Zen and the Art of Local History by Carol Kammen

Author:Carol Kammen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

Response

One of the surprising revelations to those of us who studied history while growing up in the mid-twentieth century was the fact that so much of the record had been eliminated or overlooked. History had, indeed, been written by the victors. Or, perhaps more accurately, it had been written by those in charge! Thus the contributions of African Americans and women, and the accurate reflection of the events impacting Native Americans, had simply never been put into the history books, while the accomplishments of white American men were well documented. As someone who had been raised to believe everything that appeared in my school textbooks, this was an astonishing discovery.

And although much has been attempted to remedy that situation, the dearth of contemporary records has left us with uneasy gaps in our understanding of those groups and people. I am often struck by the well-written New York Times obituaries of remarkable women whose lives come to us only in that form: quite possibly too little and almost certainly too late to acknowledge and celebrate those deserving accomplishments in their own lifetimes. So the suggestion of asking women to write of their friends and colleagues is helpful in ensuring such gaps do not persist as we move through current times.

Quite possibly we can also better understand the ambiguities of third-wave feminism. I am often struck by the conversations among my contemporaries, including women of remarkable achievements who were leaders in the women’s movement of the 1970s and 1980s, who wonder if the battles were truly won and properly understood by today’s generation of women. We frequently have to remind ourselves that our goal was all about ensuring that women could make their own choices, and not that they were guaranteed high political office or the CEO suites.

Another great benefit of Kammen’s request and research is to demonstrate the remarkable diversity of American women in today’s world: diversity in professions, backgrounds, and, once again, the personal choices they have made. The decisions of today’s well-educated, talented women who decide to spend a portion of their lives in child-rearing graphically demonstrate the tensions that the women’s movement uncovered. We should record the impact of those decisions, if there is one.

The remarkably swift change in the status of America’s LGBT communities has brought more attention, in my own mind, to the slower and less coherent progress in the contemporary women’s movement. And it becomes clear that, just as Barack Obama’s election as our first black president did not, as some celebrated (and believed), signify the end of racism in America, the election of our first woman president, when it occurs (please God, let it be soon!) will not resolve the questions and attitudes involving women’s roles.

It is increasingly evident, in a troubled world, that the story of the women’s movement will not be truly documented until it includes the progress of women across the globe, too many of whom are captives of virtually medieval personal and societal patterns. Some of us detect a fundamentalist

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