New Year, New Site, New Books

 Hello! If you have returned this site to see what I'm still up to, or somehow landed here while looking for something else, I invite you to visit me at my new comprehensive author website www.womanwriting.com for updates on the research and writing life!  

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Thank you and Happy 2022!  

On Writing and Teaching

Because this year of such intense change and upheaval is coming to a close, I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on my new identity. I left my teaching job in June and I seem to have effortlessly transitioned to my new focus as a full-time writer. (Note: This doesn’t mean that I’m effortlessly writing! Just that I’ve embraced the identity of full-time writer again.)

I have been a historian and a writer since receiving my PhD in 2001. (Yikes, almost 20 years!) Between 2001 and 2013 I was an independent writer and editor working from home, so one would think that, after a brief 7-year detour into teaching high school, I am now simply returning to my full-time writing career. But those years were different than what I want to do now, starting with how many years I spent constantly hustling for paid work. In addition to writing, editing, and adjunct college teaching - some of which paid very well and some not - I also applied for DOZENS of full-time jobs over a ten-year period between 2003 and 2013. I applied for tenure-track college faculty jobs, publishing jobs, curriculum development jobs, and education think-tank research jobs. At one time I also considered law school, but as I still had student loans from graduate school, and we wanted to pay for private school and college for our children, I decided that was not a great financial decision.

For all of my seeking, I never considered or planned to be a high school teacher, but in 2013 I was offered and grew into a job teaching high school history & government at the private school my children attended and it turned out to be one of the best surprises of my life. In my early days at the school, I remember telling a colleague that I considered myself a historian and a writer who just happened to teach. But as each year passed, teaching took over not only more months of my year and ALL of the hours of my day, but completely consumed my intellectual, social, and emotional energy. The demands of spending all-day, every day, engaging with young people meant that I very quickly moved from feeling like I was just hanging out, sharing my love of history, to actually embracing the new pedagogical responsibilities and joys of the job, reading articles and attending workshops and meetings on topics such as grading, assessments, curriculum mapping, and meeting students’ different learning needs. I learned so much from students’ curiosity and questions, reading new books and learning new subjects I might never have read or learned on my own, and researching curriculum materials and pedagogical resources to try to understand how people learn best. I did so many new things I never would have done or known about, such as becoming a Model UN leader, developing LGBQT resources and curriculum, mentoring students about college and career plans, and participating on administrative committees, learning how school communities work and function.

In addition to the steady paycheck that eluded me as a freelancer, teaching brought immediate gratification in a way that YEARS of working on a book never could. I might write a book that people, including future students, might read and maybe even find important, but there was no questioning the sense of purpose and immediacy in teaching. Right there in the classroom, at that moment, whatever was said / discussed / communicated / felt between myself and the students made an enormous and lasting impact. There was also immediate gratification in the feedback received from students in our hundreds of tiny interactions over the course of a day or year or multiple years of high school. Whether I felt inspired or not on any particular day didn’t matter, as EVERY day there were students waiting for me to open the door on a chilly morning and fire up the heater and say or do something, and that something could have ripple effects for years. There was also gratification in collaborating with colleagues and in receiving appreciation and trust from parents, in being part of a team committed to launching young people into the world.

Was I building, then, a new career? Was I first-and-foremost a teacher now, more than a historian and writer? What about the books I still yearned to research and knew I could still write? Even if I never wrote another academic book, what about the stories I wanted to tell and the novels I wanted to write? Even in the midst of loving what I was doing as a teacher, I could not fully see a way to combine my different goals and identities. I could see no way forward - no end goal. I realized that I did not see myself as a career teacher.

I saw that I would either have to pull back and give less to my students and school community, or accept that this is where I would give all of my time and energy, giving up other pursuits and life goals (such as writing books). And I couldn’t really accept either of those options. I began to contemplate that perhaps I had given all I could give to teaching. I had not built a career out of it, but I had a 7-year run in a unique and privileged position and I learned so much.

Still, I don’t see myself “returning” to the same writing life I had before I taught high school. For starters, I don’t want to hustle. Unless it becomes financially necessary, I'm not looking for freelance jobs and I don’t want to work too hard for too little money (including in teaching). I published 8 non-fiction books between 2003 and 2020. (https://www.womanwriting.com/published-works) I truly enjoy the research and writing, but I don’t actually want to write those kinds of reference books anymore. I do want to write and publish both nonfiction history and historical novels, and I hope to get an agent in 2021 to help make that happen! I've been focusing these past 5-6 months on learning the craft of storytelling, sharing my work and accepting feedback on my creative writing for the first time, thinking about ways to develop my identity as an artist and think outside the box as a historian. 

So maybe instead of seeing my path as one of uncertainty and hustling and detours, I actually HAVE been building something all along. I am entering a new phase as a historian and writer and I do believe that everything I’ve done to this point - including every day I spent teaching high school kids - will somehow inform and enrich whatever my next steps will be.

At the Mercy of the Sun

Whatever gossip our classmates heard, the truth was worse. Our teachers were alerted to watch the “moods” of the Hooper girls, and the other students were instructed not to make play of death or madness in our presence. An occasional slight from one outside the circle and the cruelty lurking beneath the surface of childhood reminded me of where I stood in time – past, present, and future.

You’re going to end up like your mother, Clover Hooper.

I wanted to be happy, like my name, growing green and effortless in the sun. But every time I tried, even for a moment, someone was there to remind me that such happiness was not mine to claim.

My older sister Nella took upon herself the impossible burden of protecting my happiness; impossible, because she and I were bound together by what happened in Mother’s room that winter.


Mother was sick for three days with fever and convulsions, vomiting and severe pain. The family tended to her, not knowing the cause, but worried for both her and the babe. A child of only five, I was sent to fetch fresh water and warm cloths from the kitchen every few hours. On the morning of the fourth day, I returned from my errand and entered the bedroom as the infant was finally expelled, without effort on Mother’s part as she was nearly unconscious by then. Doctor Phelps was called in hopes that the child, though too early, might still be saved. Father stood across from the bed, stunned. Aunt Cary leaned in at her younger sister’s head, smoothing Mother’s brown hair back, and shouting orders and questions at the doctor or at anyone who might listen. Doctor Phelps was all action, opening his bag and pulling out bandages and salves, his face betraying any knowledge of what was actually to be done in this situation.

What was the situation? I have since tried so desperately to discern what I could have known or been told as a child compared to what I know now. I knew that Mother had a baby inside of her, but I had never witnessed a birth. I wondered if the baby might still emerge and cry and be fine. Perhaps this is just what women have to go through. No one had ever spoken to me about the possibility of Mother dying. I had a horse that died once, but we just found him, sleeping peacefully on his side in the stable one morning. Father said the horse had reached old age and was tired out. But Mother wasn’t old and tired. Just the week before she was walking with us outside, collecting gold and red fallen leaves to decorate our table, remarking on the coming chill and on my brother Ned’s return from school.

Mother convulsed again but made no sound. Aunt Cary scolded me and Nella to leave the room at once. Nella ran to our bedroom and hid herself under the quilts, a place where she remained for the next week. I ignored my aunt, who was too busy to notice if I followed through on her command, and moved my body silently against the cold wall until I made myself invisible behind the plank door. The doctor pushed Mother down on the bed and tried to roll her nightdress up over her resisting body. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and then all was quiet, the room collapsed. I was soon forgotten in the chaos and grief and thus witnessed from the crack in the door the moment my mother expired in a pool of blood, without a cry, the limp babe still attached by a knotted rope the color of ash in the forgotten corner fireplace, intended to warm her through the previous night. I strained to see the baby – I wanted to see if I had a brother or a sister – but the doctor wrapped it up and placed the silent bundle away in his bag. Aunt Cary screamed in anger – she screamed at Father for doing this to her and at the doctor for not doing enough. Father slid to the floor and covered his face with both hands.

Doctor Phelps revealed to the immediate family that the loss of both mother and child was not an accident of illness. Mother had inserted into the birth canal a small wad of arsenic-soaked wool, which was expelled immediately before the delivery of the child. Father and Aunt Cary did not accept the doctor’s words as explanation for this double tragedy and sent him away, though he was a trusted friend and presented the bloodied wool as evidence.

They could not deny, however, that my mother had access to arsenic, as Father was a regular physician and had numerous bottles of remedy solution on hand as a general cure for imprecise complaints. Although some gossiping neighbors blamed my father for making the poison so easily available, a physician’s approval was not required and many fashionable ladies easily acquired it for cosmetic purposes. My mother’s intentions were clear, however, and the manner in which she had administered it to herself brought great shame upon the family, who spoke of neither the incident nor the fact of the child.

Forever hushed that voice whose welcoming
Was the last note the unsphered soul did sing –

My mother could have been a great poet, but she was undone as a mother of three (nearly four) who lived just long enough to share her gifts, but not enjoy their flourishing in the world.

I grew up feeling that, like my mother, and her mother before her - for our Grandmother Sturgis deserted her family and later ended her own life under the mental strain of losing her only son in a swimming accident – my life would be cut short. I took some odd comfort in acceptance of this fact of nature’s cruelty and understood from an early age that such entanglements as love and marriage lead only to pain, especially for women. Young girls who dreamed of filling their lives with weddings and houses and cradles did not want to hear such pronouncements, however, and so my sister Nella was my only childhood friend.

No image of my mother exists to remind us of her likeness. Three children and a dozen poems: This was all the proof that she had existed. Though I strained to develop the vision of myself as a mother, the image remained unclear.

Those poor motherless Hooper girls, how can they be raised up without a mother?

I was raised up with a mother, though – just not a living one.

Women's Equality Day and the Suffrage Centennial

On August 26, 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment was certified as part of the U.S. Constitution.  

The amendment reads in its entirety: 

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Nothing in the original U.S. Constitution of 1789 or in the subsequent Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments ratified in 1791) guaranteed any citizen either a right to vote or protection from discrimination in voting laws.  It would take several more constitutional amendments, and a fair amount of congressional legislation, to institutionalize the most basic rights that many of us consider the foundational features of democracy. On the contrary, the founders never set out to create a direct democracy, but rather a republic, a representative democracy ruled by elite property-holding white men making decisions for all.  But in the 19th century, more and more economically and politically disenfranchised groups - workers, non-property holding individuals, enslaved peoples, immigrants, members of religious minority sects, and women - challenged the nation to expand upon the Enlightenment ideals articulated in the Constitution and to expand civil and political rights to a broader group of Americans. 

Several decades into the American experiment, by the 1850s the nation had made some strides toward "democratization" with expanded property and educational rights for white women, and with the oxymoronic "universal white male suffrage" which had, state-by-state, removed property ownership or wealth (but not race or sex) as a legal requirement for voting. By the 1850s, as well, the anti-slavery and women's rights movements were in full force and the expansion of white male political rights only highlighted the lack of rights for either African Americans or women of any race. A major shift occurred in the mid-19th century with the abolishment of slavery (with the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865), followed by two additional constitutional amendments expanding political and civil rights: the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), guaranteeing equal protection under the law for all citizens, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870), prohibiting states from denying voting rights based on race (but not sex).   

Constitutional change still did not guarantee the free exercise of the franchise for black men, and the civil rights movement spent another 100 years (and beyond) protesting state and local-level obstacles to black voting and office-holding, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, gerrymandering, lack of education, difficult voter registration processes, intimidation, and violence. Additionally, it took another 50 years—between the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 and the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920—and many state-by-state victories, for a federal amendment finally extending the right to vote to all American women.

The movement to secure votes for women always worked alongside other social and civil rights movements. The suffrage movement had its own leaders, organizations, newspapers, strategies, protests, and conventions. However, from the overlap between abolitionism and women’s rights in the early 19th century, to the post-Civil War connections between black civil rights, to the effort of Progressive Era women labor leaders to recruit working-class women to the suffrage cause, to the re-emergence of the women’s movement out of the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, to LGBTQ rights and the global connections between human rights and women’s rights, the story of the women’s movement in the United States has always been wrapped up with the story of the broader, and continual, expansion of the democratic promise for all Americans. 

In an interview toward the end of her life, suffragist Alice Paul said, “There is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.” This is one of my favorite quotes and I often write it in the graduation cards I give to students! And yet, the story of American women’s participation in our nation’s political processes—from voting to office-holding to decision-making—has been incredibly long and complicated. Prominent white women like Alice Paul usually take center stage in the story of the dramatic years and months leading up to final passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (in fact, today, on this centennial day, I am registered for a webinar suffrage celebration called #ThanksAlice!). Yet, Paul herself complicated her own movement and legacy by favoring political expediency over lasting coalitions and a commitment to true equality, literally pushing aside the presence of black women in the movement.

(This image itself is controversial in the history of civil rights. Note that in the 1910s, most African Americans and reformers still aligned with the Republican Party as the party of Lincoln and the party of civil rights, but a new controversial national suffrage strategy called for removal of support from ANY platform or politician who failed to support women's suffrage, regardless of party affiliation.)   

That legacy remains with us today. The historical connection between abolitionism, black civil rights, and women’s rights, means that black women were often hard at work at the center of these social movements, and yet, the racism of white women often limited the radical potential of these voices and these coalitions to strengthen the movement. At the same time, by separating class, race, and gender (in that order) into separate categories of constitutional rights, the U.S. Congress and the state legislatures sowed division into the very nature of these civil rights movements. Still, the fight for the vote—and the subsequent struggles for women’s broader political participation—would undoubtedly have seen greater or swifter progress if the work of women of color had not been dismissed or made invisible by white women in the movement, or in subsequent histories of the movement.

While the increase in the number of female presidential candidates between 2016 and 2020, or the presence of a woman of color on a major party's ticket, might seem like exponential change (though still no presidential nomination secured and still no ERA ratified), the struggle for all Americans to be included in the promise of democracy in this country has crept along at an embarrassing pace. 

The demand for gender and racial equality in the United States - politically, economically, legally, and socially as well - is now in its fourth century, as old as the very founding of the nation and a struggle that is still not complete.  Celebrating the anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment reminds us that it took 100 years to get to this point, and that we still have a long way to go.

    

 

(The above is excerpted & adapted from the Introduction to my recently published, Women's Suffrage: The Complete Guide to the Nineteenth Amendment, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2020.  

https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=A6129C)

 

Transitioning to a Full-Time Writing Career

July has been an incredibly productive and creative month for me.

Way back in February (pre-Covid shutdown) I gave my notice to leave my high school History and Government teaching job of 7 years and return to full-time research and writing as an author and historian. I won't go into the dilemma and final reasons for making that decision, but it simply comes down to not having enough time in the day to do all the things and have all the careers I want to have. As the financial devastation and stress of the pandemic for so many people became apparent, I did reconsider whether it was a good time to leave a paying job and health insurance... But, in planning to quit my job, I had already begun putting all of my take-home pay (and my book advance - see previous post on suffrage book) in savings as a cushion and in anticipation of our family not relying on my income, at least for a while. And I have the full financial and emotional support of my husband who, luckily, remains employed and has been urging me to take this leap and focus solely on writing for some time. I could not do this if it caused hardship or stress for our family right now.  Those who have known me longer than 7 years, however, will know that, before I was a high school teacher, I was a freelance author and editor, so in many ways this is just a return to that (though hopefully with less freelancing and more creative writing). 

Back to mid-March... I was teaching 4 different high school courses when we shifted to remote learning "temporarily," but as we one-by-one had to cancel all of the end-of-the-year milestone trips & events, and then slowly realized that we would not be returning to campus for the entire semester, I was devastated to end my school year and my teaching career in this way, without even saying goodbye to or seeing my students in my classroom again. By the time we recorded our virtual graduation speeches and then met the students for a brief drive-up diploma ceremony on June 11th, I was both incredibly sad and incredibly relieved that it was over.
I spent the remainder of June finalizing my school commitments, including going to campus with my daughter to clear out personal belongings from the classroom, organizing curriculum materials and digital files for my incoming replacement teacher, and tackling my school email in-box, while also re-organizing my home office.  ("Re-organizing" makes it sound like a nice weekend project, but I spent THREE MONTHS (one advantage of shelter-in-place) clearing out boxes of books, cleaning all remaining books & shelves, throwing out paperwork, cleaning rugs & floors, setting up a new desktop computer, and sorting research and notes for each in-progress writing project into fancy file boxes and folders.)

My beautiful home office with new computer set-up

I was determined that on July 1, 2020, I would start my new job as a full-time writer. 

And I did just that. I committed myself to sitting at my desk each day. And I started a daily journal to track and hold myself accountable to my writing, my research, and my reading.

So what did I actually DO in July??

Well, it has taken me several weeks to just re-enter writer mode and wrap my head around the projects I've left sitting for months and years. I needed to decide which projects to take up again, re-engage in the world of those projects, and think about new projects to start planning. I took some tangible steps, however, this past month, namely:

1. I joined an advanced-level fiction workshop and have submitted work twice to the critique group. We meet every other week (virtually, of course) and it has been amazing to get feedback and perspective and to read the work of other people committed to story and to craft. Our teacher is a long-time amazing writer friend of mine, Lydia Netzer (http://lydianetzer.blogspot.com/p/shine-shine-shine.html), who has published three novels and I so trust her guidance and judgment. Joining this group forced me to immediately re-engage with writing as practice and identity.

Going over pages for my workshop critique group 

2.  I submitted work to TWO fiction writing contests: One, a short story of about 3,000 words that was actually a revised chapter from a novel I started long ago; the other, new flash fiction written specifically for the contest.  It was a lot of fun to write and revise and submit fiction that I'm really proud of.  Wish me luck!

3. I started research on a project that's been rattling around in my head since I first came across the story for my suffrage book. The story is of a 1915 cross-country road trip undertaken by three suffragists who were tapped by Alice Paul to take a signed suffrage petition from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. to present to President Wilson. There's a local connection, as the leader of the trip, Sara Bard Field Wood, later lived near me, in Los Gatos. My research led me to Anne Gass, a Maine suffrage historian who RECREATED the entire road trip in 2015 - I'm so jealous! (https://suffrageroadtrip.blogspot.com/2015/11/)
Anne has also written a book about her great-grandmother, a prominent Maine suffragist (https://www.florencebrookswhitehouse.com/bio). It's been great to be in email communication with Anne and share ideas this past month!

4. I embarked on a crash course in screenwriting, a genre I've never tried before! I ordered and have already read several screenwriting guidebooks, have been watching Aaron Sorkin's MasterClass videos, and started following several blogs and writers on twitter.  I am contemplating writing a screenplay based on the suffrage road trip, and started outlining that project. Already, I can see that thinking about what makes a successful screenplay is going to provide insight for any kind of storytelling, and the need to show character through action, and make every action count.
This already has me thinking about what has not been working in my longer novel project... 

5. The big novel project: At month's end, I have set myself the task of revising my historical fiction manuscript based on the life of 19th-century photographer, Clover Adams. (https://www.masshist.org/features/clover-adams) I wrote most of this novel in 2010-2012 and got a bunch of passes from agents, and have not known what to do with it since. Two years ago (yikes, time flies!) I received some very helpful insights when I sent the first 30 pages or so of the manuscript to novelist & book doctor Barbara Kyle for evaluation. (https://www.barbarakyle.com/manuscript-evaluations/) After that, I put it aside once again due to my teaching and other commitments.
This past week, I reprinted the entire manuscript and, along with notes from Barbara, and notes from this video series by plot doctor, Martha Alderson (a Santa Cruz local, I believe), I began re-visioning the plot and structure. (https://marthaalderson.com/pwplotwrimoreviseyournovelinamonth/)

So, that's it. A month of rethinking, revising, reaching out to other writers & resources, and reconnecting with the writing life. I also read EVERY DAY.  The best writing course is to be immersed in the work of other writers. I owe it to myself to do this and I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing. For years I've been saying, "If I only had the time..."  Now this is my time.

My 1956 Smith-Corona Silent Super with original case and paperwork

6. Oh, and I bought this mid-20th c. manual typewriter as a launch gift for myself! I'm not sure if I will type my next great work on it, but it inspires me to think about my favorite mid-20th c. authors clicking away, such as O'Connor, Jackson, Steinbeck....

Some writing inspiration from Octavia Butler 

The Dignity of Voting Rights; or, How Not to Disappoint Your Mother

This week I received a surprise package of 5 copies of my new book, Women's Suffrage: The Complete Guide to the 19th Amendment, from my publisher.

My daughter Lillian helped me set up this photo with my purple-white-yellow suffrage flag (gifted to me by students!) draped in the background. The 36 stars on the flag represent the 36 states needed (at that time) to ratify the amendment. Here's a picture of Alice Paul unfurling the flag outside the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the National Woman's Party after Tennessee became the final state to ratify on August 18, 1920.

The story of the nail-biter final suffrage vote in Tennessee is a legendary tale of a young, 24-year-old junior state assemblyman who listened to his mother. The legend has it that in Henry's coat pocket when he cast his women's suffrage vote that day was a recent letter from his mother, Phoebe "Febb" Burn. Buried in-between news from back home about the rain and the farm, and a local wedding and a neighbor's broken arm, she brings up suffrage a couple of times, finally instructing him to "be a good boy" and do the right thing: 

“Dear Son, … Hurrah and vote for Suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt. I noticed Chandlers’ speech, it was very bitter. I’ve been waiting to see how you stood but have not seen anything yet…. Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt with her “Rats.” Is she the one that put rat in ratification, Ha! No more from mama this time. With lots of love, Mama.” 

(You can see a scan of the original full-length letter here: http://teachtnhistory.org/File/Harry_T._Burn.pdf)

I love the anecdote, not only because that is the end of that part of the story: The 19th Amendment was certified to the U.S. Constitution just a few days later. But I love it because we want to believe that Henry listened to his mother. Suffragists had long pointed out the indignity of having to "ask" men, as the only eligible voters, to secure their rights as women. So maybe it adds a little dignity back to the story to think that it was a disenfranchised 46-year-old woman, Phoebe "Febb" Burn, who actually decided the final vote. It's interesting that she notes in her letter that she did not know how he stood on the issue - so they had not discussed it. And the record shows that Henry originally sided with the anti-suffragists and intended to vote "Nay." He twice voted to "table" the issue and avoid making a decision.

I have a son of about the same age and I certainly like to think that, in the end, Henry was swayed by the idea of having to report back to his mother on how he voted on the women's suffrage question. (She's wouldn't be mad, she'd just be very disappointed.) 

Phoebe King Ensminger Burn (1873-1945)

Flannery O'Connor

Read and enjoyed this insightful New Yorker piece on Flannery O’Connor over the weekend. The title “How Racist?” seems like the wrong question, though... especially since the answer, in this reader’s conclusion, is very. “About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind...”.
(Although she did admit, “I have read one of his stories and it was a good one.”)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor

The author of the essay points out that O’Connor did address “the changing South” in her fiction, and was, of course, highly aware of the prejudices & history of white people in Georgia.

After reading the article, I was inspired to read a 1961 short story mentioned, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (linked in comments below). The story is an excellent psychological study of the resentment of a 20-something white son escorting his old-fashioned (in manners, appearance, and prejudice) southern white mother on a bus trip around town.

On first glance, it seems like the story is also about the generational tension between the segregationist mother with her benevolent racism (she thinks black children are “cute,” and that black people have had a rough time, but the whole premise of the story is that her son must accompany her because she’s afraid she might encounter a black person on the integrated public bus) and the more enlightened integrationist college-educated white son... but, in the end, the reader is left with the uncomfortable feeling that the son is perhaps only interested in integration or equal treatment of African Americans as a way to spite his mother ...? He even fantasizes about bringing home a black friend (or girlfriend!) just to shock his mother.

(Read the story - it’s short! - and share your thoughts below! https://thomasaquinas.edu/pdfs/alumni/everything-that-rises.pdf?fbclid=IwAR27We5ZMprBq3EYhc3ATkgX0lR_1SHQLqxlJPV1jOnXsu8driPObtCG7i8)

Having died relatively young in 1964, at the peak of the civil rights movement, we will never know how or whether O’Connor’s views on racism might have evolved, personally or in her writing.

ADDED:  Insight from my father-in-law, a retired English Literature professor:

"Thanks Tiffany, for posting this and inspiring me to post one of my admittedly long-winded responses. I haven't read the New Yorker article yet but I will. The story is typical of the strengths of O'Connor's writing. But! It's interesting that you quote her remark “About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind...”. First of all, her own writing is certainly "philosophizing prophesying pontificating." Her title, "Everything That Rises Must Converge," is taken from the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin. It may be functioning ironically here, but I think it fits also with other Catholic philosophical references in the story. And there is a kind of "prophesying" quality to her mid-20th-century characterizations, the mother as the aged white "belle" nostalgic for a sentimental version of the Old South that would become harder to sustain after mandated desegregation, and the son a representative of the new Southern intellectual with an as yet underdeveloped penchant for moderate reform, alienated from his own culture but not able to actively seek an alternative, and muddling about in impotent rage. Second: despite O'Connor's reputation for being unsentimental in what is said to be a Southern Gothic tradition, as confirmed by what appears to be the anti-sentimentalism of the story, I do think there remains a certain sentimentality in her underlying religious and moral philosophizing. One of James Baldwin's main criticisms of dominant American cultures of the South AND the North, was the sentimentality that substituted for deep feeling in both popular culture and in many strains of the high culture, and allowed for comforting distraction from, and ultimately denial of, conditions of real oppression and pain, . The generation of literary critics who first wrote admiringly of O'Connor's "unsentimental" stories were raised and educated on the early to mid-20th century tradition of writing that was a reaction to Victorian sentimentality, the writing of people like Hemingway and the "hard boiled" school of writers of noir fiction. But Hemingway and those who followed in his wake, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain,etc., were themselves sentimentalists about male bonding, and about the great tradition of the American man-boy--Hemingway's Nick Adams was a kind of prototype. The Southern writers, Faulkner preeminently, could be both unsentimental in delineating the dark aspects of the dominant white culture of the post-Reconstruction South and still sentimentalize "their" Negroes. Baldwin was also critical of the "protest novel"_ drawing a ink between Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and writers of the left of the 1930s, on similar grounds of a kind of socialist sentimentalizing, as is evident in the first two essays of Notes of A Native Son, the title of which refers of course to Richard Wright's novel which Baldwin criticizes. I think, more than any other mid-to-late 20th century American writer, Baldwin understood the historical and still functional contradictions of US society and its cultures, and not just contradictions concerning race, but of gender, sexuality, class as well. Contrary to what O'Connor said of him, he didn't drop a lot of theoretical or philosophical references, and although he moralizes at times in biblical language I don't think he pontificates--that term suggests speech warranted by a powerful institution. I don't think Baldwin ever subscribed to or was a spokesperson for any kind of institutional power. But O'Connor seems bound, if somewhat ironically, to at least two powerful institutions."

ADDED:  My response:

"Thanks so much, Don. I hadn’t thought about the actual meaning of the individual words she was using against Baldwin - the three “p” words. Interesting.
The New Yorker piece, by the way, is written by a journalist who often covers Catholic issues , so it’s interesting that he did not take up more analysis about those specific words.
You mention that O’Connor was bound by two major institutions - presumably the Church and the South - and Baldwin comes up again in the article when she is approached about meeting with him while he’s in Georgia on a trip in 1959. She says “it would be nice to meet him in New York,” but she won’t meet with him in Georgia because “I observe the traditions of the society I feed on - it’s only fair.”
This is in a private letter and It’s not clear if she’s being somewhat flippant here, but it’s Interesting that she’s seen as taking a completely “unsentimental” view of that society, but not actually interested in challenging it."

FOLLOW-UP:  A response to the New Yorker piece, providing more context and history of black scholars and artists (including Walker, Morrison, etc.) responding to O'Connor: 
https://bittersoutherner.com/southern-perspective/2020/on-flannery-o-connor-and-race-a-response-to-paul-elie-new-yorker

Harper Lee and Civil Rights

Since I just finished re-reading "To Kill A Mockingbird" with my 9th graders, I decided to finally get around to reading the copy of "Go Set A Watchman" that I picked up a couple of years ago. If you don't know the story, Harper Lee wrote Watchman BEFORE she wrote Mockingbird, the publisher rejected it & suggested instead that she play up "the childhood stuff," and so she wrote & published Mockingbird about the idyllic summers of young innocent white Scout Finch against the backdrop of Depression-era racial violence in 1930s rural Alabama. Mockingbird was published in 1960 and went on to become, by many accounts, one of the best novels of the 20th century, while Watchman sat locked away in a drawer until very near Lee's death when she was talked into publishing it in 2015.

Although written before Mockingbird, Watchman takes place LATER, in the 1950s, as the story of grown up Scout (aka Jean Louise Finch), now a 20-something independent young woman who has gone off to New York but now returns to Alabama to visit her elderly father, the heroic white lawyer Atticus Finch of Mockingbird fame.


Has anyone else here read "Go Set A Watchman?" Oof, I almost wish I hadn't. Not because it is a little clunky, more overtly political, and has none of the storytelling charm of "the childhood stuff" that became Mockingbird (that publisher was right, btw), but because, it is just not where you want the Mockingbird characters to have ended up 20 years later. And not just because it turns out, surprise! ALL the white people in Maycomb are racist! (More on that below.) But also some key characters are prematurely dead (ugh), and Watchman also has some inconsistencies with the plot and characters that were later developed in Mockingbird, so that's probably another reason she did not previously publish it. FOR EXAMPLE, although only very briefly mentioned in Watchman as part of Atticus's past legal work, the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman, and the KEY plot point of Mockingbird, turns out to have a DIFFERENT VERDICT than what she wrote in Mockingbird - interesting.


As for the fast-forward 20 years to catch up with a now 70-year-old Atticus Finch in Maycomb... If you thought Atticus was the white liberal moral compass of 1930s Alabama, you may end up disappointed in how that turns out. Even Jean Louise is angry about the Supreme Court (in Brown v. Board) "telling the South what to do," but boy howdy, you should hear Atticus and Aunt Alexandra (and Jean Louise's suitor, Henry, a supposed childhood love who, by the way, never appears in her Mockingbird childhood) go off on how the NAACP is trying to get black people all riled up about their rights down here! And then there's black housekeeper Calpurnia, who helped raise motherless Scout and her brother, but somewhere in the intervening years finally got fed up with the Finches and leaves them - a credible move inserted by author Lee, although from Jean Louise's still childlike and self-centered perspective this is a personal betrayal, not a political move.


It's hard to come to a conclusion about Lee's project here. Did she intend for 1930s Atticus Finch - sensitive single dad, progressive intellectual, smalltown moral leader - to EVER be the hero that millions of (white) readers have held him up to be? Or was he ALWAYS (even in Mockingbird) just progressive *enough,* committed to the pursuit of justice under the law, and equally committed to treating neighbors (black or white, rich or poor) with civility, but actually holding the same prejudices as his white contemporaries?

One of his most famous dad lines in Mockingbird is the quote about walking in another person's shoes, and he has this calm rational perspective that everyone is battling their own struggles, which we may not know anything about. But, even in Mockingbird, his own children uncomfortably struggle with how Atticus can "defend" everyone and not take a more vocal stand against all kinds of injustices?? At the end of Mockingbird, Atticus's children CHALLENGE him - how can he defend a black man against false accusations, and yet allow the white racists to express their views unchallenged? Scout wonders how her teacher at school can teach the children that anti-Semitism is wrong because you shouldn't judge someone based on religion, but the white adults all around her constantly judge black people based on the color of their skin? Atticus says everyone is entitled to their beliefs, live and let live, but the CHILDREN know that is wrong, that beliefs lead to actions. By the white juries, by the white police, by the white neighbors.


So the first reaction of (white) readers of both books (and the reaction of Jean Louise) is shock and sadness that the gentle guiding Atticus Finch of Scout's childhood - the one who loved his black housekeeper as a co-parent and defended Tom Robinson with everything he had - is 20 years later resisting the anti-segregation and voter registration efforts of the mid-1950s and joining the local "Citizen's Council" alongside the town's most obvious racists.



Adam Gopnik writes, "So the idea that Atticus, in this book, “becomes” the bigot he was not in “Mockingbird” entirely misses Harper Lee’s point—that this is exactly the kind of bigot that Atticus has been all along. The particular kind of racial rhetoric that Atticus embraces (and that he and Jean Louise are careful to distinguish from low-rent, white-trash bigotry) is a complex and, in its own estimation, “liberal” ideology: there is no contradiction between Atticus defending an innocent black man accused of rape in “Mockingbird” and Atticus mistrusting civil rights twenty years later. Both are part of a paternal effort to help a minority that, in this view, cannot yet entirely help itself."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/sweet-home-alabama

By the way, before teaching Mockingbird, I did some research on controversies about the novel and teaching Atticus as white savior, and about how white students might read it compared to black students. I listened to this podcast on "Teaching While White," which points out that Atticus Finch, given his own family history and upbringing, could NOT HAVE EXISTED in the way white readers have wanted him to exist.  And I now think that was probably Harper Lee's point.

https://teachingwhilewhite.org/podcast

In Watchman, Jean Louise realizes, and in an angry confrontation tells her father, that children don't learn racism from school or from society... they first learn it at home. And in that one accusation, Lee puts a completely different spin on Mockingbird, on going back and telling the story of how that happens in Scout's childhood.

Maybe the books do work as joint novels after all.

Mrs. America

I watched the first three episodes of "Mrs. America" that are available on Hulu and I just LOVED this! Great 1970s vibe in the music & artistic direction & costumes, and I smiled out loud (ha) to see Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan (love Tracey Ullman!), Bella Abzug, and Shirley Chisholm onscreen as characters!
And it is all so relevant to political conversations today, not only abortion and the ERA (fully ratified now but still not passed!), but I especially liked Episode 3 about Chisholm's presidential campaign, calls for "party unity," and the delegates debate leading up to the Democratic national convention in 1972. Chisholm's run was HEROIC in challenging sexism and racism (Does a black woman have any better a chance today? I think we've answered that question.), but Bernie supporters might also definitely relate to that episode... Just sayin'.

Btw, Phyllis Schlafly is not the complete villain here. She is hardly sympathetic in her effort to organize a false battle between housewives and feminism, but she is a complex and paradoxical character, struggling with the limitations of sexism in her own life, marriage, and career, and opportunistically stumbling into anti-ERA activism because that's where people were willing to listen to her. (She aspired to be a foreign policy nuclear arms expert, had a failed Congressional run (but refused to acknowledge that sexism impacted her chances) and when she tells her husband that she also "could have gone to Harvard law school," he reminds her that, No, actually, Harvard didn't admit women at the time Phyllis graduated from college.)

There's a great scene at the end of the third episode that provides a visual of Schlafly's intense desire for stability and security: But it's up to the viewers to conclude whether that is because she's a socially conservative Republican? or because she's a mother of three teenaged sons while the Vietnam War rages on the news every night (her main argument against the ERA was that daughters would also be drafted)? or because she's a woman and a 1970s housewife with no income or power of her own? (In earlier scenes, Schlafly's husband has to sign a credit card application for her (the law at that time), is upset when she flies to Washington and leaves the 6 kids behind *for the day,* and she worries about her own elderly mother running out of money, first dependent on her own husband and now dependent on her son-in-law.)

Watch it!

I signed up for the Shakespeare 2020 Project to read all of the plays in one year.  They provide a schedule, weekly videos and scholarly articles about the plays, and a discussion forum to connect with other people reading the plays on the same schedule. 

I just finished the first play, "Twelfth Night," ahead of schedule. On the surface, this is a simple comedy employing all kinds of typical antics around twins, mistaken identity, cross-dressing, and the ensuing romantic missteps, and it was a quick & easy one to read. But the videos and resources posted for each play are deepening my understanding of the layers and nuances, and I think the play is darker and more transgressive than it first appears. 

This play is the source of the well-known quote, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."  Among others.  

I just learned that there was a 1996 Twelfth Night film starring Helena Bonham Carter, so I'm going to look for that later today.
On to Henry VI. 

 I'm also starting Romeo & Juliet with my 9th graders on Monday, so this independent reading project is providing additional context for teaching Shakespeare, in general.  To that end, I also started re-reading Stephen Greenblat's 2004 cultural biography, "Will in the World."  The introductory pages would be great to read aloud to students to set up study of the plays. 

I'm not entirely in teacher mode on this project, though.  Most of the plays I will be reading for the first time and it is difficult to get a full understanding from just one reading.  But I want to have a deeper understanding of Shakespeare's body of work and a greater facility with his language, for my own literary and writing purposes. This is one of my self-improvement goals for 2020.  

Found my "Women's Roles in 19th-Century America" book on the shelves at San Francisco State Library. It is dedicated to Lillian, so here she is, full circle, with "her" book.
AND I was pleasantly surprised to see how often it has been checked out.
I wonder if a prof. is assigning it for a class...? 🤔

True story: When I was in grad school I used to just sit and read on the floor on the HQ (Women's Studies) aisle and my dream was to have a book published and catalogued under HQ. Don't ever give up your dreams, kids.

I was in Berkeley all weekend with my Model UN students - a great, experienced group, and an easy trip, even though the Berkeley campus was bigger and busier and a little trickier to navigate than we're used to at Stanford. I also got to meet up with my former student, Ruby (MMS Class of 2018) who attends Berkeley now, and Miles took the train over from SF to spend some time with me on Saturday.

We wandered into a bookstore and I found this vintage book, _Woman_, published in 1901. It includes several well-known (to me, and to people in 1901, ha) contributors, including international suffragist and peace activist, May Wright Sewall; abolitionist, women's rights activist, and colonel of one of the first black regiments in the Civil War, Thomas Wentworth Higginson; and David Starr Jordan, the first president of Leland Stanford Junior University (aka Stanford University).
The book is in perfect condition, and looks brand new, which is bad for books, but good for collectors.

I was recently reading an essay by John Steinbeck in which he explained why he cared nothing for collecting old or valuable books. He complained when his publisher released special anniversary or leather-bound editions of his works, or asked him to sign copies for special distribution or sale. He did not like the idea of trying to add value to a physical book, beyond the value of the words inside. He said he never spent his money collecting books, and would rather see beloved books bent and used up and passed along to someone else.

Point taken, but I love my new 118 year old book in pristine condition. :)

RBG & the Constitution

I finally saw "On the Basis of Sex" last night. As a historian/teacher/scholar, I appreciate any effort to make research and written and oral argumentation seem exciting and suspenseful! I also enjoyed Kathy Bates as Dorothy Kenyon, an earlier feminist lawyer who had not been able to do what RBG ultimately did, and the conversation between Kenyon ---> RBG ---> RBG's let's-protest-in-the-streets teenaged daughter, Jane Ginsburg, as representative of the changes happening across the generations and the feminist "waves" working together. Nice touch, Hollywood.

Speaking of Hollywood, an older man outside the theater was handing out papers to all of us before we went in, on which he somewhat sloppily explained the the movie was full of LIES. In particular, he warned us about a scene in which young RBG notes that the word "freedom" is not in the U.S. Constitution. His handy-dandy handout helpfully pointed out that the word "freedom" is, in fact, right there in the 1st Amendment, regarding "freedom of speech."

(Hmmm.. so, he had a point, but I don't know why Hollywood would LIE about the Constitution, especially if it makes it seem like RBG doesn't KNOW her Constitution....If liberal Hollywood was going to lie, they'd want to prop up our heroine by making her look even smarter than she is, right??!)

Obviously it was my duty (as a citizen, a government teacher, and as a fan of RBG willing to turn a blind feminist eye to pesky facts like the Constitution) to respond to this dilemma, so I looked up this man's complaint and found a couple of articles that refer exactly to that scene and explain that, as a Constitutional scholar, Ginsburg was referring to the *original* unratified and unamended Constitution - in fact, her entire point in that scene in the movie was that, starting from the beginning (with the Bill of Rights), we have expanded the definitions of freedom and equality to protect citizens' rights and liberties that were not in the original Constitution. That the Constitution CHANGES, including through interpretation of the laws.

Hmph, take that old guy with nothing better to do than type up complaints about Hollywood, make a bunch of copies, and then stand outside the movie theater in the cold & rain trying to protect our democracy from RBG.