"History as Fiction" enthusiast

This post is riffing off of a comment I made on Leor's post, "Kevin Character Analysis". See here: https://leorblogsplot.blogspot.com/2023/11/kevin-character-analysis.html?sc=1700454447766#c6292752440283883920 My original comment: You went all in on the idea of Kevin as a student learning about the 1619 project. That's definitely a meaningful way to analyze it. Although neither Kevin or Dana spend any time in 1619, they do get a hands-on learning experience of 1800s institutionalized slavery. Both Kevin and Dana return to the present scarred, physically and mentally, and will never truly recover from their experience time traveling. It occurred to me that this could be used to argue that the 1619 project is a harmful way of teaching kids about American history (not my actual opinion, but an interesting question to unpack and debate about). Of course, it's essential to not censor history in any form, and it's important to face uncomfortable truths. That might b

Both Mumbo Jumbo and Ragtime  use history to add to the realness of their texts. In Ragtime, Doctorow uses "false documents" that likely aren't true but for the most part can't be disproven to fill in the gaps of real history used in his book. For instance, he depicts J. P. Morgan talking to a seagull in a bout of loneliness, something that cannot be proven nor disproven. Moments like this make Ragtime  feel real.  Mumbo Jumbo takes place around the ragtime period as well, and during the Harlem Renaissance. Jes Grew is an anti-plague that spreads dancing and liveliness, a metaphor for the spread of black culture. The novel identifies things like ragtime and jazz as elements of Jes Grew, but Jes Grew's origins go back thousands of years. Reed uses what I presume to be (mostly) real Egyptian mythology and mumbo jumbo lore as actual history in  Mumbo Jumbo.  By using African history/mythology to set the novel, Reed accomplishes multiple things: he creates an Afrocent

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow tells a unique story about the Ragtime era. There is no main character, no antagonist, and a very confusing plot. Instead, it jumps about seemingly aimlessly at the beginning, emulating some kind of omnipotent camera zooming in on random people. Doctorow doesn't use names for fictional characters but does for real historical figures in the book (with the exception of Coalhouse Walker). Things get interesting when historical figures interact with fictional characters, because Doctorow writes Ragtime in the gaps of history, making it impossible to know whether these events really happened.  Although all the characters are seemingly disconnected, they end up all having some connection to each other by the end of the book. The Family of Mother, Father, and the Little Boy meet Houdini in a rare coincidence, who meets Harry K. Thaw, death row convict and estranged husband of Evelyn Nesbit, who has an affair with Mother's Younger Brother. Coalhouse Walker'

  All subsequent posts from this blog will be for the class "History as fiction".

Benji's adventure of trying to get into the eighteen-only club is a classic teenage adventure in my opinion. Of course as a teenager I don't know what other adventures come after, but this is the kind I can relate to. As a teenager I've enjoyed pushing the boundaries and tip-toeing the line of what I can or can't do (or get away with), and I see that reflected here. But all the adventures I've had along these lines have been spontaneous-- I've never gone into the intense planning to pull off such an operation. Benji describes him and NP planning for days, weeks even, on how they'll pull it off. NP works on bribing the bouncer for a while, and Benji practices his adult persona (that one I can relate to).  In the end, they manage to get in without trouble, and Benji to this day remembers the incident as "a caper that didn't go wrong for once" (I can't find where, but I'm 99% sure he says this). It also signifies them having come of age to

 I wrote this after reading the first two chapters of Black Swan Green. It is my first impression of Jason: Jason Taylor is a kid who cares very much about keeping up appearances, similarly to Bruce Bechdel in  Fun Home.  However, unlike how Bruce hid his homosexuality, stammering is the sort of thing that the harder you try to hide it, the more apparent it becomes. He refers to his condition as "Hangman", and has four commandments for it: "Thou shalt hide from speech therapists; Thou shalt strangle Taylor when he is nervous about stammering; Thou shalt ambush Taylor when he is not nervous about stammering; Once Taylor is 'Stutterboy' in the eyes of the world he is  yours " (31). He really wants to maintain his social status and that makes him anxious about his stammer, which makes it all the worse. I've experienced a similar sort of "mental echo chamber" where the more I think about a certain problem, the more it affects me. However, I've