I enjoy historically framed stories and lot and lots of non-fic.
Tks

I like Liz2′s suggestions, and I understand her interest in teaching with novels. But–and perhaps I’m being too optimistic here–there are now enough books and articles (for now) that deal with African American and Indian women’s history that I can fill out a syllabus with history books and articles that address the experiences of all women. Pre-1800 African American women’s history has the thinnest historiography, but even that field gradually gets better every year.

I certainly admire the imaginative efforts that Morrison went to in order to successfully create characters very much like the hundreds of thousands of people whose actual lives and experiences history did not record or preserve, but on the other hand, I don’t want to suggest to my students that the only way to do this is through fictional re-creations. I think students should see writing this kind of history as difficult and creative but possible. I guess I wonder in some ways if assigning this book would suggest to students that historians should give up on history from the bottom up.

(And, Indyanna–don’t worry about Roxie’s teasing! You are in fact ideally poised to re-create Vaark’s journey to and fro the Chesapeake. Maybe you can get John McPhee to ride along with you this time?)

On Milton, who knew? There are (at least) two of them in NY. One in Saratoga County, not really hard by the Hudson. A second on the main stem of the Hudson, but on the west bank, near Kingston (which would have been Esopus in the novel’s timeline I think). Still sounds like kind of a late Yankee invasion thing. Ironically, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to that part of the Hudson lately for a project of my own, but mostly the east bank, and had never even noticed any Milton.

Yeah, Historiann, I should just put this novel on my comps. list and do a little cultural-g.p.s. work on it. Will report if this happens, but it may take a while.

I’m sure there is more that I do with them, I’m tired out from a house full of kids. Holidays with no public school are not holidays!

Maybe it would be a good book for exploring the reasons for “the unity (or lack thereof) among women and other disempowered people,” with an emphasis on “the lack thereof!”

The central community on Vaark’s farm is the most varied, but the essentially powerless state of all of it’s inhabitants other than Vaark cause them to turn on one another the minute that he is gone. No one except perhaps Vaark is free in any sense of the word. Since historical fiction is as much about the author’s time as the historical period depicted, I think Morrison is saying something about the unity (or lack thereof) among women and other disempowered people.

As for using a novel in the classroom, my students, like Indyanna’s, tend to call anything book-shaped a “novel.” I’ve had two different experiences with actual novels. I was a t.a. for a teacher who assigned “Killer Angels” (yeah, I know!). While the novel did help the students wrap their imaginations around some of the larger issues of the war, they tended to have a difficult time distinguishing fiction from fact. Some even took the novel as essentially a transcript of the battle of Gettysburg.

I have also taught “The Jungle.” Opposite reaction there. The students judged “all of that could not have happened to one person” and therefore discounted all of the ideas that Lewis attempted to convey.

I think that you would have to teach “Mercy” with a lot of accomanying non-fiction and explicitly guide the students toward an understanding of the narrative as an interpretation rather than fact. Perhaps you could bring in documented examples that mirror pieces of the story.

Really, why can’t historical novelists footnote their work!

For you colonial historians out there, I’m thinking of Breen and Innes’s Myne Own Ground as an example of a microhistory that illustrates the possibilities, and the foreclosed options, that Africans and Europeans alike faced in the English New World colonies in the 17th C. The main thing Morrison’s book does that most colonial history books don’t is to highlight women’s experiences. This by the way is what I’m trying to do with the book I’m writing, although it is of course a non-fiction book (as much as possible, anyway). I have’t yet read Jon Sensbach’s Rebecca’s Revival yet–can anyone comment on that title? My guess is that might accomplish the same thing as Morrison’s novel, but in more specific and evidence-based ways.

And, Roxie–that’s a really great book! DeLillo is one of our few modern novelists whose works tend to revolve around history. I think he’s fascinating.