I
Am a Stranger Here Myself
University of New
Mexico Press
1. What inspired you to write this book? As our country has
become increasingly polarized over these past years, I’ve felt keenly a divide
with my own family—patriarchal, staunchly conservative, and steeped in the
mythology of the Frontier West. While I love Idaho, where I was born and
raised, and fiercely honor my family’s heritage, I also must be true to my own feminist
beliefs and values. So when I found a book in my grandmother’s collection about
the first white woman to cross the Rocky Mountains in 1836 (she was reported to
be the first), a missionary named Narcissa Whitman, I dove in to her history,
suspecting that if I could discover something essential about the first white
woman in the West, I would also solve a dilemma in myself.
When I
started reading about Narcissa, I did so with a revisionist mindset (I was
early to judgment about her and her religious agenda): I considered her yet
another colonizer determined to dismantle a distant culture’s traditions and
epistemology. That’s pretty much true of Narcissa and her husband, Marcus:
their way was the only way and because of their narrow views, they clashed
horribly with the people they’d come to “save,” the Cayuse Tribe. In 1847, a
band of Cayuse attacked the Whitman Mission and killed Narcissa, Marcus, and a
dozen others. Fifty women and children were taken hostage.
The
story fascinated me, so many layers of expectation and distrust and greed and
exploitation. What surprised me was that, over time, she became, for me, a
complex and vulnerable woman. I began to recognize the trap she was bound in,
and this confirmed in me a need to comb through my own legacy as a fifth
generation Idahoan. How can I be a woman of the West and still be true to
myself? That became my central question, and Narcissa Whitman helped me pry open
many answers.
2. Who should read it and why? Any woman who recognizes herself in this divide—family members positioned against each other as polarization deepens. My intention was not to vilify my relatives, but to discover in myself a sense of reconciliation and peace in these troubled times. Also, anyone interested in the history of US expansion and Manifest Destiny would find elements to love, hate, and quibble with in this book. I’m not an historian or a scholar—this is a creative expression of what I took from my years of research and I’m eager to share that with readers.
2. Who should read it and why? Any woman who recognizes herself in this divide—family members positioned against each other as polarization deepens. My intention was not to vilify my relatives, but to discover in myself a sense of reconciliation and peace in these troubled times. Also, anyone interested in the history of US expansion and Manifest Destiny would find elements to love, hate, and quibble with in this book. I’m not an historian or a scholar—this is a creative expression of what I took from my years of research and I’m eager to share that with readers.
3.
How is it better or
different than others in the genre? I’m very excited to be writing in this
time of genre-busting. Helen McDonald’s H is for Hawk is in that
camp, and was hugely inspirational to me because for the first time I felt I
could successfully combine my own story and personal journey with the
historical tale of Narcissa Whitman. The resulting book, I Am a Stranger
Here Myself, is part memoir and part expository narrative—my take, again,
on striking historical incidents that formed the Western ethos that has
trickled down through generations of my family.
4.
What challenges did
you overcome to write your book? My challenge certainly wasn’t a lack of
research materials about Narcissa Whitman, but perhaps too much. The first
drafts of the book were overly dense with information, and my job, over the
course of several years and much revising, was to discover a good balance of
information and story-telling, which vexed me for a long time. My other
challenge was to find a way to write about my role in family dynamics with
fierce honesty, holding my own feet to the fire and eschewing, as best I could,
blame.
5.
What lasting messages
do you hope your readers are left after consuming your book? Perhaps that history,
indeed, repeats itself. The expansion of the West, one of this country’s most
profound migrations (300,000 people within a five-six year window on the Oregon
Trail), was rife with many of the same issues we face today: the vilification
of the “other,” in this case the Native people of frontier; the falsification
of facts and fabrication of tales to bolster a questionable movement; and a
very unsettled relationship with the Federal government—new settlers (speaking
broadly) demanded government help and aid in procuring land, but then wanted
largely to be left alone, free of restrictions and regulations.
6. What advice do you have for struggling writers? Hang in there! Meet with other
writers; read and read some more. Believe
in yourself and what you have to say.
7.
Where do you see the
book publishing industry heading? My first book was published ten years ago by
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, so I went through the process with a large New York
trade publisher. This book, because it’s the winner of the River Teeth
Nonfiction Prize, was contracted with a small university publisher. I have
learned tremendously from both experiences and find myself, more than ever,
hoping for a resurgence of the mid-list book with less emphasis on giant best
sellers. It’s my plan to keep writing and I certainly hope to be part of the US
publishing industry for a long time to come.
For more information, please see: www.debragwartney.com
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