Walking on the Moon

As titles go, The History Of White People, is pretty confrontational. Nell Irvin Painter is definitely issuing a challenge with it, though one can choose to fight her, wrestle with the works she does, or with your own preconceptions. I advocate a bit of all three.

The history one hears is shaped by the perspectives and assumptions of the tellers. For many, this makes history – told with any passion or even sense of narrative at all – more engaging and illuminating than even the intricate nuts and bolts description of the technical systems that power the world. (The styles and content of technical and historical works do overlap and the best and worst of the two broad areas cross over.) Because histories can engage intellect and passion together, they can motivate readers to learn more and take action like few other writings. Readers need to remember that first sentence – all humans who write history bring their perspective to it. I can easily forget that, so I remind myself whenever I can.

I mention all that to underscore my admiration for Painter’s title. When a Black historian who is proudly African American releases a work with that title, she puts her ambitions and perspective squarely on the table. Painter is famous enough that she doesn’t need to be so brash just to sell books or gain attention. I take it to be a declaration of boldness framed with historical responsibility.

Painter certainly writes from her advertised position, recognizing that having come to fight she needs to support her positions carefully and with direct and clear connections to the original sources. She does so with aplomb and accuracy; her scholarship seems compelling.

I find her arguments to be generally sound and interesting. Her detailed and compelling deconstruction of the stunningly broad range of eugenic race theory is rich in detail and merciless in prosecution. Given how subjective and malicious this body of work is, this is shooting fish in a barrel. She expands her assessment into the literary and historical – giving Emerson a few sharp kicks in the shins that challenges the reader to reassess his writing and biases. She convinced me that there’s a fair amount more bathwater around Emerson’s babies than I remember. If and when I wade back into those tubs, I’ll be looking with a more jaundiced eye.

Her writing style is well suited to this kind of exploration and challenge. She writes clearly and precisely, connecting solidly to primary sources and also providing the occasional cutting comments that remind readers how biased and self-serving the overall picture is. I imagine that some will find her style dry, but I respect the tightrope she walks. For my money, the writing matches perfectly.

Recommended.

I picked this up as a result of an offhand recommendation on the History Is Sexy podcast, and I’m pretty happy I did. It’s somewhat off my usual path, even in the scope of SF. It’s space opera writ small in that we see operatic machinations from a ground-level view. Becky Chambers handles it all deftly.

World building gets great respect from some SF fans, me often included. These days I tend to value world building that forms a milieu that frames the societal or technical aspects of the world that are the target of the author’s themes. Chambers brings just the right amount of detail to her world to make it believable and habitable without making it so complex that it is distracting. Her universe abstracts ours to make her characters and their trials and tribulations shine.

Her focus is on the people who are making a living by trading in an opening galaxy, the bonds they form as they ply their trade, and the ways that big events toss them about. It’s quite a refreshing approach. She makes our society alien enough to see in new ways and familiar enough to be relatable. It’s quite a joy to bond with the family taking shape even as it continues to evolve.

Recommended.