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10 Jul, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Wrapping up the blog series on work in American lit with a special weekend post examining five pop culture characters who reflect the range of work in 21st century America!

americanstudier.blogspot.com/2021/07/july-1…
From @john_sayles' Nick Rinaldi & @AoDespair's Janette Desautel to @blackishabc's Dre & @ConstanceWu's Destiny/Dorothy, these characters take us across a great deal of the late 90s, early 2000s, & up to the gig economy of the 2020s.
But I have to single out Zulema from the 2010 documentary The Harvest (La Cosecha), a heartbreaking & crucial voice & story that all Americans should watch, now more than ever.

PS. I'd love to hear some of your nominees for pop culture characters (fictional or real) who can help us think about images and realities of work in 21st century America!
PPS. My Honorable Mention, the one I most wanted to include if I were to cut one of the five (or go with six, but, y'know, round numbers) is Willem Dafoe's wonderfully understated, profoundly human motel manager in The Florida Project.

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More from @AmericanStudier

Ben Railton Profile picture
11 Jul
As my hometown of #Charlottesville completes a weekend of overdue statue removals w/UVa’s Clark statue this morning, wanted to make this week’s #ScholarSunday thread a bit different: pieces & voices to help contextualize this moment! #twitterstorians
Gotta preface the thread by shouting out the amazing young scholar & activist (and fellow Charlottesville High School alum) most responsible for getting us to this moment, @ZyahnaB (& all those @TakeEmDownCVL):

zyahnabryant.com
First, a handful of the many scholars who’ve been doing the work for years. @HilaryGreen77 has created an excellent database of statue & monument histories & removals:

hgreen.people.ua.edu/csa-monument-m…
Read 30 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
10 Jul
So the boys were called racial slurs by a fellow camper (who was asked to leave). Gonna make this a starting point for my next @SatEvePost column, so just a couple things here. (NB. They had an amazing time as ever & are stoked for next year when Aidan'll be a proto-counselor!)
First, it happened 'cause they were awesome allies! Jackassclown was insulting a Chinese American camper w/whom they were playing tennis, & Kyle said, "Hey we're Asian too!" It's been so great to see the boys embrace their identities more & more, & this is a moving case in point.
Second, I was talking w/Aidan about it last night, & specifically about it being the first time they've been directly targeted by such bigotry. I asked if he was feeling badly about it, then or since, & he said, "No, I just thought, 'Well, that guy's a racist!'"
Read 5 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
8 Jul
“Every Rose Has its Thorn” is really a primer in terrible similes. “Though it’s been a while now/I can still feel so much pain/Like a knife that cuts you, the wounds heals/But the scar remains.” Dude, I think your scar is infected.
Also, I for one do not want to rule the world. Sounds exhausting.
Listen to classic rock radio long enough, and you come at last to the worst verse in history: “Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas/You know he always knows exactly what the facts is/He ain’t gonna let those two escape justice/He makes his living off the people’s taxes.”
Read 4 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
3 Jun
I wanted to say a couple things about a historical figure who used to be on my Memory Day Calendar (for his June 1 birthday), why I removed him, & the difference between history & commemoration: Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. #twitterstorians
For a long time, I knew Harlan only for his inspiring (mostly—hold that thought) dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), & specifically for his striking & influential argument there that the Constitution is “color-blind.”

chnm.gmu.edu/courses/nclc37…
Along with Homer Plessy & his lawyer, the thoroughly awesome Albion Tourgée, I thus put Harlan into the category of “inspiring historical figures we can learn from amidst a horrific, exclusionary, white supremacist historical event.”

google.com/books/edition/…
Read 19 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
1 Jun
As we start #PrideMonth, I wanted to quote from a paragraph from my 60s chapter in Of Thee I Sing, highlighting critical patriotic LGBTQ rights activism that predated Stonewall: "One of the earliest & most overtly critical patriotic 1960s LGBT rights protests took place outside+
Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on July 4th, 1965. Organized by a courageous group of activists called the Gay Pioneers, this first of what would become known as the Annual Reminder Marches was very purposefully held in that historically significant location+
+on that nationally symbolic occasion; as one of its participants, Reverend Robert Wood, put it, “We were picketing for freedom and equal rights, and the Liberty Bell was a great symbol.”+
Read 5 tweets
Ben Railton Profile picture
1 Jun
The Decoration Day series continues with Frederick Douglass' amazing & crucial 1871 speech at Arlington National Cemetery! #decorationday #MemorialDay #twitterstorians

americanstudier.blogspot.com/2021/06/june-1…
As much as the overt, neo-Confederate Lost Cause narrative and all that came with it became dominant in the post-Civil War US, I would say that another white-centered narrative was & remains just as destructive: that the Civil War was a terrible tragedy.
saturdayeveningpost.com/2020/06/consid…
That tragedy frame relies on another narrative with which I grew up: recognizing the courage & sacrifice of soldiers on both sides, even if we acknowledge the war's true cause. Douglass takes that on directly in the conclusion of his stunning speech:
Read 6 tweets

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