‘Either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.’ - Derek Walcott
My partner in crime and literati madness, Lynne, and I continued this conversation about America, American identity, narratives, and plurality over the weekend. I summarized my recent post for her at our stomping ground while we were planning the next issue of our literary journal. We both remarked how we willfully ignored the kerfuffle or hullabaloo of Glen Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in DC over the weekend. A rally so blatant in its effort to re-write the narrative of post-civil rights America to serve some nameless corporate and political interest that it turns stomachs, rolls eyes. Whatever. That spectacle, compounded by the nativism and islamophobia washing over many parts of the country over the Park 51 cultural center, juxtaposed against the intensity of the anti-immigration debate in Arizona and California, exacerbates the polarization. We shared our fury over two separate events of assault and vandalism directed at our Muslim Americans; I told her how some believe that this backlash was a delayed reaction to September 11th. We also talked about how we were worried after the towers fell that we would see this behavior in our community and didn’t. We remarked how our mongrel society in the County of Kings asserts our right to exist. Then, I brought her up to speed on the #frazenfreude, the crowning of author Jonathan Franzen as the Great American Novelist of our time, and it’s subsequent fallout/criticism from women authors (Jodi Piccoult, Jennifer Weiner, progenitors of the much maligned chick lit) and the Paris Review’s Lorin Stein’s thoughtful response over on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog on the Atlantic.
It’s impossible for me to not look at these things in relation to each other. The narrative of the American experience is undergoing some deep structural work. It’s good to see this debate out there in ether, warts and all. We’re all looking at this in different ways. Continue reading
