Q&A with Marc Aronson
Q: How did the idea for Race come about?
A: The book had two origins—just as a child has two parents. My editor, Ginee Seo, suggested I write a book on the history of prejudice, and I set out to do just that -- tracing biases based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and class back to prehistory and all around the world. I loved the research, but it soon became clear that my book would have to be an encyclopedia, which is not what I had in mind. I wanted the book to be a good read, and a more personal statement, not a pure reference. As I struggled with that, I had an experience at our local swimming pool where I saw race prejudice coloring my own thoughts and feelings. And that came just as Ginee said she thought the best writing in the first draft was in the parts about race and racism. So we agreed to change the book from this immense survey to the smaller but still challenging topic of race and racism. We also limited the focus to the West, again to make the topic just a bit more manageable—though I still tried to smuggle in as much about the whole world as I could.
Q: Race is such an expansive and complex topic. Was it difficult for you to narrow your focus and keep this book within reach of its intended readership?
A: I think that young people are cheated out of getting the best, most interesting, thinking about our world because adults either talk over them or under them. Either we use academic abstractions, or so simplify that we are saying nothing. In order not to do that, I decided to begin each section with short pieces that give modern analogies to the historical themes I was about to discuss. That way a reader could begin with a cool, easy-to-read, bit before having to deal with unfamiliar names and dates. So, for example, I tell a story about a hypothetical Super Bowl game to preface the section on Greeks and Persians. When I sent the draft out to teenagers to read, they did, in fact, particularly like those sections. But I also made another major decision: I realized that I had to put myself into the book. I realized that race and racism are too close to the bone for me to speak as a distant lecturer. So I allowed myself to enter the story—to speak about my prejudices, about my family's experiences, to reveal my own feelings. I hope that that directness will appeal to teenagers and will encourage them to take similar risks in their own nonfiction writing. Race is a topic that lends itself to illustrations, and I found many strong images. I hope that even readers daunted by the length of the book will browse through it and see, in the images of how we have depicted ourselves and others, a hint of the themes of the book.
Q: What type of research did you do in order to write this book? Do you enjoy the research or the writing process more?
A: I love doing research; I could do it all day, every day. First I looked for the best academic studies on race and racism. Then, where possible, I e-mailed, phoned, or went to meet the experts who wrote those books.
Those books and interviews led me to ever more specialized studies. At the same time, I needed a strong historical spine, so I read one general world history and, again, dipped into the specialized histories of each era. Can I tell you a secret? Someday I do want to write the history of the world, the whole world, covering all time. I crave knowing every step, every detail of that span. I often feel like an engineer, I want to build a bridge from one period I know to another, past to present, and I can only do that by making sure each inch is solid and true—that I know and can explain what happened in one place and time, why that changed, and how that influenced what followed. This book was, in a sense, a trial run for that immense project. I just want to know what we stand on and how we came to be—I want to feel that I can connect the dots, that I really know. Research is what allows me to do that. Writing is a different challenge—and here Ginee, and my wife, the author Marina Budhos, and the many teenagers, librarians, authors, and academics who read drafts of the book helped me immensely. Writing is creation, it is storytelling, it is taking that wealth of information and giving it a form that reaches out to readers, that hooks them, challenges them, inspires them, engages them. That is hard for me, but extremely rewarding when I get it right. Research, you might say, is knowing. Writing is creating.
Q: What do you hope readers will glean from Race? Did the message of the book change over the course of your writing?
A: The most basic message of Race is this: Human beings feel prejudice, they always have and always will. Mouthing the right words about “race is only skin deep” does nothing to restrain the dark strands we have inside us. But recognizing what a powerful hold prejudice has on us can help. We can stop ourselves, we can recognize when our perceptions are being warped. We can pause, question ourselves, and learn to do better. We need to recognize the power of the enemy we carry inside ourselves, that is our best chance to live together as one human race.
Q: At what age did you know you wanted to study history? What advice do you have for students who want to pursue a similar career path?
A: The first book I ever read all the way through was a biography of George Washington. I have loved history since that summer after first grade. As a senior in high school I read a book by Norman Cantor about the Middle Ages, and had the good fortune to study with him as both an undergrad and grad student. I was hooked.
Advice: Historians need two things to start off with: curiosity and questions. As you read history, listen to your own interests and uncertainties—ask, ask, ask. At the same time, start to piece together what you know. How does one era, or person, link with another, start to lay out the braid, the strand, in your mind. We are at a great moment for history just now. American historians are starting to knit American history into world history, and that is yielding fresh insights every day. History is not dead and done, it is alive as the world we live in, and you have the chance to shape the new history that is being researched and written RIGHT NOW. Come join us, we need your questions and your passions.
Q: Both when you were a teenager and now, what authors influence and inspire you most?
A: I remember liking Gods, Graves, and Scholars by C. W. Ceram, and, as I said, Norman Cantor; in fiction, of course, Hesse, Tolkien, I tried John Barth but I think mainly to seem cool, I liked Lorca, whose poetry we read in Spanish class—his surrealism and intensity; Bob Dylan, if you count him as a poet; most recently I thought Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains was wonderful both as history and as narrative.
Q: What are you working on next?
A: Unsettled, a book about Israel—most of my family has lived there since the 1920s; I have been there often. I love the country and could never live there. I decided to write a book for teenagers in which I wrestle with the whole question of Israel. It takes off from the personal approach of Race and pushes it ever further. The book is due to come out next year, in time for Israel's sixtieth birthday.
Contributor: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing
For additional information about Marc Aronbson, visit his web site www.marcaronson.com
Reviews
Race: A History Beyond Black and White
Marc Aronson
The book traces the idea of race from the ancient world up to modern times. The premise being that race as we know it today is a recent development. Starting with the idea that prejudice is in the mind; coming from the days when survival depended on making an instantaneous decision on if another human were friend or foe, the book states that in ancient times people were judged more on where they came from geographically and their economic and social status vs. their race. A few chapters focus on religion and how the thought of being chosen or holy came to affect our view of another other. The middle chapters are devoted to the role that science has played in development of race; needs of classifying items based on certain characteristics giving rise to the idea of race, but even then, race was not so clearly defined. Seven chapters after this are spent discussing views of race during different time periods. These chapters cover such subjects as Irish and Italians not being considered white, Jews and Catholics “whiteness” being once debated by Congress, Jews considered to be their own race of people and the treatment of blacks during the latter part of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. The last few chapters are devoted to ideas on race in the modern world covering topics such as the spectrum within our classifications of white, black, Asian and Indian that may give no meaning to race and the idea that a person can “act white/black”. This is an excellent springboard book to use in a social studies or ethics class. Its focus on the developing history and perception of races and prejudice make it more thought provoking than material that focuses only on race as we think of it today. Unfortunately, the subject matter of race in modern times is only briefly touched upon and discussed. The book moves very quickly though history of the conflict between white and black of this century and in the last chapter is filled with more opinion from the author and less fact than in previous chapters. In the final chapter there is hardly and mention at all of Latin peoples. This gives it less relevancy in discussions and debates about race today, but the book is an excellent tool to stimulate discussion about race in the past and its evolution in the future. 2007, Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, Ages 12 up, $18.99. Reviewer: Patrick Hunter (Children's Literature).
ISBN: 978-0-689-86554-1
Added 03/03/08
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