October 16, 2012: Ezra Jack Keats

[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!]

Given how significant a percentage of my daily life—and an even higher percentage of my reading time, over the last six plus years at least—is dedicated to children’s books, it feels overdue for me to dedicate a week of posts here to them as well. My Mom Ilene Railton did so in my first Guest Post, on Margaret Wise Brown and Goodnight Moon (1947); I also spent a paragraph analyzing the family dynamics of The Cat in the Hat here, and discussed one of my all-time favorite chapter books, David and the Phoenix, as part of the Valentine’s post here. Each of those books and their authors would certainly qualify for a tribute post; my Mom’s post in fact focused on Brown’s hugely innovative theories and styles, and the same could of course be said of Dr. Seuss’s literary creations, as well as those of numerous other children’s authors (my short list would include Maurice Sendak, Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books, and Marjorie Weinmann Sharmat’s Nate the Great series). But I’m not sure any American children’s author is more tribute-worthy than Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983).

Keats’ early life and career read like a newsreel of American culture and identity in the early 20^th century: born in Brooklyn to Polish American immigrants, he won a nationwide artistic contest in high school with a Depression-era painting of the unemployed; after graduation he went to work for Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) as a mural painter, then turned to providing illustrations for the exploding new comic books industry; he served in the army during World War II, designing camouflage; spent a year in Paris, where he produced many paintings that were later exhibited there and in the States; and then returned to America to illustrate many of the era’s most prominent magazines, including Reader’s Digest and Playboy. His first jobs as a children’s book illustrator were just another facet of this expanding career—in fact he was offered the first such job after a publisher saw another illustration of his—and as of the end of the 1950s, despite the clear facts of his artistic talent and resume, there was no apparent evidence that Keats had anything especially unique to offer the world of American children’s literature.

Keats’ first authored as well as illustrated children’s book, My Dog is Lost (1960), instantly proved that perception false. The book featured as its protagonist a young Puerto Rican boy, a recent immigrant who speaks only Spanish, as he travels New York City in search of his lost dog; during his journey he meets numerous other city dwellers and communities. My Dog’s introduction of a multicultural and multiethnic urban world, without sacrificing a bit of story or beauty or audience appeal, set the stage for a long career in which Keats continued to strike that balance, most especially in the many books featuring the African American protagonist Peter; introduced in 1963’s Caldecott Winning The Snowy Day, Peter would reappear in many more books and grow from a young boy to a teenager on New York’s streets. His world and experiences and stories were recognizably specific to his race and urban setting and time period, but were also always universal and human and full of the wonder and mystery and humor that defines the best children’s books. More than, I believe, any other single American author (in any genre), Keats helped bring the nation’s burgeoning post-1960 multicultural identity into the mainstream, not with polemics or arguments, but with beautiful illustrations and engaging stories of city life and childhood.

My boys don’t like The Snowy Day any more than they like many other favorites, but that’s precisely my point—it’s one great children’s book among many, yet one that stands out (in its own era and to an extent even in ours) for the community and world it creates. Well worth a tribute, I’d say. Next children’s author tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Responses, nominations, perspectives for the weekend’s post? Share ‘em please!

10/16 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two pioneering authors who helped change America’s languages, literatures, and culture in multiple and enduring ways, Noah Webster and Eugene O’Neill.

October 15, 2012: Guest Post on Margaret Weis Brown

[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!]

[Ilene Railton has been studying and working in the field of early childhood education for her whole adult life—starting with her graduate work at Bank Street, where she studied with the poet Claudia Lewis who had been strongly influenced by Margaret Wise Brown. She has also taught at and directed preschools and day care centers, served as a child care resource and referral officer, and taught and counseled and worked with kids and families in multiple Head Start-like programs (including currently with the Albemarle County Bright Stars program). And she’s been kinda crucial to the development of this AmericanStudier too.]

One hundred thirty words: simple, repetitive, whimsical and peaceful, and powerful enough to change the direction of children’s literature. This was Goodnight Moon, published in 1947, written by a young woman named Margaret Wise Brown. It was not her first book, in fact five wonderful books came before it, and 21 others followed. Her name is not particularly well known, except to parents who have read the story of the bunny in the green room, falling asleep to the cadences of love and safety that all children respond to. Margaret Wise Brown listened to the child inside and those around her, and brought a new kind of literature to the children of the world.

Brown was born in 1910 in Brooklyn. She died two weeks after an appendectomy in Nice, France in 1952. She grew up in an unhappy home, and was estranged from her father and siblings for at least part of her brief life. She went to boarding school, and then to Dana Hall, Hollins College and on to work at the Bank Street Experimental School in NYC. At Bank Street she worked under the guidance of the educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell, who created and tested a philosophy of the “here and now” with children. Brown worked with children in the writing laboratory at Bank Street, encouraging them to swap stories with her. She even brought illustrators into kindergarten classes to draw in front of the children. She wanted their ideas, and the way their saw the world to be at the center of her work.

“One can but hope to make a child laugh or feel clear and happy-headed as he follows the simple rhythm to its logical end. It can jog him with the unexpected and comfort him with the familiar, lift him for a few minutes from his own problems of shoelaces that won’t tie, and busy parents and mysterious clock time, into the world of a bug or a bear or a bee or a boy living in the timeless world of a story.” This is how Brown described what she did with her books. She told friends that she woke every morning with a head full of stories, and she rushed to write them all down. She kept six different publishers busy, and wrote under several pen names so as not to flood the market with Margaret Wise Brown books. In fact, her book The Little Island, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, won the Caldecott Medal in 1947. The author was listed as Golden MacDonald.

Brown also wanted all children to have access to books and stories. She wanted the cereal companies to put stories on the backs of their cereal boxes. When Golden books first appeared on the scene, she supported the idea of affordable books and wrote several stories for Golden that are still in print today. Many librarians and reviewers at that time felt that quality publishing standards were being lost with the publication of these books. Brown was quoted as saying, “The quality of a book is determined by the writing and the illustrations, not its printing.”

Margaret Wise Brown, a whimsical, eccentric creative genius, never married, and never had any children of her own. She had the ability to see and feel the world the way a child does, with silliness and gravity, and some nonsense words thrown in for good measure. She actually died kicking up her leg to show her doctor how good she felt after surgery. (A clot was dislodged and traveled to her heart). Who knows how many books, poems, plays, and music we would have had she lived a long life. Don’t wait to have a child! Open the book, enter the great, green room…….

Ilene

PS. Nominations, responses, perspectives, ideas for the weekend's post? Share 'em please!

10/15 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two of the 20^th century’s most impressive and influential writers, thinkers, and Americans, John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

October 13-14, 2012: Crowd-sourcing Columbus Day Alternatives

[For this AmericanStudier, Columbus Day is by far the most troubling of our national holidays. So I’ve decided to propose an alternative, Cross-Cultural Day, which would be an occasion to remember and celebrate some of the most inspiring relationships between Native and Non-Native Americans in our history. This week I’ve highlighted a few such inspiring individuals and interactions in my posts. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from responses to those posts and other takes. Add yours below, please!]

Rob Gosselin argues that “I, for one, would be more than ecstatic to see Columbus Day replaced with something else. I originally thought it would make sense to replace it with something like "Exploration Day" and connect it to the space program. Use it as a day to celebrate exploration, and not a day to celebrate an invasion. Then I realized I was being a revisionist and ignoring the facts, both positive and negative, of the actual event. I like where you are going with this. Keep the day the same. There is a lot to be said for exploration, but it is also important to realize that it comes with a bucket-load of consequences. Particularly when it is begins as an extension of imperialism, and not as a journey of discovery.”

Rob and I discuss those questions further in this Facebook thread, where Maggi Smith-Dalton argues that “Without the practical, self-interested treasure seeking angle (and don't discount the religious zealotry) I doubt there would have been any kind of ‘venture capital’ (to be totally anachronistic here) available to the Lord Admiral and his quest.” Monica Jackson adds the idea, shared by other commenters in a thread of hers, that “there should be a Pocahontas or Sacagawea day instead.”

Jeff Renye suggests another turn of the 20^th century cross-cultural American text, Tekakhionwake's (E. Pauline Johnson) short story "As It Was in the Beginning."

Also, check out these very interesting and relevant articles on Columbus Day and possible alternatives!

10/13 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two artists who greatly influenced 20^th century American political, social, and popular culture: Herblock and Lenny Bruce.

10/14 Memory Day nominee: E.E. Cummings, the Modernist poet whose innovations in punctuation, structure, and style complemented and amplified his complex and pioneering themes and perspectives.

October 12, 2012: Columbus Day Alternatives, Part Five

[For this AmericanStudier, Columbus Day is by far the most troubling of our national holidays. So I’ve decided to propose an alternative, Cross-Cultural Day, which would be an occasion to remember and celebrate some of the most inspiring relationships between Native and Non-Native Americans in our history. This week I’ll be highlighting such inspiring individuals and interactions in my posts. Your thoughts, nominations, and other perspectives appreciated for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]

Highlighting an inspiring cross-cultural effort that’s going on right now!

On the day when this year’s New England American Studies Association Conference begins in Providence, it’s very appropriate that I cede my blog over to the voice of a colleague with whom I’ve had the good fortune to work a good deal on NEASA matters: Siobhan Senier of the University of New Hampshire. Much of that work, like much of Dr. Senier’s work overall, has been dedicated to highlighting and sharing Native American voices, not only from American history but also and even more significantly in our contemporary moment. And for a few years now she’s been working on a culminating project to that end: an anthology of Native American literature from New England, one assembled in conversation with contemporary Native voices and authors.

For more on that project, I turn the blog over to Dr. Senier, and to the blog that she and her co-editors have created to document and extend their work in progress:

http://indiginewenglandlit.wordpress.com/

Check that out, add your comments and thoughts as the project continues, and help shape the next generation of cross-cultural American writing, community, and identity.

And, of course, share your responses to any of the week’s posts, or to anything else related to Columbus Day, cross-cultural America, and more, for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!

Ben

PS. You know what to do!

10/12 Memory Day nominees: A tie between George Washington Cable, who did as much for American historical and social understandings with his fiction as with his political writings; and Robert Coles, who has done as much for American psychology and narratives of childhood and identity with his teaching as with his pioneering writings.

October 11, 2012: Columbus Day Alternatives, Part Four

[For this AmericanStudier, Columbus Day is by far the most troubling of our national holidays. So I’ve decided to propose an alternative, Cross-Cultural Day, which would be an occasion to remember and celebrate some of the most inspiring relationships between Native and Non-Native Americans in our history. This week I’ll be highlighting such inspiring individuals and interactions in my posts. Your thoughts, nominations, and other perspectives appreciated for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]

On the complex, challenging, and vital cross-cultural perspective of one of America’s most unique women and voices.

In one of my earliest blog posts, I wrote about journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells (Barnett), calling her “A Voice from the Nadir.” I wanted that title to sum up two seemingly distinct and eve opposed yet in fact interconnected and mutually dependent ideas, not only about Wells but about inspiring Americans more generally: that from the darkest moments in our histories (such as was the turn of the 20^th century “nadir” for African Americans) often emerge the brightest and most inspiring lights. “Yet the shadows bear the promise/Of a brighter coming day,” wrote Frances Ellen Watkins Harper during this same era; and as I argued in that Black History Month post on Harper, I believe—and am arguing in the book I’m hoping to finish this coming summer and fall—those lines means precisely that it is in the shadows that we must find the light, to the darkest histories that we must turn in search of hard-won hope.

While many historical periods could vie for the title of nadir when it comes to Native Americans, I think the 19^th century’s last few decades likewise have a very strong case: the “Indian Wars” were culminating with the final and complete defeat of all remaining independent nations; the removal and reservation systems were concurrently enveloping every nation more and more fully (with even the well-intentioned  Dawes Act playing into those trends); and, perhaps most egregiously, the system of “Indian boarding schools” was taking young Native Americans away from their communities and trying to force cultural assimilation and the loss of heritage on them. It was in direct response to and representation of those trends, and particularly the destructive boarding school experience, that Sioux author Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) emerged onto the national literary scene, with autobiographical pieces such as “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” and “School Days of an Indian Girl” (both published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1900); since most of us American Studiers still encounter Sa through those works in anthologies (as I did), it’s easy to define her through them, and thus to see her as a complex and talented chronicler of this nadir period for her community and culture.

Yet the individual perspective that comes through in those pieces, and even more in 1902’s “Why I Am a Pagan” (also published in the Atlantic), is that of someone who will not be defined, and certainly not limited, by any single experience or category. And indeed Sa spent the next few decades extending her career and activism in a variety of compelling and significant ways: compiling, editing, and publishing Old Indian Legends (1901), a collection of Native folktales and stories; working with composer William Hanson to write and stage The Sun Dance Opera (1913), one of the most unique and pioneering works in American cultural history; and founding (in 1926) and serving as the first president of the National Council of American Indians, an influential political and social organization that lobbied on behalf of Native American rights and citizenship throughout the 20^th century. In these and many other efforts, Sa illustrated just how fully she had transcended the depths of the nadir, and exemplified the potential for all cultures and communities—and, most importantly, for America itself—to similarly find hope for a stronger future: in our histories, in our cultures, and in our most inspiring identities.

Final Cross-Cultural Day nomination tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts, responses, or other Cross-Cultural Day nominations for the weekend post?

10/11 Memory Day nominee: Eleanor Roosevelt!

October 10, 2012: Columbus Day Alternatives, Part Three

[For this AmericanStudier, Columbus Day is by far the most troubling of our national holidays. So I’ve decided to propose an alternative, Cross-Cultural Day, which would be an occasion to remember and celebrate some of the most inspiring relationships between Native and Non-Native Americans in our history. This week I’ll be highlighting such inspiring individuals and interactions in my posts. Your thoughts, nominations, and other perspectives appreciated for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]

On two very distinct but equally cross-cultural late 19^th century literary works.

William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) is probably one of the most controversial, and definitely in many quarters one of the most reviled, novels of the last fifty years. The most obvious and certainly one of the most central reasons for the attacks which the book has received from African American writers and historians and scholars (among other critics) is that Styron focuses the psychology and passion of his fictionalized Nat Turner on a teenage white girl, ignoring potential (if ambiguous and uncertain) evidence for a slave wife of Turner’s and greatly extrapolating this relationship with the white girl from a few minor pieces of evidence in the historical record. Yet having read at length the critiques on Styron, including those captured in a book entitled Ten Black Writers Respond, I have to say that an equally central underlying reason for the impassioned attacks on the book is the simple fact that Styron, a white novelist (and a Southerner to boot), had written a novel in the first-person narrative voice of this complex and prominent African American historical figure.

The issue there is partly one of authenticity, of who does and does not have the ability to speak for a particular community and culture. To me, while there may well be specific reasons to critique Styron’s choices and efforts in this novel, on that broader issue I believe that one of, if not the, central goal of all fiction should be to help readers connect to and engage with identities and experiences and communities and worlds; seen in that light, Styron’s novel is, at least in its goals, hugely ambitious and impressive. But it pales (no pun intended) in comparison with a similar, entirely forgotten novel from nearly a century prior: William Justin Harsha’s Ploughed Under: The Story of an Indian Chief, Told by Himself (1881). Harsha, the son of a prominent preacher and pro-Indian activist and himself an impassioned advocate of Native American rights, published this novel anonymously, and since it is narrated (as the subtitle suggests) in the first-person voice of a Native American chief, his project represents an even more striking attempt to speak from and for an identity and culture distinct from the author’s own. The novel is long and far from a masterpiece—it features in a prominent role one of the least compelling love triangles I’ve ever encountered—but in this most foundational stylistic and formal (and thematic and political) choice of Harsha’s, it is to my mind one of American literature’s most unique and amazing efforts.

And yet was it necessary? Just a few years later, Paiute chief and leader Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins would publish her Life Among The Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims (1886), a work of autoethnography and history and political polemic that, like all of Winnemucca’s life and work, makes clear just how fully Native American authors and activists and leaders could and did speak for themselves in this period (as they had for centuries, but with far greater opportunities to publish and disseminate broadly those voices than at any earlier point). Winnemucca, like the Ponca chief Standing Bear whose lecture tour inspired Helen Hunt Jackson’s conversion to activism and like numerous other Native American leaders (including Inshta Theamba, also known as “Bright Eyes,” who wrote the introduction to Harsha’s novel), spoke and worked tirelessly for her tribe and for Native American rights more generally, and her book illustrates just how eloquent and impressive her voice was in service of those causes. Although her individual and cultural identities became, in both her life and the text, quite complicated as a result of her experiences as a translator and mediator between her tribe and the US army and government—complexities that are the focus of the Winnemucca chapter in my second book—such complications are, if anything, a further argument for the value of hearing and reading her own voice, rather than trying to access it through intermediaries or fictional representations.

Everyone should, indeed, read Winnemucca’s book, and if we had to choose one Native American-focused text from the decade to cement in our national narratives, I’d go with hers without hesitation. But we don’t, and we don’t even necessarily have to decide whether her voice is more authentic than Harsha’s narrator’s, or Jackson’s Ramona’s and Alessandro’s, or Theamba’s. There may be some value in that question, but to me the far greater value is in reading and hearing as many voices as we can, from this period and on these issues and in every other period and frame, to give us the most authentic understanding of the whole complex mosaic of American identity. Next nominee tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts, responses, or other Cross-Cultural Day nominations for the weekend post?

10/10 Memory Day nominees: A tie between Robert Gould Shaw, the young Bostonian and Civil War officer whose heroic service as the Colonel of the 54^th Massachusetts has inspired multiple American cultural responses; and Oscar Brown, Jr., the singer/songwriter, actor, playwright, and activist whose presence defined numerous 20^th century cultural and social communities.

October 9, 2012: Columbus Day Alternatives, Part Two

[For this AmericanStudier, Columbus Day is by far the most troubling of our national holidays. So I’ve decided to propose an alternative, Cross-Cultural Day, which would be an occasion to remember and celebrate some of the most inspiring relationships between Native and Non-Native Americans in our history. This week I’ll be highlighting such inspiring individuals and interactions in my posts. Your thoughts, nominations, and other perspectives appreciated for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]

On the cross-cultural relationship and experiences of one of 19^th century America’s most inspiring figures.

There are many reasons why I began this blog with a brief (now tragically lost) entry on W.E.B. Du Bois, but I guess what it boiled down to was that if I were to start an American Hall of Fame—and honestly Fame is the wrong word, might imply that somebody like Paris Hilton or The Situation could someday garner a plaque; let’s go with American Hall of Inspiration instead—Du Bois would be one of my first, unanimous inductees. Not because he was perfect—he wasn’t, far from it—but because, I suppose, of a trifecta of core details: he spent his life trying to do things he felt were significant; he committed to each of those things with passion and seriousness and a desire to do them as well as he could and appropriate levels of (and balance between) ambition and humility; and he remained, even into his later years, very open to the voices and perspectives of the people both with and for whom he was doing them. Yup, those are pretty much the measuring sticks for induction into Ben’s American Hall of Inspiration.

I’ve known that I felt that way about Du Bois for a long time, at least since my sophomore year of college when I read a lot by and about him. Some of the other people who would be on the short list for inaugural induction I’ve known about for even longer, and would come as no surprise to anybody who knows me (Bruce, John Sayles, Val Kilmer) (just kidding about the last one, I love the dude but I’m afraid he falls short on that whole balance of ambition and humility item). But another one is a very recent discovery who has rocketed toward the top of the list: Ely Parker (1828-1897). I learned about Parker while working on a couple page portion of my second book—the opening couple pages of my chapter on the 19^th century focus on Lewis Henry Morgan, the pioneering anthropologist who worked extensively on the Seneca Iroquois and was even adopted into the tribe; and Morgan, who is pretty impressive and inspiring in his own right, admired the heck out of Parker and helped him enter many of the worlds (engineering and work on the Erie Canal; law and politics and the fight for the tribe’s homeland and sovereignty; the military and service in the Union Army, through which he ended up drafting the Confederacy’s surrender terms at Appomattox Court House) to which he contributed his tireless work and passion from the late 1840s to the end of his life.

Any one of those worlds and efforts would be a good starting point for Hall of Inspiration consideration, and the cumulative effect of them is pretty overwhelming. But as with Du Bois, what I find particularly interesting and inspiring about Parker is something less explicitly heroic or impressive, but even more (to my mind) American—his complicated location amidst and between multiple communities and identities, and his determination not to simplify that position nor reject one or another of his identities and worlds. The name he was given when he was made a sachem of the tribe translates to “Open Door,” and I think that’s very apt (as was Morgan’s tribal name, which translates to “Bridging the Gap”—they were spot-on with those names, the Seneca), both in his own life and in his role as a mediating figure (anthropologically, politically, legally, militarily, ideologically, you name it) between the tribe and the American government on multiple levels. As was sometimes the case with Du Bois, Parker’s attempts at mediating and unwillingness to simplify either his own identity or his connections to both his ethnic and his national communities (such as in his post-Civil War marriage to a white socialite) were, at times, met with harsh criticism from more fully ethnically focused peers (and Parker himself apparently questioned, toward the end of his life, some of the work he did as the first Native Commissioner of Indian Affairs, a position he held in the scandal-filled administration of his old general, Ulysses Grant). But despite such specific critiques, I don’t think anyone familiar with Parker’s life and work could question for a second his thoroughgoing commitment to improving the lives of his fellow Americans, native and otherwise.

The last years of Parker’s life were defined at least in part by losses (financial, on Wall Street, and in other ways) and self-doubts (particularly about whether he had been able to maintain as well as he had hoped that balance between the different communities to which he dedicated his life). But they were also defined by another dialogic and mutually beneficial relationship, one very much parallel to his with Morgan—he was approached by a poet named Harriet Maxwell Converse who had an abiding interest in his tribe, and the two developed a friendship that helped Parker reexamine his life and identity and communicate them to an interested European American partner once more. If I can help him continue to do the same, even a century after his death, maybe I’ll have helped pass his inspiration along. Next Cross-Cultural Day nomination tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Thoughts, responses, or other Cross-Cultural Day nominations for the weekend post?

10/9 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two reformers and activists whose efforts have made America and the world more equitable, more democratic, and safer, Francis Wayland Parker and Jody Williams.