Woodrow Wilson in Love
In honor of Valentine's day, I want to share one of my favorite stories about President Woodrow Wilson, reported by Secret Service agent Edmund Starling in his memoir of the Wilson White House:*
En route to his honeymoon destination with his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the president was seen dancing a jig by himself and singing the chorus of a popular song: "Oh you beautiful doll! You great big beautiful doll…" Starling reports that the president even clicked his heels in the air.
Look closely at the portrait of the president at the top of this post. Add a top hat, pushed back. Picture him dancing and singing. Makes me smile every dang time.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to give My Own True Love a kiss. I may even click my heels in the air and sing a love ditty.
*My apologies to those of you who've read it here before or heard me tell the story in person (complete with song and dance step).
Fatherland
If you dismiss history told in comic book graphic form* as the non-fiction equivalent of Classic Comics, you're missing out. At its best, graphic non-fiction uses visual elements to tell stories in new and powerful ways.**
In her graphic memoir, Fatherland: A Family History, Serbian-Canadian artist Nina Bunjevac tells the blood-soaked history of the former state of Yugoslavia through the lens of one family's story.
Fatherland centers on Bunjevac's father, whose involvement in a Canadian-based Serbian terrorist organization led her mother to flee with her daughters to Yugoslavia in 1975 and ended with his death in a bomb explosion. Moving back and forth in time and place, from modern Toronto to Yugoslavia during both the Nazi occupation and the Cold War, Bunjevac explores the steps that led to her father's extreme nationalism and its tragic consequences. Using a combination of strong lines, pointillism and cross-hatching that evokes the feeling of an old newspaper, she tells a story in which there are no heroes and every choice, personal or political, has traumatic consequences. (Bunjevac's mother is forced to make a classic "Sophie's choice": the only way she can take her daughters to Yugoslavia is to leave her son behind.) Both the country and Bunjevac's family are torn apart by the bitter divisions between Serbs and Croats, partisans and collaborators, royalists and communists.
Bunjevac makes no moral judgments about her family's choices. Instead she approaches their history from several viewpoints, introducing increasing complexity and moral ambiguity with each new layer. The only thing that is black and white in Fatherland is Bunjevac's exquisite and often grim illustrations.
*As opposed to what we call "comic book history" here at the Margins--stories that are culturally entrenched and often emotionally satisfying but untrue.
**At its worst, graphic non-fiction is garish and heavy-handed. But if we abandon entire genres of literature based only on the worst examples we'll have nothing left to read.
Much of this review first appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers
Abandoning the Algerian Model
Tunisia and Morocco came under French control much later than Algeria, in 1883 and 1912 respectively, as part of the great “scramble for Africa” at the end of the nineteenth century.*
From the French perspective, the imperial experience in Tunisia and Morocco was very different than that in Algeria.** In both states, French investors became concerned about the security of their investments under the rule of what they perceived as a weak Muslim government. In both states an internal crisis combined with imperial rivalries with Britain in Tunisia and Germany in Morocco triggered occupation by French troops and a “now what?” response by French administrators.
Fifty years of rule in Algeria had taught French politicians that direct rule by French administrators and colonization by European settlers was expensive. Instead of being integrated into French territory as colonies, first Tunisia and then Morocco were placed under protectorate status: a ambiguous term that suggests a stronger power protecting a weaker power. The reality was the stronger power protecting its own interests in the weaker power.*** In theory, the Bey of Tunisia and the Sultan of Morocco remained the rulers of their respective states with the support of a French civil service and the French military. In fact, both rulers were puppets under the control of their French advisers--a position that was soon made clear in Morocco. When Sultan Mulay Hafid refused to cooperate with French plans for administrative, legal, educational and military reforms, he was forced to abdicate and replaced by his brother.
The bottom line: Tunisia and Morocco were possessions, but they never became part of the French identity. François Mitterand once claimed “Algeria is France.” No one ever said “Morocco is France”. As a result, in the unraveling of European empires that followed the end of the Second World War, Tunisia and Morocco were relatively easy to let go. (The key word there is relative.)
Algeria? That was another story.
*If you’re interested in the big picture on this, I strongly recommend Thomas Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa: The White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912: a Big Fat History Book that's well worth the time.
**My guess is that the experience from the perspective of the colonized looked much the same.
***The phrase "protection racket" comes to mind. Or is that just me?