As you know, I write and talk a lot about historical fiction, focusing on American
history. (I also write American historical
fantasy, but that’s another discussion). I’ve written before that history is more than
dates. History is people, too. In the best of historical fiction, as with any
story, a child becomes a hero who gains power over her situation, a theme that
contemporary readers appreciate. For my first
post of the new year, I revisit my thoughts on the matter, and reinforce
my belief that all history is a story.
“Historical fiction helps young readers develop a feeling
for a living past, illustrating the
continuity of life,” says Karen Cushman, a master writer of historical fiction.
Historical fiction, “like all good history, demonstrates how history is made up
of the decisions and actions of individuals and that the future will be made up
of our decisions and actions.”
But, historical fiction defies easy explanation. For
some, historical fiction is first and foremost fiction, and therefore anything
goes. Others condemn the blending of invention with well-known and accepted
facts, and consider the genre a betrayal.
Nothing about history is obvious, and facts are often open
to interpretation. Once upon a time, it was considered factual that the world
was flat, that blood-letting was the proper way of treating disease, that women
were emotionally and physically incapable of rational thought. In 1492,
Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but he didn’t discover America. In
fact, some would say he was less an explorer and more of a conqueror. History
tends to be written by those who survived it. As such, no history is without
its bias. The meaning of history, just as it is for the novel, lays “not
in the chain of events themselves, but on the historian’s [and writer’s]
interpretation of it,” as Jill Paton Walsh once noted.
For these reasons, writing historical fiction can be very
challenging. I explore my own process in researching and creating a protagonist living during the Revolutionary
War:
“In order to understand [the protagonist’s life] , I had to
explore the larger contexts of her story: as the daughter of a royal military
officer, living on the (then) frontier, during the time of a profoundly
changing political and social upheaval that ultimately led the revolutionary
war. Some facts, such as dates of specific events and troop movements (and so
on), are fixed points in time. Much of what happened has been glossed over,
reduced to dates in a textbook. Other facts have been ignored. But history is
more than dates. History is people, too… Staying true to the times and the
people, I did imagine discussions, often extrapolating from their own writings
if I could find them. Also, I didn’t want to oversimplify the contradictions of
a [the times] that focused on
independence for some, but not for others."
Writing historical fiction is an act of defiance, according to Elizabeth Partridge at the Horn Book:
“To write about ordinary people caught in times of huge, historic change, I inhabit an oddly transparent double-world: there is my ordinary, rather mundane life, and then there is the world of the book I am working on. I’m immersed in a time of conflict and bitterness, digging in and sorting out as best I can, to raise up the stronghearted who help make the world a little better. These days I’m working on lives as different as Frederick Law Olmsted and his tireless efforts in the nineteenth century to create open, free, public parks in our cites; and Hung Liu, a contemporary Chinese American artist whose paintings focus on society’s outcasts.
Setting word against word, I’m rubbing flint against stone, trying to set off sparks. I’m looking for readers I know are out there: kids with courageous hearts, who know things aren’t right. Kids who want to make things better, but don’t know how.”
Crystal King at Literary Hub introduces ten authors, focusing on why historical fiction is more
important than ever:
“Famous essayist and diarist Anaïs Nin used to say, We write
to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.’ Nowhere is that more true than in historical
fiction, which allows readers to step inside the minds of those who
have shaped the world we live in, and to imagine the all-too human
side of history.”
Justin O’Donnell at Publishers Weekly makes an argument why
historical fiction is here to stay:
“… history isn’t really about the past. It’s about human
nature. We use the genre as a lens to see ourselves in a different age. To
write on the human condition is to write with a reliance on history. Elements
such as political consciousness, large-scale conflicts, revolutions, opposing
factions, questions about government, economy, society, culture: all of these
contribute to that theory…
“Kerney wrote that “history is all around us, a continuum on
which the past, present, and the future interact constantly.” It is precisely
this interaction—this conversation between past and present, and present and
future—that is driving this “new” trend in literature. Historical fiction is
not vanishing at all, but changing for the better.”
Ellen Klages, at Brightly: Raise Kids Who Love to Read, explores
the many reasons why reading historical fiction is more important than ever:
“Good historical fiction opens a dialogue between the past
and the present. The attitudes of the past, from the more enlightened
perspective of a present-day reader, may seem wrong-headed, even ugly; many
social norms were not questioned, not then. There are no warning labels on
history. People smoked and didn’t know it was bad for them. Women and
minorities were treated like second-class citizens and denied fundamental
rights. Unfortunately, that same racism, sexism, abuse of power are all part of
today’s headlines... I think it’s important for kids to be aware that
the past was often less than savory, that they learn about what actually happened,
not what some would like to pretend it was like."
David McCullough, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote, “We
are raising a generation of young Americans who are by and large historically
illiterate…We have to know who we were if we’re to know who we are and where
we’re headed…If you don’t care about it –if you’ve inherited some great
fortune, you don’t even know that it’s a great work of art and you’re not
interested in it – you’re going to lose it…”
History is literature, McCullough says. And our history is
full of amazing stories.
-- Bobbi Miller
