Existential struggles for freedom and equality are archetypally American. Mr. John Lewis who died on July 17, 2020 wrote a remarkable essay shortly before his death. It is as if Congressman Lewis said what I longed to hear.
While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society.
We in the United States continue to build a large society of many relationships that are self-sustaining and self-revising because we learned how. We continue to develop identities that are adaptive. We learned how to make differences worth making. When John Lewis uses the pronoun, you, he is speaking to us, our generation of youth and the learners in our maturity.
The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society…. You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, though decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.
We may learn how to “make a difference” worth making, but we do not all agree on what differences to make. We feel and act as groups, but also as individuals, overcoming confusion and seeking truth in our existential struggles. My novel tells a story about people learning to make a difference in the United States, and I hope there is plenty of diversity and good air to breath.
The New York Times Learning Network has posted a video of youth answering the question, Is America living up to its values? Learn more about the 2020 Civil Conversation Challenge for teenagers.
“Beginning Sept. 22 and running through Oct. 30, we’re inviting teenagers to have productive, respectful conversations about some of the issues dividing us this election season.”
New York Times, The Learning Network
Teaching and Identity
“You think we are as American as they are? Mariah, you are mistaken!”
The Compromise, “In the Garden 1843”
Teachers work across the spectrum of social-emotional and cognitive goals. Having given decades of work to its success, I am among the Americans who are proud of our (aspiring, evolving) multicultural, socially just, and culturally responsive society. Failures cut deeply. To me, they are our successes and failures.
Teachers also say that literacy is necessary to the practices of social engagement and self-creation. Absolutely. Literacy helps us learn from the past, gather new ideas, and plan and implement our goals. But there are also challenges related to family and identity. Addressing these improves our self-knowledge and self-creation through many stages in life.
My lead character, Mariah, who is part Native American, and her white half-sister try to work out an answer to another age-old question in school: “Who cares?”
“Mother wanted us to read, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” I said. “She argued with Pa over schooling us or not.”
“That’s why we're here, don’t you think, for the books and the music, and to walk and talk like we’re somebody?”
“I don’t know, Lizzy. We have to do housework. Nobody cares if we read or not.”
“You’re right about that, Sister. Maybe because Pa was against it, and we don’t know what Mother wanted, that’s why it’s so hard for us, I mean, to read and write. She knew everything there was to know about living things, but nothing about books and music.”
Engaging with multiple groups and institutions allows the learner to critically reassess original communities and social strata, including the family. That assessment is hard work, especially when there are few to ratify it.
Cultural Capital
Knowledge makes cultural capital, the term coined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in 1973. This sort of capital is meant to grant status in a stratified society. Eliza sings European art songs and fashions lace in addition to her housekeeping duties. She hopes that education in the arts can lift their social status, “to walk and talk like we’re somebody.” Or was that type of education established for a different color and class of people?
The Compromise is like a family saga because in this country, social status rises and falls over generations. Education has long been meant for particular social classes and not others, so what happened to this society when literacy skyrocketed in the 19th century? Did it prepare a population for civic responsibilities in a new democracy? The answer is obvious: yes, but only for some. People of color were excluded from basic literacy. All women were denied higher education until the second half of the century and then access increased gradually until our time when numbers of women surpased men in higher education. Social betterment through education has been the expectation, but the means are highly contested.
Women’s Education
From the beginning of the Gamble Library scenes, there is a haunting problem. It is not whether or not a young woman learns to read. It’s how literacy makes a difference in her life. Hester, the realist says,
“Nothing here cleans a pot. You copy these words a few more times; then come with your scullery salt.”
Learners ask these questions all the time: “Why am I learning this? How can this improve my life?” If teachers don’t have answers, they have little of value. Learners still struggle to earn a living and forge a path through adulthood, teachers as much as anyone.
For a scullery maid, is learning to read as important as disinfecting with vinegar and salt or serving the right mushrooms? My parents, who grew up in the Great Depression, expected me to learn a suitable trade or a skill like typing, something bound to necessity. Today our lives depend on disinfecting and following hygiene rules.
In the period of The Compromise, 1840s America, industrialization and urbanization had begun. Public education was taking off. Excluding those of color, girls and women were encouraged to read as part of their duties beside their husbands and as mothers. Catherine Beecher was a strong advocate for women’s education by way of traditional gender roles.
“The family state then, is the aptest earthly illustration of the heavenly kingdom…[The mother] is to rear all under her care to lay up treasures, not on earth, but in heaven. All the pleasures of this life end here; but those who train immortal minds are to read the fruit of their labor through eternal ages.”
― Beecher, Catharine E. (Catharine Esther)
Beecher published the best-selling book, A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841) and The Duty of American Women to Their Country (1845). Sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, she was also an abolitionist and led an all-women campaign against the Indian Removal Act.
“But the lands of this people are claimed to be embraced within the limits of some of our Southern States, and as they are fertile and valuable, they are demanded by the whites as their own possessions, and efforts are making to dispossess the Indians of their native soil. And such is the singular state of concurring circumstances, that it has become almost a certainty, that these people are to have their lands torn from them, and to be driven into western wilds and to final annihilation, unless the feelings of a humane and Christian nation shall be aroused to prevent the unhallowed sacrifice….”
“Circular Addressed to Benevolent Ladies of the United States” by Catherine Beecher via Women and the American Story
Family Disruption
My young characters, Mariah and Eliza have lost the direction of their parents and are unsure where in society they belong. This is the essential coming-of-are dilemma. Their mother disappeared in a snow storm three years earlier. Mariah learns that a federal law “removed” her mother because of her Native American ancestry, the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This history places Mariah near a generation of children whose connections to family and tribe were broken when they were sent to government schools.
The sisters were raised by the same Cherokee woman, Mariah’s biological mother. She started her mixed-race family with a Scottsman and did not teach her daughters her native language. She taught them self-reliance on the land, integrity with nature, respect for life, and resilience. They learn their own political history from an objectified perspective among privledged women. They struggle to relate the political events to their lived experience.
“We couldn’t find her trail in the snow because she didn’t want us to follow her.”
She nodded and asked. “Do you think about finding Mother and living with her people someday?”
“I do, Lizzie. I do, but I never speak of it. I might not ever find her. I wouldn’t know her people and they wouldn’t know me.”
She said, “Scarlett says all this land belonged to them for thousands of years. That’s why they’re called the original people.”
...
I said, “Mother left without a horse or a mule, and she left all the wintering things for us at home.”
Lizzie grabbed my hand to help us both hold back tears. She said, “We couldn’t find her trail in the snow because she didn’t want us to follow her.”
“If anyone could survive a winter, Mother could. But why did Pa’s people make her go away and not tell us where or why?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Maybe Pa had nothing to do with it.”
Education exposes the injustice that left them motherless and does not give them the means to seek justice. Mariah must also cope with the laws and social rules that separate her from her half-siblings. These separations contribute to a seemingly irreconcilable struggle to belong.
She is at the cross-roads of cultures, both greatly abundant and deeply compromised.
Healing or Adapting
The siblings use silence to keep their mother’s ancestry a secret, but this threatens Mariah with insecurity. It is a dilemma faced by many with biracial or bicultural identities for whom a committment to one identity threatens the other.
They are like childhood arrivals and unaccompanied minors in our time. Dreamers are schooled without getting a ticket to the middle class in the United States. Instead, they might get a ticket to a place that no longer exists. They could wake up one morning to find themselves stateless and without parents. They are protected by our constitutional law and our willingness to uphold it, which is debatable.
People must rely on themselves and hope for humane outcomes. Writing this story, I picture my characters’ internal life by activating my own. In this scene, Mariah and Eliza use a ritual object, a talisman, to bring them comfort and a sense of belonging.
“Do you still wear it on a cord?” Lizzie touched her chest where her little red-pine bird would be. “Mother made them for times like this.”
I nodded. Mine had open wings of black oak. Our mother was planted deep in our lives and that would always be true.
The gesture towards the wooden bird has spiritual significance. Is this an act of cultural resistance or cultural defeat? The reader can decide. I believe that using jewelry and other small objects in this way is very common across cultures. I have two small pendants that I have worn as talismans. One is from my mother, a locket with a tiny photo of my Christian Scientist grandmother, and the other is an ornamental cross from a beloved paternal aunt, a Mormon. Religions on both sides were home-grown, originating on this continent.
Joining a Generation
“Learn to hear the words, Mariah, and the authors will be friends who speak to you.”
Margaret engages Mariah in a dialogue about books and life. They form a relationship of increasing mutual respect and affection. I doubt that a young woman of Margaret’s generation was aware of what we call the cultural politics of her work. In a relationship of sympathetic mutuality that bridges class differences, Mariah joins a generation of women who work for a political voice and equality under the law. She believes this mission is worthy of her committment, identifies it as coherent with her mother’s beliefs, and holds true to it throughout.
“Learn to hear the words, Mariah, and the authors will be friends who speak to you.”
“Speak to me?” I sniveled. “But these are too hard for me to read. I’m still ignorant.”
Margaret’s face looked stern. Then she regained her mildness. “You will learn to read when you want to know what it says.” She smiled.
She opened the folded sheets of heavy rag paper. “This is by an American woman living in Boston, Miss Margaret Fuller. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. This is a manuscript, soon to be published in The Dial. I met the author last year at the Peabody’s. Miss Fuller leads conversations for women. You must try to attend.”
Learning is a shiny coin, but every coin has two sides.
Cultural Loss and Representation
Good intentions can have painful outcomes. United States history shows that actions to Christianize and “civilize” the indigenous tribes began the process of cultural suppression and population decline. Here is an excellent article in The Atlantic, “What’s Lost When a Language Dies?” English language education has its role in the suppression and loss of indigenous languages. This is certainly true, but The Compromise is about individuals coping with loss and creating their own lives. Yes, there are compromises in our time and theirs, and each of us decides what they mean and how to act on them. An article in People’s World, “Indiginous People Have Long Known, Child Separation is an American Tradition” discusses the problem of separating families at our border.
English language education has its role in the suppression and loss of indigenous languages.
In showing the complexities of a family of mixed race, theories of cultural representation can be put to work. Though the half-siblings are different from one another in appearance and legal status, their union, our union, I say, is a worthy narrative. The story takes place, not in textbooks or DNA tests, but under the skin when emotions are engaged and in a text that can be analyzed.
“You are not one of them, not any longer.”
The secret of Mariah’s identity is revealed by a bully named Miss Trudy. The scene begins at a high point. The girls roll back the rug in the library to dance. Mariah shows them flatfooting, a style of dancing she learned in the hills and which is against the rules at the Columbian Female Academy. The act of dancing in the library is transgressive and joyful.
Miss Trudy takes that moment to throw water on Mariah’s success. The newspapers ran stories describing violent conflicts between indigenous peoples and pioneers. Indigenous people’s land and resources were taken and, often after trying to negotiate peacefully, they fought back. Newspaper stories stoked fears and genocide followed.
We were cleaning up when Miss Trudy held a sheet of newspaper in front of me. “Which side are you on, Mariah?” My stomach fluttered at the sound of her voice, tinged with hatred.
I scanned the print and caught the words, “Comanche. Blood-thirsty barbarians. Savage dogs.” I looked at Trudy and my heart sank.
She shook the paper in my face. “Fiends all of them: Apache, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, Pawnee, and Cherokee.” She thrust the newspaper at me. I stepped back. She crumpled it and dropped it at my feet. She turned to leave because Miss Margaret and Miss Claire closed in. She called out, “Primitives, looting and burning, scalping women. Which side are you on?”
This bullying is overtly racist. It pushes Mariah to one side or the other, threatening her hard-earned social belonging. Rightly, she feels overwhelming confusion. Another assault comes quickly. It is well-meaning but more damaging.
Miss Claire said, “Don’t listen to that. You are not one of them, not any longer.”
Her face blurred and I tried to blink it back into focus. The books started to slide off the shelves. I reached out to keep them from falling, but instead the ladies held me up and put a chair under me.
Miss Claire thought she was helping Mariah prove her worthiness as a white woman, but instead she torments Mariah’s secret identity and deep connection to her mother. This is a dilemma to feel without a solution to find. We have parents, siblings, and a network of dear people, all of whom live in us. Othering any of them divides us within.
Margaret picked up the crumpled newspaper and drew me to the kitchen. She whispered to Hester who jammed the newspaper into the stove and sent me to bed.
Internalized oppression requires courage and teamwork to overcome. Fortunately, Mariah receives the kindness of her companions, Margaret and Hester. Loving kindness is the fruit of social and emotional labor. To withhold it is shameful.
This is a dilemma to feel without a solution to find.
Existential Freedom
There is another fruit of education. It is a relationship to ideas, to the fecundity of words, to poetry. As Mariah learns to read, she deciphers metaphors in a text because she already knows and feels the land and humanity they represent. She knows them in her flesh, yet not only in the ways family or a racial identity provide or limit. To follow this line of thinking I must question the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis. It says that the structure of language determines cognition, shapes world-view, and guides perception. Language, its structure and uses, determine, shape, and guide. But are we not free of those bonds when we integrate knowledge in ways that are unique and experiential? Even when we mindfully wait for meaning to arise in an interaction, we are interpreting what is possible. The “empire of liberty” is not necessarily a political place where we try our social experiments by reposting memes. The existential struggle is our own.
“A poem is where you might hear the voice of God undiminished by minds higher or better than the one you have.”
The Compromise “Readers 1843”
Literate, the Reader walks as an equal beside the Teacher and the Poet, and they are neither oppressed nor oppressive in the language they share. It is not necessary to put one another in a camp, colonizer or colonized, and expect a skirmish. There are other metaphors to which human experience may be likened, such as rivers, their tributaries, their watershed, their bottomland.
Bicultural, Mariah grows up at the fertile joining of cultures, like our land, abundant and compromised. There is no way to measure her strength. There is unstable, quixotic freedom in her choices, but freedom it is.
