17 pages • 34 minutes read
History Lesson
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Themes
The Personal is Historical
In an article in the New York Times on June 6, 2012, in response to her mother’s death by murder, Natasha Trethewey is quoted as saying, “that was the moment when I both felt that I would become a poet and then immediately afterward felt that I would not. I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened" (McGrath, Charles, “New Laureate Looks Deep Into Memory”). The phrase, “the personal is political” and also “the private is political” were slogans of second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, indicating a belief that personal experience was deeply influenced by the social and political inequities of the time. In the case of Trethewey’s body of work, which spans centuries as well as the specific incidents of her and her family’s lives, the personal is historical in that one generation’s experience evolves from the experience of previous generations—even more specifically, of African American and mixed-race people living in the United States.
Trethewey’s perspective as a poet and historian is directly influenced by events and situations personally experienced by her and/or her family, as well as by people throughout US history. Institutional racism takes hold and is perpetuated through the everyday rites and rituals of, say, a day at the beach. A direct and seemingly simple remembrance inspired by a photograph of a child on the beach is emotionally singular until the scope widens, and the reader sees the picture through the lens of segregation.
In other work, Trethewey considers the effects of the long-standing miscegenation laws that prohibited her father and mother from marrying in Mississippi, not only on herself and her family but for all the other people directly affected by institutionalized racism, particularly in the South. For Trethewey’s work, the Civil War is not merely a historical subject but a nexus of events that led to Jim Crow laws, the civil rights movement, and the continued racial tension that pervades society today. On a hopeful note, “History Lesson” embodies an optimism that suggests that change, progress, and human decency are not only possible but attainable within our lifetimes.
The Duality of the Self
In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois says, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford University Press. 2008). The poem “History Lesson” is framed within the context of looking at a photograph. Photography is the art of the image, but it is an art that carries the bias of the artist. The reader sees the young child with her “hands on the flowered hips” (Line 3) and envisions, perhaps, a typically saucy four-year-old, confident in her “bright bikini” (Line 4). The reader learns, however, that it is the child’s grandmother on the “other side / of the camera” (lines 9-10) who is issuing instructions on how to appear in the picture. There is the self, and then there is the self that is composed and presented to others.
In “History Lesson,” there is a duality in the presence of the child and of the grandmother. They exist on the “wide strip of Mississippi beach” (line 2) together in 1970, and they exist separately on the same beach in photographs. In her portrait, the child is dressed in a colorful bathing suit as any child would be on the beach in 1970—while the country may have been heading into a recession, the spirit of the post-World War II economic boom had solidified the façade of a middle class. Conditions are nothing like the rampant poverty of the Great Depression, when the photo of the grandmother was taken, an era well documented by her attire, a warm weather dress made from a meal sack.
Both the child and the grandmother place their “hand on the flowered hips” (Line 16) of their bodies, standing tall and defiant of anyone who would suggest otherwise.
A Line in the Sand
The difference between a “wide strip of Mississippi beach” (Line 2) and “a narrow plot / of sand” (Lines 14-15) is almost too immense for many readers to understand without the concrete nature of Trethewey’s imagery in “History Lesson.” The child’s toes “dig in” (Line 4) before the reader understands the stakes: this is hard won ground. The speaker says, “It is 1970, two years after they opened / the rest of the beach to us” (Lines 11-12), and the question looms: In the United States of America, on home turf, who are “they” and “us”? We know from history that “they” are white legislators and their white constituents and “us” are African Americans, mixed-race people, and all other people of color.
Both the child and the grandmother appear in photos wherein they each stand with their hands on their hips. The posture can indicate defiance, or it can register as expectancy. In any case, it is a powerful posture, self-assured, and in no way retiring or submissive.
Lines and borders appear throughout the poem. There are the implied edges of the photograph and the “strip” (Line 2) of shoreline. “The sun cuts” (Line 5), and the little fish catch the light like the edges of equally little knives. In the photograph of the grandmother, the area on which she stands is “marked” (Line 15). Everywhere one looks, there are lines in the sand.
Through nonviolent protest and more aggressive means, the battle for equality for all peoples in the US rages on. In “History Lesson,” the reader experiences both the joy of positive change and the perils that continue to exist.
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By Natasha Trethewey
