Have you ever thought just how young United States of America is in world culture? We didn’t become one country until after the Civil War, and then we were faced with rebuilding a war-torn economy. Our machinery was new and not very well made, and the books we printed were lacking in quality. We continued to depend on England for literature. It has taken a whole century to catch up. We now have a collection of literature that stands on its own. The children’s books of the twentieth century tell America’s story and help us to appreciate the unique quality of American culture. No other country in the world is anything like us. Yet we represent every other country in the world. We’re a mosaic, each pixel representing a distinct element, and together a single image.
What does it mean to be an American? It starts with the American dream. It continues with a belief that nothing stands in our way. We have the freedom as individuals to go after the dream, whether it’s financial or, as in the case of Dorothy in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,?finding the way back home. This aspect of being American hasn’t changed, even though finding the way, financially or socially, isn’t always easy. During the 1930s, we had to face the Great Depression; in the 1940s, a second world war; in the 1950s complacency and a war that we couldn't win; in the 1960s a social revolution and, again, a war we couldn’t win; in the 1970s a psychological depression; in the 1980s a power struggle, and in the 1990s too much violence. We started out the twentieth century involved in an industrial revolution, and we have started the twenty-first with an electronic revolution.
As part of this electronic revolution, we’re finding that new sources of information are changing our view of history. Also, our privacy has been invaded, and we’re finding out a lot more about each other than we need to know. For a country that celebrates individual rights, it has taken a long time to recognize the barriers that have made such rights difficult to achieve for some people, namely blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Hispanics, and, let us not forget, women. I’ve never considered myself a feminist, but I was brought up to believe that being female was a matter of pride, not debasement.
Most Americans, with the exception of Native Americans (or “the People,?as they prefer to be called), see themselves as more attached to their country of origin, the land of their ancestors, than to America itself. Owning a house is more important than ties to a piece of land. They see themselves as hyphenated Americans--Italian-American, Polish- American, Asian-American, African-American, Hispanic-American. American citizens can trace their genealogy, but if the trace goes back more than 200 years, chances are they’re going to find themselves in a different country. Even for those claiming ties to the first settlers (European, that is) can’t go back more than 400 years.
With the whole world at our fingertips, we tend to ignore much of that world, seeing the American way as the only way. Instead of learning from others, we try to impose our beliefs on them. We’re rash and outspoken and unafraid to voice our opinions here and abroad. But isn’t that the glory of America, the freedom to speak out? We also have the freedom to listen, and we should do more of it. In the meantime, being an American is a matter of pride, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Marjorie N Allen is a free-lance author/editor, whose book ?00 Years of Children’s Books in America?is an enlightening study of America as a nation through the children's books of each decade of the 20th century.