Back to the Classics Challenge 2013

Okay. So this past year, I attempted my very first reading challenge. I pledged to read and review nine classics by December 31st. I read five. Five books I wouldn't have read otherwise, though, which I found personally enriching. This year, thanks to the blog, Sarah Reads Too Much (http://www.sarahreadstoomuch.com/), I'm trying again. For the 2013 version, there are only six required books to read in predetermined categories, and five optional ones. The six main categories and my choices are below:

Nineteenth Century Classic: Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Twentieth Century Classic: Light in August by William Faulkner
Eighteenth Century Classic: Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
African-American related Classic: Beloved by Toni Morrison
Classic Adventure: Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Animal-related Classic: Call of the Wild by Jack London

Thanks to Sarah for hosting this challenge. Stay tuned for my reviews throughout the year.

The Truth About the First Thanksgiving

This week millions of kindergarteners dressed in paper Pilgrim hats or Indian headdresses. They learned how these English adventurers came over on the Mayflower in search of religious freedom, and in 1620 at Plymouth Rock, gave birth to the American experiment. They also learned of friendly Native Americans like Squanto who cheerfully helped the settlers.

It’s all a nice story. But according to the research of James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, the facts may be a mite different.

For instance, the passengers of the Mayflower were not the first settlers in the New World. Obviously, people had lived here for about 12,000 years—likely much longer.

Yeah, but weren’t they the first non-Native group? Nope. In 1526, nearly 100 years before the Pilgrims set foot in Plymouth, Spaniard left African slaves in South Carolina when they abandoned a settlement.

Okay, then. The first European settlers.  Wrong again. You’ve heard of that group seeking religious freedom, right? The Spanish Jews who made their homes in what is now New Mexico in the late 1500s? Thanks to the Spanish, America now has horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs. None of these are native to the Western Hemisphere.

First English colonists? Remember Jamestown, Virginia, 1607? Sure, you do. But they don’t get much coverage in our history books. There, instead of friendly Squanto, the English took Indians prisoner, demanding they explain their farming techniques. Instead of a great shared feast, the Virginian English offered a toast to the friendship between them and two hundred Native Americans, only to have all the Indians drop dead from poisoning. These fools never farmed. They were too busy digging random holes in search of gold. They finally had to hire themselves out to the Native Americans as servants just to survive. Not exactly the story we want our five-year-olds re-enacting in November.

Okay, okay. So they weren’t actually the first. No. And they didn’t exactly carve a colony out of the wilderness. Likely due to European fisherman off the Massachusetts coast, diseases unfamiliar to the native population ravaged between 90 and 96 percent of them. Entire villages were deserted. According to Loewen,  the Pilgrims “chose Plymouth because of its beautiful cleared fields, recently planted in corn, and its useful harbor and ‘brook of fresh water.’ It was a lovely site for a town. Indeed, until the plague, it had been a town…”

 A few other misconceptions and I’ll finish with my myth-busting. First, out of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, only 35 were actually Pilgrims. Most were seeking their fortunes like real Americans.

Also, the kindly Squanto, who “mysteriously” knew English, may have learned it when he was kidnapped by an English slave trader in 1614 and sold into slavery in Malaga, Spain.

And, as a final insult, the Indians thought the Pilgrims stank. Since they thought it was unhealthy and immodest, the Pilgrims rarely washed and resisted poor Squanto’s efforts to teach them the benefits of a bath.

Wonder if they’ll act that out in kindergarten.

Who You Calling a Paunchy Toad-Spotted Harpy?

In my book, Aroon, there’s a heck of a lot of animosity between the characters as there is in any self-respecting plot. Hence, I need tons of insults and they had to be current in 1750. You’d be surprised which of our libelous vocabulary is relatively recent.

A mild word like “jerk” has only been around since 1935. “Jackass,” meaning stupid person, only came to prominence in 1823. Can’t use it.  “Bastard” has been in use since the thirteenth century, but I need some variety in my abusive language.
 

Imagine my glee when I googled “Medieval insults” and found the Shakespeare Insult Kit at http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/shake_rule.html. Check it out. They give three columns with words in each taken from the Bard’s various plays. Start with the word “thou,” then choose one phrase from each column. It’s fun. Here are two I’ve put together:

 

Thou frothy flap-mouthed foot-licker. (I love alliteration.) OR

Thou yeasty onion-eyed pignut.  (Now I didn’t actually know what a pignut was, so I looked it up. It’s the tuber of some European plant. Which isn’t bad either: You yeasty onion-eyed tuber!)

If this isn’t fun enough—and it is—try the Shakespeare Insulter at http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/index.html. Here you hit a button that says “Insult me again” and a bonafide slight straight from one of Shakespeare’s plays comes up. And let me tell you, he was the master of mockery. Here are a couple I got:
 

“Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins!” compliments of Richard III
“We leak in your chimney.” from Henry IV, part I (Now I’m not positive what that means, but it certainly sounds gross and demeaning.)
“Thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up, And howl’st to find it.” –Henry IV, part II (Ewww)

And you thought Shakespeare was too highfalutin for you. His plays have been around for four hundred years for a reason. Needless to say, our modern-day mud-slinging now seems mundane and repetitive. Where’s our flair? Where's our creativity?

As in all areas of life, when in doubt, turn to the master.

Mystery Mystically Unmasked

My favorite part about research is the unexpected discovery. This comes in many forms and is always exciting, but what happened last week was exceptional.

I lost my mother in September. I am not ready to write about this yet, except in the context of this ironic occurrence. While we are South Carolinians now, Mom spent her first fifty years in New Jersey. Last weekend (just days before the devastation to our home county by Superstorm Sandy) a memorial service was held there in her honor.

Although I did not make the trip, the very day before the service, I was connected to Mom through a distant cousin’s email who found me through Ancestry.com. This lovely woman wrote to ask me about my mother’s family and to see if I could identify the people in an old photo she had.

I certainly could. Front and center stood my six-year-old Mom making her First Communion. I have seen very few childhood photos of her, so this is a great treasure.

Beside her is her younger sister, Margie, my aunt and godmother. The taller girls are their cousins. My grandfather, Luke Pryor, is the dapper gentleman on the right and the tall man is his older brother, John Benjamin Pryor III. Both are grandsons of John Benjamin Pryor, the trainer of the legendary racehorse, Lexington, and his ex-slave wife, Frances Bingaman. The older woman is my great-grandmother, Luke and JB III's mother.

Long-time readers will know that I have been trying for some time to definitively determine the parentage of Frances Bingaman. That’s where the unexpected discovery comes in. This distant cousin, a genealogist extraordinaire, has copies of the death certificates of Frances and her sister, Cordelia. Both list their parents as Adam and Amelia Bingaman.

This answers two questions. Yes, I am the descendant of the colorful plantation owner, Adam Lewis Bingaman of Natchez, Mississippi, but not his New Orleans placee, Mary Ellen Williams. I had determined that Mary Ellen Williams was too young to be Frances’s mother, but another descendant found “Millie” listed in their family Bible. “Millie” is obviously short for Amelia, mother of Frances, Henrietta, Amelia, and Cordelia—all mixed-race daughters of Adam Bingaman.

Mystery solved in a remarkable way at a most significant moment.

A Writer's High

Meeting authors, chatting with agents and editors, winning an award—all in Myrtle Beach! And the weather was exquisite. For writers, it was Nirvana. Last weekend I attended the 2012 South Carolina Writer’s Workshop Conference at the Hilton resort and I couldn’t have had a better time.

Friday night, my husband, Wendy, and I attended an outdoor reception where fellow Aiken critique group member, Steve Gordy, introduced me to published authors, agents, and best-selling writers of the future. Being naturally shy, this was a blessing. It is incredibly uplifting to speak with people who all share the same passion.

Soon we filed into the banquet where I was awarded first place in the Novel First Chapter category of the Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Award. I am humbled by and proud of this honor. This year, they included the winning pieces from all categories in the annual anthology, The Petigru Review. It was a thrill to see my writing in print.

I was also excited to meet one of the judges of the competition, Barbara Claypole-White, an enthusiastic writer who offered me a tremendous amount of encouragement. Her book, An Unfinished Garden, just came out in August and is wonderful. Watch this blog for my review.

Each time I go to a conference, I like to “stretch” myself and this time I chose to make a pitch for my book to an editor. The conference scheduled a slot for me for ten dollars, a bargain for such an opportunity.
To pitch, you’re expected to excite an industry professional with your book idea in a one- or two-sentence summary, hopefully delivered from memory. I was a nervous wreck. Wendy drilled me throughout the four-hour drive to Myrtle Beach and at random times after we arrived.

Finally my 2:15 appointment arrived. After a minimal amount of small talk (too nervous), I blurted my spiel, hopefully not too fast. Nothing actually came of it, but I DID IT. Later that night, Wendy and I celebrated with a bottle of Asti Spumanti.

I am greatly encouraged by two agents who invited me to send them my book for their consideration. It’s not quite ready, but I am pounding the keys. A door has opened and I’m determined to walk right through.

Shameless plug: Search Amazon.com for The Petigru Review Volume 6 or click here to order a copy for $9.99.

NOTE: If you're a writer from South Carolina, look into the SCWW. This organization has schooled me, guided me, and encouraged me. www.myscww.org 

The Results Are In!

Pryor ancestors: my grand-
father, great grandmother,
and aunts

Well, my DNA results came back. They’re confusing. And somewhat unexpected.

When I sent my saliva off, I told my mother what I had done and what we might expect. “We may find out which African tribes we’re from.”

If you’ve read any of my previous posts on this topic, you know my great-great grandmother was born a mulatto slave and married my great-great grandfather who worked on her plantation in Mississippi.

“What if we’re Zulu?” Mom asked.

“Zulu?” Not the response I expected. “We’ll hold our heads up,” I said. “It means we have spirit, that we don’t take it from The Man.” I was getting wound up. “We won’t have our identity defined by some 1960s propaganda movie.”

“Mmm,” was all the response I got.

In this regard, I am disappointed. Not only did we NOT find out where in Africa we originated, there is no mention of Africa at all. In fact, the results are listed in generalities, not specific countries or regions.

So where was I from? Eighty-four percent of my genetic material is from the British Isles. No surprise. Growing up, I identified myself as three-fourths Irish and one-fourth English.

But I am also 12% Eastern European. That would include anywhere from Estonia to the Ukraine to Greece. I have discovered no indication of any such ancestry. France, yes. Belgium, maybe. But those areas were not represented at all. Instead, I may have Romanian blood. Who knew?

The final four percent is listed as Uncertain. Ugh! Very frustrating. My African ancestry must be included in that. According to Ancestry.com, “‘Uncertain’ usually means that you have traces of a specific genetic population that were too low to pinpoint to an ethnicity.” So, I told my mom, no Zulu—that we know of.

My mercenary daughter said she was not mentioning her African roots anymore. “Two percent of uncertain won’t get me any scholarships.” Pitiful.

This process has created a lot more questions. But, Ancestry.com notes that, as their data grows, they may have more answers. Onward—the journey continues.

The Last Discoverer of America

Does Christopher Columbus matter? You bet. Historians use his accomplishment to delineate different epochs in world history, especially that of the Western Hemisphere. Days before 1492 are known as Pre-Columbian. The only other person I’m aware of who has influenced our view of history to that extent is Jesus Christ.

Also, Columbus Day is one of only two national holidays named for an individual. He is an American hero.

But what about that discovering America stuff? There is evidence, even very strong evidence, that other (non-Native American) people set foot on American shores before Columbus. “Hello-o-o,” I can hear them saying. “Where's our holiday?”

The spirits of Thorfinn and Gudrid Karlsefni, Norsemen who led a party of hopeful colonists to Vineland (now Canada) in 1005, may be shouting, “Hey, Columbus visited Iceland in 1477. Who do you think clued him in to the existence of another continent?” There’s no proof of that, but a man of Columbus’s curiosity surely would tune into the epic tales of these journeys that Scandinavians continued to recite.

Oh. You’ve heard about the Viking voyages. How about the Phoenicians and West Africans?

Olmec statues--you decide

There's lots of evidence, albeit controversial, that early Africans migrated to Mexico. Statues of Olmecs, “ranging up to 9 feet and 4 inches in height, with a circumference of 22 feet, and weighing 30 to 40 tons, … depict helmeted Black men with large eyes, broad fleshy noses and full lips. They appear to represent priest-kings who ruled vast territories in the ancient New World from provinces near the Gulf of Mexico,” according to Legrand H. Clegg II in his article, “Before Columbus: Black Explorers of the New World.” [http://rense.com/general43/before.htm] There are also claims of African skulls found in the area.

"Where did you say you got those points?"

Columbus himself wrote of meeting the Arawaks of Haiti during his second voyage. The Native Americans showed him spear points made of “guanine,” claiming black traders from the south and east brought them. They were made of the same alloy used in West Africa, where it was also called “guanine.”

There are claims by historians of pre-Columbian visits from Siberians, Indonesians, Japanese, Chinese, Irish, and Polynesian explorers as well.

The heroified version of Columbus

So why the heroification of Christopher Columbus? Many reasons, but one might be that his was the right voyage at the right time. Due to a number of reasons, Europe at that time was ready to embrace this new “discovery.”

Whether hero or villain, the man was an adventurer who greatly influenced world history. But, like all historic figures, he did not work in a vacuum. The real story—which deserves to be examined—is bigger and more magnificent than one guy. A combination of events, people, cultures, and trends created a “perfect storm” for Christopher Columbus to define an epoch and get his own holiday.

I can feel the rants of the other explorers from here.

Many of the ideas in this post came from Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, an excellent starting point for re-examining our historical myths.

Photos came from the website of the Library of Congress.