Sarah Vowell Gives Reading at UNT

Best-selling author Sarah Vowell visited UNT last month, entertaining hundreds of admirers with her quirky-smirky take on American history. Vowell read from her latest book, Unfamiliar Fishes, an examination of how the year 1898 (when the U.S. became an imperial power, conquering islands in the Caribbean and South Pacific) was as crucial to the formation of the American psyche as the year 1776. As with her previous books, Vowell's wry, sarcastic humor is the real story here. She enlivens seemingly dead material (the history of Hawaiian Imperialism, anyone?) with astute observations of local culture (mayonaise and soy sauce co-exist in harmony) and hilarious tangents on how mainland Americans view Hawaiian culture. But as trivial as the jokes may seem at times, Vowell is always working on a deeper level: Her interest in the U.S. conquest of Hawaii is kairotic: at one point in the book, she subtly connects a palace in Honolulu circa 1898 to another in Baghdad circa 2003. Vowell argues that despite Americans' propensity to believe that we are a nation of isolationists, unsullied by colonial pasts like other world powers, our national identity has been one of conquest for some time.

What I find so refreshing about Sarah Vowell is that she doesn't seem to get caught up in the distinction between memoir and history. Her writing aesthetic implies that history is nothing without a unique living voice to tell it and interpret it. During the Q&A, she often brought up stories from her own life to explain why she finds certain historical figures so interesting. Vowell's body of work implies that history can only be interesting if we see history as a force constantly at work in our own lives. The biographies (and autobiographies) of famous men like Teddy Roosevelt are thus entwined--in subtle, surprising ways-- with our own life stories.