and Nella Larsen—not just as a tie, but as a very complicatedly and appropriately matched American pair.
[I’m spending much of my blog-time this week working on a new writing project, about which more to come soon (when details become more finalized). So in honor of National Poetry Month, I’m going to highlight one amazing American poem per day this week, say one thing about why I love it, and then hope that you’ll a) read and enjoy; and b) share your own nominations in comments!]
Joy Harjo’s
“A Map to the Next World” (2000)
Everything I ask poetry, and literature, to be and do.
Final poem tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Favorite American poems, merci beaucoup!
4/12 Memory Day nominee: Ronald Takaki, the pioneering scholar of ethnic studies, Asian American Studies, and multicultural American history who really represents, quite simply, the ideal for which American history-writing, scholarship, and education should continually strive.
[I’m spending much of my blog-time this week working on a new writing project, about which more to come soon (when details become more finalized). So in honor of National Poetry Month, I’m going to highlight one amazing American poem per day this week, say one thing about why I love it, and then hope that you’ll a) read and enjoy; and b) share your own nominations in comments!]
Stephen Crane’s
“I saw a man pursuing the horizon” (1898)
At once both deeply cynical about the core of human existence (and the speaker/poet’s ability to change it) and yet somehow humanistic and hopeful as well, an uneasy and important balance in all of Crane’s works.
Next poem tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Favorite American poems, por favor!
4/11 Memory Day nominee: Jane Bolin, whose pioneering life of firsts culminated with her appointment as the first African American woman judge, and whose critical and impassioned perspectives on the core historical issues of the 20th century are just as inspiring as her professional trailblazing.
[I’m spending much of my blog-time this week working on a new writing project, about which more to come soon (when details become more finalized). So in honor of National Poetry Month, I’m going to highlight one amazing American poem per day this week, say one thing about why I love it, and then hope that you’ll a) read and enjoy; and b) share your own nominations in comments!]
Sarah Piatt’s
“The Palace Burner” (1872)
Parent-child relationships, class and revolution, gender and identity, self-reflection, history, the need for and limits of empathy … is there anything important this poem isn’t about?
Next poem tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Favorite American poems, please!
4/10 Memory Day nominee: William Apess, about whose tragic but inspiring life, and angry and eloquent voice, see that link!
