| United States in the 20th Century 1945 TO THE PRESENT
SHORT PAPER #3: "IN SEARCH OF AMERICA" Due: Tuesday, April 20 See General Guidelines for Short Papers Documents: Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi; David Beers, Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America's Fall from Grace. (Plus lecture notes and other documents we have read during the term where they are important to your argument). Introduction: Earlier this term, I read aloud in class a brief excerpt from John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley (1962). The second part of Steinbeck's book title is "In Search of America." In the opening pages of the book he describes the purpose of his journey as follows: ". . . . For many years I have traveled in many parts of the world. In America I live in New York, or dip into Chicago or San Francisco. But New York is no more America than Paris is France or London is England. Thus I discovered that I did not know my own country. I, an American writing, writing about America, was working from memory, and the memory is at best a faulty, warpy reservoir. I had not heard the speech of America, smelled the grass and trees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. I knew the changes only from books and newspapers. But more than this, I had not felt the country for twenty-five years. In short, I was writing of something I did not know about, and it seems to me that in a so-called writer this is criminal. My memories were distorted by twenty-five intervening years. ". . . . So it was that I determined to look again, to try to rediscover this monster land. Otherwise, in writing, I could not tell the small diagnostic truths which are the foundations of the larger truth. . . ." (p. 5). Steinbeck saw writing about America without "knowing" America as "criminal." The same might be said for historians. But because historians study the past, we are dependent upon the surviving material record of the past and on the memories of those who lived through the events and processes we hope to understand. The two memoirs you have read this term -- David Beers, Blue Sky Dream and Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi -- cannot stand in for all of America anymore than Steinbeck's "dips" into Chicago or San Francisco. And yet, they do offer a kind of glimpse into America that one does not get from a lecture, a film, or even a smattering of primary sources about a broad range of topics. They are both "coming of age" memoirs and thus offer an opportunity unlike other sources we have read this term to see the world through a child's eyes and experiences and that child's eyes and experiences as he/she matured into adulthood. Moreover, Moody's and Beers's lives were at the heart of two of the most fundamental transformations in American life of the post World War II era. With this as your starting point, write an essay that answers the following question. Question: What do these memoirs from Silicon Valley and the Mississippi Delta offer for one "in search of America"? Guidelines for Excellent Essays
Mechanics
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