This has
been a historic and moving few weeks, and the connections that have bubbled up between history, the opening of the human heart and the expansion of freedom have inspired this
post.
When the
Supreme Court expanded the definition of fourteenth amendment rights to guarantee
the right to gay marriage in every state in the union, freedom was likewise
expanded. That this decision fell roughly on the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising
makes it even more resonant with the struggle that went before.
Meanwhile, a
more painful resonance came with the despicable and cowardly mass murder of
nine Black worshipers at the Emmanuel AME church in Charleston in the name of
white supremacy. The initial resonance was with our ugly history of racial
violence.
(right - a sign about the Confederate battle flag amidst the tributes at Emanuel AME)
But something
astonishing happened which shifted that resonance to a deep and resounding echo of the history of the inspired struggle for civil rights and human dignity in the United States. Rather than the effect desired by the alleged
killer of starting a ‘race war’, the ultimate effect of his crime was to
galvanize people to tear down emblems of hate and segregation across the South:
a symbolic step, no doubt, but a valuable one. A way of saying that Black Lives Matter -- the doing is still up to all of us. The forgiveness extended to the
alleged killer by the relatives of his victims was stunning and heartrending.
President
Obama’s eulogy for the Reverend Clementa Pinckney movingly engaged with the
themes of violence, injustice and the possibility of change, and inspired me to
think about how powerful historical narrative narrative can be. Here is a link
to the eulogy: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK7tYOVd0Hs)
The
president wove his speech around the words of the hymn “Amazing Grace” and made
repeated references to history, mentioning that while we “have a deep
appreciation of history…we don’t have a deep appreciation of each other’s
history”, and suggesting that “we’ve been blind to the way that past injustices
continue to shape the present.”
And as a
deep believer in the idea that knowing each other’s history is a step toward
“…the steady expansion of human rights and human dignity” that the president
lauded and that the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage embodies, I’m thinking
in this blog about how important it is to go directly to the source and listen
to the voices of those who have too often not been heard. Historical fiction
can be a first step for kids and teens toward that engagement. (left: Ouladah Equiano - see below)
At the end
of my ancient history class this spring, I asked students to either bring in a
quote from one of the “voices” that we encountered through our primary sources
or to note which voices we did not hear.
In the time period that I was teaching, such voices are limited, though some students
loved that they could still hear Sappho, an ancient Greek poet, declare her
love for another woman (notably, if they had read Sappho in the nineteenth
century, the pronouns would have been changed by translators to make the poet
appear heterosexual). Other students enjoyed hearing the wisdom of Confucius or
the wild irreverence of Aristophanes.
But many observed that they couldn’t hear
at all from most women, or working people or slaves, and they wished so much
they had been able to. They could only hear about people like Spartacus, the
leader of the great slave uprising, or Boudicca, the warrior queen of the Iceni,
through the words of others who were almost always elite, and often hostile.
As we teach
history closer to the present day, more voices can potentially be heard as literacy
expands and more sources survive — even the voices of the otherwise
dispossessed (though there are still many, many silences).
An
important role of historical fiction for young people is to give them an idea
of who these voices belong to so that
they can make the important step of transitioning to reading the actually
primary source material that fiction writers use as sources for creating their
work. Often the voices of the primary sources engage with issues that still
stir and divide us today. In thinking of the legacy of slavery, several works
of fiction and non-fiction primary source narratives come to mind.
For
example, I remember reading Paula Fox’s novel The Slave Dancer as a child. The emotion it evoked is still vivid
in my memory – pity and horror, as the main character’s musical talent is
twisted into the service of macabre practice of “dancing” the captured slaves on a slave
ship to keep them fit so they can be more readily sold once they arrive at
slave ports.
Another
story which has this powerful effect is “The People Could Fly” —the eponymous
folktale in the collection of The People
Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Leo and Diane Dillon. Many of the
tales in the collection are ingenious examples of the oral tradition of riddle-making
and story-telling which convey the richness of African American culture during
the long period of slavery. Often there is a sense of joy despite dire circumstances.
But the final story fully embodies the cruelties the slave system inflected and
the passionate desire of enslaved people to ‘fly away’ to a land of freedom.
This kind
of narrative structure allows children and young teens to understand the horror
of slavery and the value of every human being in the way a text- book just can’t
convey.
The
narrative form (usually an autobiographical narrative) was also used
by eighteenth and nineteenth century former slaves who were also passionate
abolitionists in order to fuel others
to join the abolitionist cause, and this ‘story telling’ of their own
experiences is, I think, the next step for teens who have already read fictional accounts of
slavery.
I’d suggest
that history teachers can carefully and thoughtfully link the two, using the
fiction as an introduction leading students into the primary sources. These primary sources
are certainly much more challenging reading, which is why I’m specifying that
this is a good tactic for older teens, though it is also possible to rework
such connections so they are manageable for younger students (using only a
chapter or a few paragraphs of a primary source and discussing how it differs
from the fictional account and talking about the writer’s voice and purpose).
For
example, no history teacher can hear "Amazing Grace", the hymn the president so surprisingly
sang, without connecting it back to the British abolitionists
who fought and won the abolition of slavery by parliamentary vote in most of
the British empire long before America achieved abolition through war.
Among this
group was Olaudah Equiano, the former slave who bought his freedom and devoted
his life to the cause of abolition. He wrote The Interesting Narrative of
the Life of Olaudah Equiano and
using his own story to make his appeal to the humanity of his readers in the cause
of liberty. And he was not alone in using self-story-telling as a means toward
liberation.
By telling
their own stories, by engaging readers with empathy, and using the sort of
structures that keep readers concerned with the outcomes of their tales, former
slaves made slavery real and urgent to people who had never experienced it.
I am, of
course, thinking of Equiano, but even more of the greatest (I believe) of all
slave
narratives
The Narrative Life of
Frederick Douglass. This is a text I would love to see more teens reading
in high school as they become more sophisticated readers of historical
material.
The power
of Douglass’s book is overwhelming. Every time I teach it to students, it is
the autobiography that most powerfully moves them. From the description of Douglass’s
mother walking miles from a neighboring plantation just to put him to sleep as
a small child to the story of a man being shot dead by his master’s
overseer for refusing to obey an order, to Douglass himself reaching his
breaking point and beating up a degenerate overseer (in introducing this episode he says:
“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a
man”) to his final triumphant escape, the details are raw and the story urgent.
But for me,
the most affecting chapter is the one where Douglass learns to read.
His
mistress begins teaching him, before being forbidden to do so by her husband
(it will “unfit” Douglass to be a slave, the husband explains). But Douglass
perseveres in any way he can, hiding books, tricking other kids into teaching
him.
What I love about this account of learning is how strongly he connects
learning with liberation. He describes how learning about the slave trade
engenders fury and discontent in him and concludes “I could regard (the slave
traders) in no other light than a band of successful robbers”.
But even
learning that causes pain is part of this process of liberation — for Douglass and for many
others. As he explains, “(t)he silver trump of freedom…roused my soul to
eternal wakefulness…” and once he had learned to read, he could never stop hearing that trumpet.
Douglass’s
words —the words of any powerful primary source recording vast, systemic
injustices —can still rouse our complacent souls to eternal wakefulness.
And if
historical fiction for young people can serve as a bridge to Douglass’s
thundering words, so much the better.
It inspired me to look into other verse novels which are historical in nature. I believe introducing historical novels in verse would be an excellent way
to start meeting curricular standards at the start of the school year. Students (and
even teachers) may still be in a summer mode with laid back attitudes. Everyone could
be eased into the rigors of school by starting the year with these brief novels
which have much substance. 
Hopefully you'll find some short historical fiction books that match your students' needs, which would give you more time to incorporate additional and outstanding historical novels into your busy school year.
