Support WBUR
Cog's Weekly Ideas Newsletter
Where — and who — we come from
Editor's Note: This essay appeared in Cog's newsletter, sent every Sunday. We share stories that remind you we're all part of something bigger. Sign up here.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading a book called “American Nations.” It’s a work of nonfiction first published in 2011 by the journalist and scholar Colin Woodward. I realize political history doesn’t exactly scream “summer reading,” but my social scientist husband has been haranguing me to read it for months, and I finally agreed.
For the uninitiated, Woodward runs the Nationhood Lab, an interdisciplinary program focused on threats to American democracy, at Salve Regina University. His scholarship argues the United States is — and has always been — a tenuous (and contentious) federation of 11 “nations,” or regional cultures, each with its own set of religious, political and ethnographic characteristics. In his telling, how these nations came to be underlies many of the political and cultural battles that define modern America.
Fear not, I won’t summarize the whole book — just a few examples to give you the flavor.
I, like many of you I imagine, hail from Yankeedom, founded by the Puritans of East Anglia. Yankeendom nation includes New England, yes, but also the Great Lakes and sections of the upper Midwest, including Minnesota. In this nation, Woodward explains, we value education, communal good, social reform and strong government. But Yankeedom can also be intolerant and overly moralistic, in a way that has frustrated people from America's other "nations." Sound familiar?
The Deep South (that’s South Carolina, the Florida Panhandle, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and eastern Texas), founded by English plantation owners (and slaveholders) from Barbados, is Yankeedom’s polar opposite. In Woodward’s analysis, the culture in that nation is defined by a rigid social hierarchy that encompasses its racial stratification and a discomfort of any government authority that would interfere with the liberties of the elites. And always has been.
I won’t get into the landed gentry of the Tidewater or the Scots-Irish of Appalachia or the earliest European settlements in El Norte, but I do think Woodward does a better job explaining American politics writ large than most pollsters and political reporters. His work looks beyond red states and blue states to something more elemental. He’s telling a story about where, and who, we come from.
I brought “American Nations” on a recent trip to visit my sister-in-law’s family in London . We spent most of our time wandering their city, but also managed to squeeze in two nights in Paris.
With our five kids in tow, we unabashedly made the rounds. Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Churchill’s War Rooms, the Musee d’Orsay, the Champs-Élysées, a boat ride on the Seine, the restored Notre Dame. I could go on. Every stop, full of history and positively jammed with tourists: clumps of Germans, Italians, Chinese, Spanish, British, Americans, all taking in the sites. I was reminded that William the Conqueror – the founder of the English monarchy – was French. I brushed up on Oliver Cromwell and the Anglican Church, and the gruesome violence of the French Revolution. Every bit of architecture, art and (literal) armour told a story about what people once cared about and how successive generations honored or rejected or built on that heritage.
I couldn’t help but see snippets of Woodward’s “Nations” everywhere I looked: New France (New Orleans and Quebec) in Paris cafe culture and the moderation of The Midlands (Pennsylvania and some parts of the Midwest) in the men and women biking to work on London’s narrow streets.
At a pub in Belsize Park on our final night, one of my 11-year-olds said she couldn’t believe how different London and Paris were, even though they were only two hours apart: “Totally different language and food and people. They drive on different sides of the street!” Two hours from our home in the Boston suburbs would get us to Connecticut (not so different) or Maine or New Hampshire (still not so different). That was remarkable to her. I hadn’t anticipated that navigating the Underground and seeing a Vermeer — in between about a bazillion stone steps and a dozen ice cream cones — would enable her to grasp something bigger about humans and culture. It was a “being-a-mom-is-cool” moment.
Which brings me to Ruthie Ackerman, an author I interviewed a couple of months ago, who wrote a beautiful essay for Cog this week. Ruthie’s book, “The Mothercode,” is part memoir, part cultural commentary and part narrative nonfiction, about maternal ambivalence, infertility and her choice to become a mom by using a donor egg. It’s about cultural expectations and how the stories passed down in our families and societies (rightly or wrongly) shape our decision-making. And it’s also, fundamentally, a story about identity, like so many stories are.
P.S.— You’ve no doubt heard the news about President Trump and the Republican Congress’ funding cuts to NPR and PBS. The future is achingly uncertain, but as ever, we go on: “Onward, damnit,” as one of our newsroom leaders implored. Cog will take next week off from publishing to plan for fall events and projects — it’s our annual mini summer hiatus — but we’ll be back in your inboxes Aug.10.
