Southern Myth or Southern Fact?

 Siedule, Ty.  Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause.  

         New York: St. Martin's Press, 2021.

 

Do you remember learning history, especially American history, in the late sixties/early seventies?  It was bland, black and white, with very little nuances in regard to details and very little context.  The history classes also missed most of actual history.  This is the world that formed Ty Seidule.  Robert E. Lee and Me is Ty Seidule's response to his changing awareness of what American history actually is.

Ty Seidule grew up in the South (Alexandria, VA and Monroe, GA), attended Washington and Lee University and joined the U. S. Army via ROTC.  Only later in life did he live above the Mason-Dixon line.  Later in his career, he was posted to West Point as a history professor.  He had become what he wanted to be early in life - a Southern gentleman like his idol, Robert E. Lee.  But life has a way of changing one's views on people, circumstances, and facts.  Life brings to the forefront concepts and facts that challenge long held beliefs.  Over time and distance, Siedule's views of his hometowns, alma maters, and cherished beliefs clashed with the facts he uncovered.  As a trained historian, Siedule sifted facts from fictions and was forced to change his views on the so-called Lost Cause and its pinnacle of worship, Robert E. Lee.  This change of outlook is the meat of the book.

Robert E. Lee and Me will not resonate with every reader. But, if the reader is willing to listen to Ty Seidule's story, they will learn how to nuance history and its facts for themselves so they are more equipped to make up their own mind. 

Comedy - Native American Style!

 Nesteroff, Kliph.  We Had A Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native 

          Americans & Comedy.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021.

 

Charlie Hill's stand-up act includes the following lines: " My people are from Wisconsin.  We used to be from New York.  We had a little real estate problem."  Kliph Nesteroff riffs off Charlie Hill's comedic life into a broad overview of Native American comedy in this book.

Kliph Nesteroff shotguns his way through Native American comedy with each short chapter providing a glimpse of a different comedian or historical period.  He introduces unknown comedians, such as Jonny Roberts, lesser known groups such as Williams and Ree or the 1491s, and brings in big guns such as Will Rogers and keeps up the examination of Charlie Hill.  He also looks into Wild West shows in the 1800's, vaudeville in the early 20th  century, Jim Thorpe on American Indians in movies, the role of whites playing American Indians on F Troop and the influence of Davy Crockett.  

As the reader travels through the book, wandering off on all the detours but coming back to finish the tale, they should accumulate enough facts to come to this conclusion - Native Americans are human and like to laugh just as much as any one else.  Humor and comedy can be culture specific, but it can also reach across cultures and draw disparate people together, if only for a laugh!