Here’s what to read with you In fact Consider the country’s heritage.
Happy 250th (late), America! we are not Absolutely In a party mood on this rainy Monday, but que sera. This weekend brought Washington a militaristic displayAnd most states are left with a puzzle: How can we celebrate a country that is actively pursuing a violent, fascist agenda both within and beyond its borders?
to paraphrase dazed and ConfusedOn the day of Ms. Stroud’s bicentennial, we cannot forget what we are asked to celebrate: “The fact is that a group of slave-owning, elite white men did not want to pay their taxes.”
And yet, Woody Guthrie. Baseball. Hollywood! Jazz! What do we do about the pickle of American patriotism? lots of our best selling author Ink has been spilled on this question. Last week, some brilliant minds My generation offended us elegy and poetic travelogue. But I left the weekend still yearning for some context for the old national experiment.
Here are some blessed links to take you to another era of wrestling with America. From historical corrections to recurring reading lists, all of the articles below serve to remind us what’s really can do What Make America Great: Our Long History of Rebellion and Resistance, and an Enduring Curiosity That Reaches Beyond Borders.
Robin Dizzy Kelly’s”Do you understand your language?” hammer and hope
In this engaging historical essay, Kelly, a leading thinker and writer in the Black radical tradition, offers a close reading of the Declaration of Independence alongside Douglass’s “famous jeremiad.”
Listing a dozen examples from the country’s early days, Kelly makes a case for making the Declaration a core text in Black Studies—despite all of the document’s obvious mistakes. Kelly writes, “If the long movement for black freedom claimed the Declaration and its various amendments as a weapon, an inspiration, a north star, a nightmare, then the Fourth of July is ours too.”
Ishaan Tharoor’sWhy was the last battle of the American Revolution fought in India?” the new Yorker
my history lesson Too The Americans managed to ignore much of the global context surrounding the Revolution. This interesting deep dive from Tharoor’s new “Global Notes” column puts India at the center of the country-founding conflict.
This short, curious history recounts the major battles that took place off the coast of India during the War of Independence. Battles that “have completely faded from the American imagination, even though, in some ways, the American rebellion was just one aspect of a much larger imperial drama.”
For those of us who need reminding that the country was not built in a vacuum, start here.
Lauren Fadiman,”How environmentalists became America’s first modern ‘domestic terrorists’” current affairs
This essay introduces some of the history of the modern American movement. Editor of Jacobin and Ph.D. in American History. Candidate Fadiman takes us from the beginning of the ongoing Stop Cop City protests in Georgia, when parts of the green movement began to adopt violent tactics.
First of all to remember the earth! and Earth Liberation Front campaigns, Fadiman highlights a very American habit: armed resistance. (And second: the death of the movement by government overreach.) But green radicals are a special case of making property, not people, their primary target.
Because distinguishing between terrorism and direct action is a majority American pastime, I’d say this is a fascinating piece to read on Fireworks Reflections.
Is it cheating to use a reading list for pointing? one more reading list? oh good! I thought that for those of you who want to read longer—and for those of you who are more inclined toward fantasy it Guardian Increase The Weird American books recommended by Weird American authors were especially wonderful.
We’ve got Sarah Schulman praising Carson McCullers, and Kay Gabriel praising John Keane. And a fun genre bonus: poetry and plays are fairly represented in this alt-canon, which isn’t always the case. In short, this list reminded me that our radicals and renegades are the best thing about this great nation.
In art, and on the streets.
