Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Ericka Verba
Ericka Verba is Professor of Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Her research interests include the cultural Cold War, the role of music in social movements, and the intersection of gender and class politics in twentieth-century Latin America. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright, and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. She is a founding member of SCALAS (Southern California Association of Latin American Studies) and the recipient of the E. Bradford Burns Award for service to the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies. She is the author of the book Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra.
Take it away, Ericka!
What path led you to Violeta Parra?
I first encountered Violeta Parra’s music as a high school student when I became friends with a Chilean family of musicians and artists living in exile. The family taught me my first Violeta Parra songs and guided my political awakening to the brutality of the Pinochet dictatorship and the role of the US government in installing and supporting it. As a musician and member of the US-based New Song groups Sabiá and Desborde, I have been performing Parra’s music since the late 1970s. I wrote my undergraduate senior thesis on Parra’s autobiography in verse in 1980, and gave my first academic presentation on Parra at the 2nd International Conference on Women in Music in 1982. In 1996, I was musical director and arranger for a tribute concert to Violeta Parra, held in Los Angeles with the participation of L.A.-based musicians from four continents. As a professor of Latin American History since 2004, I have welded my research on the history of women in Chile with my interest in Parra to acquire a deeper understanding of the social context and gender dynamics that shaped her life. Suffice to say that my biography of Violeta Parra is the culmination of my decades-long curiosity about and engagement with her work.
Thanks to Life is an evocative title. Can you tell me how you came to it?
“Thanks to Life” is the English translation of the title of Violeta Parra’s most famous song, “Gracias a la vida.” The song has been translated into 14 different languages and sung and recorded by scores of musicians the world over, including country music star Kasey Musgraves, cellist Yo-Yo Ma (instrumental version), Latin pop singers Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, K-pop duo Davichi, US folksinger Joan Baez, and Cuban singer Omara Portuando of the Buena Vista Social Club. I recently learned that Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa’s version of the song is featured on the soundtrack to the film Project Hail Mary. The song’s title also has the word “life” in it. Finally, the song clearly hits a universal chord. For all these reasons, it felt like the obvious choice for the first major biography of Violeta Parra to be published in English. My hope is that it will lead listeners to want to know more not just about her music, but also her visual art, poetry, and life story.
How did your experience as a musician inform your work on Violeta Parra?
I’ve been singing Parra’s songs since I was a teenager. Her lyrics have become part of my internal vocabulary and a particular line will come to the surface when I need it most to help me grasp what I am feeling at that moment. Lately, for example, this phrase from the last verse of “Gracias a la vida” often comes to mind:
Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto.
Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto.
Así yo distingo dicha de quebranto,
los dos materiales que forman mi canto
[Thanks to life for all it has given me.
It has given me laughter, it has given me tears.
And so I distinguish joyfulness from sorrow,
The materials that together make up my song]
I think this level of familiarity with Parra’s poetry gave me an edge when I began to examine her life from the analytical perspective of a historian. It also influenced my decision to integrate excerpts of Parra’s song lyrics and décimas, her autobiography in verse, into my book.
And I am so happy with the translations, which were done with much love and effort by my dear friends and colleagues Nancy Morris and Patricia Vilches. Here is their explanation of their process: “Translating parts of Violeta Parra’s Décimas [Parra’s autobiography in verse] and songs constituted both a cherished and monumental task for us. We worked through successive draft translations, parsing and refining line by line and at times word by word. We sought to maintain the vibrancy of Parra’s poetry and songs while staying faithful to her meaning, and to convey the meter, pacing, rhythm, tone, and, where achievable, rhyme of the original texts.”
A question from Ericka: What inspired you to start your blog?
When I started History in the Margins, almost fifteen (!!!) years ago, the first post I wrote was an attempt to answer the question “Why Another History Blog? “ I went back to that post today, I found it still rings true to me. Here’s the guts of it: “These days I write about a wide range of historical topics…And at the end of every day I have a great story that didn’t quite fit in the piece at hand, a dangling idea that I want to play with, a connection I want to explore, or a book that I can’t wait to share with someone else.”
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Want to know more about Ericka and her work?
Visit her website: https://erickaverba.com/
Follow her on Instagram
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Come back tomorrow for more women’s history fun.
History on Display: The Anne Frank Pen Pal Museum
Anne Frank, 1940, at the 6th Montessori School, Amsterdam
One of the delights of a road trip is seeing a sign advertising an unexpected attraction. The kind that makes you go “What??!!” and immediately pull out your phone because you can’t believe you read it correctly.
One of the frustrations of a road trip is missing something you would like to see because the timing does not work.
The Anne Frank Pen Pal Museum in Danville, Iowa, fits both categories.
The story behind the museum is little more than a footnote in the larger Anne Frank story.
Every summer Danville school teacher Miss Birdie Matthews traveled to Europe. Every fall, she would have her students write letters to European pen pals from an interested school that she had contacted during her summer travels. In January 1940, she gave her students a a list of names and addresses of Dutch children who attended the 6h Montessori School in Amsterdam, where Anne Frank was a student.
Ten-year-old Juanita Jane Wagner picked Anne Frank from the list. In her first letter to Anne, she told her about Danville, her family, particularly her sister Betty Anne, and life on an Iowa farm. Then she waited eagerly for a return letter.
A few weeks later, Juanita received her first and only letter from her pen pal, dated April 29 1940. There was a second letter in the envelope, from Anne’s fourteen-year-old sister Margot to Juanita’s sister Betty Ann, who was also fourteen. Anne wrote about her school and her family. She told Juanita that she collected postcards and asked her to send a photo. Margot wrote about what was happening in Europe and the fact that they listened to the news on the radio. She told Betty Ann that “we never feel safe’ because the Netherlands shared a border with Germany. Neither girl mentioned that they were Jewish. Both letters were written in English—the assumption is that they drafted them in Dutch and their father translated them into English for the girls to copy. The Frank sisters also sent small photographs of themselves and a picture postcard of Amsterdam.
The Wagner girls wrote back immediately, and sent snapshots of themselves in return.
They did not hear from their Dutch pen pals again. Germany invaded the Netherlands on May 10, the Dutch surrendered four days later, and the Frank family went into hiding.
In an interview late in her life, Betty Wagner said that she and her sister often wondered if their Dutch pen pals were safe. When the war was over, Betty wrote to the address they had used before. Otto Frank answered, telling them what the family had gone through and what had happened to his daughters. Betty said later that after she read the letter, she “just sat and cried.” It was the first time the Wagners learned that their pen pals were Jewish.
The original letters are now in the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The museum in Danville has copies of the letters on display. It also tells the stories of Holocaust survivors who settled in Iowa. Or so reviews of the museum say. We drove past too late in the day to stop. It’s on my list of places to go back to.
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Come back on Monday for three questions and an answer with somebody about women’s history.
From the Archives: Talking About Women’s History and Alias Agnes with Elizabeth De Wolfe
Sometimes plans go astray. I don’t have a new “Three Questions and an Answer” to share with you today. Luckily I have years of interviews that you may not have read the first time. I am pleased. Next up, historian and writing friend Elizabeth de Wolfe!
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I have literally been waiting for years to read Elizabeth De Wolfe’s newest book, Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of a Gilded Age Spy. In fact, I was so eager that I pre-ordered it twice. . To quote Matthew Goodman, author of one of my favorite books, Eighty Days, “This is a stirring tale of secrecy, betrayal, ambition, jilted love, and the many barriers—political, financial, legal—faced by young women in nineteenth-century America.” Definitely my cup of chai with milk.
I am delighted to have Elizabeth back here on the Margins to talk about Alias Agnes and how she wrote it.
Even well known women in the nineteenth century are often neglected by biographers and historians. What path led you to stenographer turned undercover detective Jane Armstrong Tucker?
The path to Jane was accidental. I began my research intending to write a book about Madeleine Pollard, the plaintiff in a breach of promise lawsuit against Congressman WCP Breckinridge for failing, as pledged, to marry her. While a handful of historians had written about the trial and Breckinridge’s subsequent (failed) political career, the overwhelming assumption was that Pollard was a mistress and nothing more, as if her life was frozen at that very public moment of time. I wanted to know about her life before she met Breckinridge, the path that took her to a courtroom in the nation’s capital, and what happened after the trial was over. As I read through correspondence between Congressman Breckinridge and his legal team at the Library of Congress, I picked up on hints of some sort of secret scheme. His lawyer refused to put details in writing, leaving only the vaguest hints about a “Miss P.” At the same time, I was reading accounts of the trial published during and immediately after – works capitalizing on the public interest. One book was written by “Agnes Parker,” purportedly a memoir of ten weeks as a “girl spy.” Miss P? Agnes Parker? Fiction or fact? As it turns out, a bit of both. Once I began to write my book, I stuck with my initial idea of focusing on the trial, but the manuscript never really gelled. But Agnes Parker’s behind-the-scenes relationship with Madeleine Pollard did. I flipped the narrative of my book to focus on Tucker, and the story just took off.
The Gilded Age has been a popular history hot spot for several years now, the setting for the television series by that name, now in its third season, and a number of best-selling novels, including The Personal Librarian, The Address, and The Social Graces. In your subtitle, you described Tucker as a Gilded Age spy. How does her story relate to the world evoked in such works?
Jane Tucker is an outsider to the glitz and glamor – she does not hobknob with “the 400,” nor aspire to a life of luxury. Yet, as a working-class woman, she is intimately connected. Her goal was to become financially self-sufficient, but it was no easy task. Eschewing the route of marriage, in Boston Jane worked as a seamstress–at one point working in the dress department of a major department store. Skilled in fine embroidery, Jane made the custom buttons and embellishments for women’s bespoke dresses. She also painted porcelain, adding the flowers and delicate motifs to the teacups and plates the upper crust used in their parlors. Jane was well aware of that world — middle class managers and their families boarded at her coastal home for summer relaxation (while she worked for their comfort) and she was well-versed with their culinary preferences, knowledge she put to good use while spying on Madeleine Pollard.
Both the young women at the heart of your book struggle to make a life for themselves as single women in the Gilded Age, though they chose very different paths. What new opportunities, and challenges, did women face at that time?
An opportunity that connects Tucker and Pollard is the typewriter. This new office tool allowed thousands of young women the opportunity to engage in office work, both in urban businesses and, in Washington, in civil service, a lucrative option.
Tired of working for unpleasant employers, Jane learned to type and take shorthand at the Hickox School in Boston’s Copley Square. She progressed rapidly and easily found work. Her most significant job was working for a group of Kentucky businessmen who had established a New York City office (When Boston jobs grew tiresome, she tried her hand in New York). She loved the work, the city, and her supervisor, a lawyer named Charles Stoll, whom she called “the kindest man she ever met.” When the economy soured and the Kentucky group closed their office, Stoll wrote her a glowing recommendation letter. Eight or so months later, Stoll, now serving as Breckinridge’s attorney, remembered Jane’s skills and derring-do, and begged her to take on a very special job.
Madeleine Pollard also learned to type. In Washington, she took the required Civil Service exam at least twice, each time earning middling scores. Nonetheless, she did get work (in at least one case with the strong-arm assistance of her lover) first in the Botany Division of the Agricultural Department and later with the Census Office. Madeleine started as a “computer,” tallying up census items; she was promoted to copyist and her annual salary reached $900. The money allowed Madeleine to move out of a room in a convent (where she did some light teaching in exchange for housing) and into a series of boarding houses in increasingly tony neighborhoods. Her significant moment came when her landlady introduced the Kentucky-born Pollard to two of her Kentucky friends, sisters Emily Zane and Julia Churchill Blackburn, a senior member of Kentucky “Society” in Washington. Pollard became Blackburn’s protégé and entered the life of which she had dreamed: teas and dinners, literary events, and travel.
As single women earning marginally sufficient salaries, both women were at risk—a job loss could be catastrophic. After New York City, Jane returned to a former Boston job with a street railway company but was laid off at the end of 1893. Worn out and without work, she returned home. Madeleine lost her job at the Census office when tabulation of the 1890 census was completed. Ironically, new technology played a role. The Hollerith keypunch machine counted the collected data more efficiently and instead of years to tabulate the 1880 census, the 1890 census took just twelve months. In June of 1891, Madeleine was let go “on account of necessary reduction of force.” Shortly thereafter, she met Blackburn and moved from the work-a-day world to the world of leisure.
Both Jane and Madeleine shared a similar fate after the trial: Breckinridge did not pay either one money he owed them.
Like other women you’ve written about, Tucker is not a major historical figure. How difficult is it to find sources for women whose lives are not well documented? What is your favorite research tip for people who want to write about relatively obscure historical women?
It is very difficult to find sources. In Jane Tucker’s case, even the archive holding the family papers had no idea of her days as an undercover detective. My tip is to start with the men in a subject’s life – her father, husband, brothers, associates — and scour their papers. Then, build out her world of women and men. I draw relationship maps on big sheets of paper. (Pro tip: use the back of good quality wrapping paper—it’s big, sturdy, and often has grid lines). Who were her relatives? Schoolmates? Neighbors? Businesses she frequented? Places she traveled? And for each, think through what records might exist. Treat every relationship as if it were the subject of your work and dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. And google everything: one insomniac night, instead of googling her name, I googled Madeleine Pollard’s nineteenth-century address which revealed her presence in a university catalog under one of her playful name variations. I never would have found that if not for this backwards google. The lesson I learned in this project is that to find an undercover detective’s story, you have to be a detective.
What was most challenging or exciting about researching women in this period of history?
The most challenging part of this project was the absence of two key data sources: the 1890 federal census, which burned in 1921 leaving a twenty year gap between the 1880 and 1900 records, and the Pollard v. Breckinridge trial documents. I found fabulous stories from the women who testified, and I was eager to read their full depositions or transcript of courtroom testimony — typically elided by the newspapers covering the trial. Yet, when I requested the records from the National Archives, the archivist found an empty acid-free box. The only thing inside was a file card that said: “Do not remove this card.”
What was the most surprising thing you learned working on this book?
That Jane Tucker was from my home state, Maine. I nearly fell on the floor when I saw on a key document “Transportation: Maine to Washington.” So much for my idea that, for once, this project would not feature New England!
What work of women’s history (fictional or non-fiction) have you read lately that you loved? Or for that matter, what work of women’s history have you loved in any format?
I recently read Jodi Picoult’s novel By Any Other Name that braids the story of Emilia Bassano, possible writer of Shakespeare’s works, and a twenty-first-century young female playwright. Both face challenges of gender, making a living, and erasure. I loved this thought-provoking novel that spoke to my desire to recover and make visible women’s stories.
Along those lines, in non-fiction, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers’s The Vice-President’s Black Wife brings to the fore an amazing story of an enslaved woman’s persistence and her subsequent, quite intentional, erasure. It’s an amazing piece of research. And I’ll also mention a book I love to teach in my Women in the Modern World course – Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five, which explores the lives, not the deaths, of the victims of Jack the Ripper. Rubenhold shows how fragile a woman’s security was and how quickly one’s life could change. It’s also a model of historical research and how historians weave together a life from scant references spread across diverse and sometimes unconventional sources. My students are amazed that what they thought they knew—the victims were all prostitutes—is wrong.
Is there anything else you wish I had asked you about?
I’m glad you did not ask me what’s next, because I really have no idea, but I’m excited by the newfound freedom and creative space freed up by completing Alias Agnes. I’m confident the right project will find me.
Elizabeth DeWolfe is professor of history and co-founder of the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of New England where she teaches courses in women’s history and archival research. She is the award-winning author of The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories (Kent State University Press), about the unfortunate death of a textile mill operative in 1849 and Shaking the Faith (Palgrave) about the nineteenth-century anti-Shaker campaign of Mary Marshall Dyer, a former member. DeWolfe makes her home in southern Maine with her husband, an antiquarian books dealer, and Floyd, a stray cat now living his best life on the DeWolfes’ sun-drenched couch.
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Want to know more about Elizabeth and her work?
Check out her website: www.elizabethdewolfe.com
Follow her on FaceBook and Instagram
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Tomorrow will be business as usual here on the Margins with a blog post from me. Then we’ll be back on Monday with three questions and an answer from … someone.