Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell (2011)
Nonfiction, history
10 out of 10
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| from Goodreads |
Dear Readers,
There are some
really awesome Americans who do what they can to decrease world suck. There are some
really lousy Americans whose only purpose in life is to increase world suck just as fast as possible. And then there are the rest of us Americans who sometimes do really great things and sometimes make really bad, really costly mistakes. To be fair,
most of the really awesome Americans are, like you and me (and probably some of the lousy Americans), fallible humans (except for Glenn Beck, who is an evil asshole -- just sayin').
And then there's Sarah Vowell. Vowell has a wicked sense of humor and a fascination with the darker side of history. But best of all, she takes stories that on the surface may seem black and white or good and evil and shows her readers that really, history is made by flawed humans, with good and bad intentions. It is not made by angels or demons. To be sure, she doesn't let bad folk off the hook or sweep undesirable stories under the rug, nor does she hold people up as perfect paragons. She puts the humans who shaped history back together with the cold dates and facts, all the while managing to write a funny and engaging book.
Unfamiliar Fishes, a history of the annexation of Hawaii, is no different.
Vowell takes us through the history of Hawaii from the 1779 death of Captain cook to the 1898 annexation of the territory. Her focus, though, is on the missionaries who came to Christianize the natives and the far-reaching effects of their arrival. For example, she writes, "Mills, Dwight, and the other men of faith who founded the
ABCFM would use the empirical data and maps of European explorers like Cook and La Perouse to fan out evangelists across the Pacific to spread the fear of God as far and wide as Cook's men had spread the clap" (30). Yikes!
Later, she quotes one of the missionary wives. "Mercy Whitney's echo of
Winthrop's sentiment, which was an echo of Paul's belief, is a crucial reminder of one of the finest principles of Christianity in general and New England's Congregational brand of Protestantism in particular. Scrape off every irritating trait that mars Mercy and her shipmates -- xenophobia, condescension, spiritual imperialism, and self-righteous disdain -- and they have an astonishing aptitude for kinship and public-spirited love" (52). Again, Vowell gets to the crux of the story -- that history and the people who make history are messy and complicated. The trick for us, then, is to see how we are messy and how we can make choices to be less so.
Further on, she writes, "For Americans,
Acts 16:9 is the high-fructose corn syrup of Bible verses -- an all-purpose ingredient we'll stir into everything from the ink on the Marshall Plan to canisters of Agent Orange. Our greatest goodness and our worst impulses come out of this missionary zeal, contributing to our overbearing (yet not entirely unwarranted) sense of our country as an inherently helpful force in the world. And, as with the apostle Paul, the notion that strangers want our help is sometimes a delusion" (81).
What I like best about Vowell's books, after their playful and sharp use of language, is that she grapples with serious, dark and weighty topics in history -- assassinations, imperialism, Puritainism with a great eye to historical accuracy which she couples with the knowledge that humans are messy and complicated. She draws readers' attentions to the facts and to some of the many sides of a story and asks that, when you make a decision about a topic, you have taken a close look at the facts and thought long and hard before announcing a truth. She tugs at our emotions without pandering and makes us laugh without diverting us away from difficult truths, and I kind of want to be her. Barring that, I can't wait for her next book.
