May 2009 Archives

Lies My Teacher Told Me is a nonfiction history book consisting of the author's attempt to debunk various myths, untruths, and omissions in American history as taught to high school students through US history textbooks. The author analyzes 12 textbooks, mostly traditional texts but also including two "discourse" style books, around specific events in US History.

Throughout Lies, Loewen illustrates how Anglo centric the textbooks are in their selection and presentation of material, how they tend to present one-sided stories in order to preserve the "heroification" of certain historical figures (like George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Woodrow Wilson, and Helen Keller). For example, most of the textbooks paint a glowing picture of Columbus and how he "found" the "New World" (despite the land's previous occupation by indigenous people, the facts that many other explorers may have been in North America previously, and that Columbus enslaved and murdered thousands of indigenous people).

Mark and I had a brief conversation yesterday about the importance of protecting one's public identity, prompted when I asked him his opinion of that fact that I've started using my name for my blog URL, eHow, and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Mark is extremely cautious about protecting his public identity, particularly online. Images of the writer at Burningman, he argued, could affect her negatively should she seek future work promoting public education.

I had it in my head when I left the PR job that I wanted to become a "real" writer, not a writer bound by the perspectives of the organizations I represented.

A couple of things happened to me back in those PR days. For one, the line between truth and fiction became blurry for me. If a public leader needed a quote but didn't have time to come up with something, I wrote it and ran it by him or her for approval. If a story had to be developed but I hadn't yet talked to the parties involved, I wrote a draft purely on how I imagined it and then inserted the information I gleaned after the fact. 

The second thing that happened is that my own opinions took a back seat to my craft. I felt, to quote Pink Floyd, "comfortably numb" out of pure necessity. It's hard to acknowledge anything negative--I mean truly acknowlege--and then turn around and write only the positive side of the story. So I developed the habit of ignoring my own critique of the system in those instances when something fishy seemed afoot or even when I knew something was outright wrong. Instead I dived into my work to get it done, and then at the end of the day dived into other things--exercise, friends, hobbies, travel--by way of distraction.

I had a recurring idea that I didn't like the work I had dedicated myself to--and by extension the person I had become--but again, like my other misgivings, I went to lengths to ignore it.

I picked up The Bean Trees at a rummage sale (one of my favorite places to go book shopping). I almost didn't take it, but in the end I'm very glad I did.

The story is about a young girl who gets away from her go-nowhere town just as soon as she's saved up enough money to buy a car. She's not sure where she's going so she just drives. Then at one of the stops on her trip, a Native-American woman puts a baby girl on the passenger seat of her car and tells her to take it. She continues onward, now caring for a small child she nicknames "Turtle" who, it turns out, has been sexually abused. Eventually she stops out of necessity because her car dies, so she calls that city her temporary new home. There she meets a handful of characters who become her new family.