"1493: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus" & "Father and Farther"

In Lies My Teacher Told Me, I am becoming more and more amazed at the amount of historical inaccuracy in so many of our nation's textbooks. I had always known that the Phoenicians and Egyptians were very advanced peoples, but your typical high school history class leaves out so much! Even accounting for nationalism and a sense of respect toward our European ancestors, I see no fault with honoring the cultures that inspired people like Prince Henry and Bartolomeu Dias. I understand that Christopher Columbus was not the most ethical and compassionate of people, but his faults make him real, which makes him interesting and easier to relate to. In this respect, I understand and agree with Loewen. Why not make history come alive by telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the true, so help me God"?

On the other hand, I also see where Sara is coming from by sympathizing with the textbook creators. They have a hard job and nationalism/patriotism is not a bad thing to inspire in the next generation. I just think that there needs to be a happy medium. The truth should be presented, but inspiring historical characters don't have to be any less inspiring just because they have faults. They were real, sinful people, too, just like us.

Changing topics, in The Summer of Black Widows reading we had for this next class period, I found a very interesting mix of topics and styles. "Father and Farther" is a very different section than "Why We Play Basketball" was. Some poems like "Grandmother, Porcupine, Traffic" and "Death of the Landlord" I really enjoyed, and I think I understood most of them. On the other hand, I will be clueless about "Totem Sonnets" and parts of "Haibun" until we discuss them in class.

What I found most interesting in this section of Alexie's work was the repeated line in the last poem, "Death of the Landlord." The section is titled "Father and Farther," so we know that this section will focus on Alexie's father, and while this is obvious in many of the poems, one would not relate the last poem to his father except for the one, repetitious line: "This is not about my father." That immediately made me begin to hypothesize how the poem really could be about his father. I think that was Alexie's aim with his use of repetition here. I just found it very interesting and challenging.