The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

I usually reserve this blog for posting reviews and thoughts about works of fiction. I make an exception in this case.

We Americans surround ourselves with myths about our country, myths that we learn early on from family, school, and our institutions.  Myths can be wonderful, unifying banners to gather and work under, but they can also serve the purpose of hiding shame and obscuring responsibility.  Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project takes the singular institution of chattel slavery and holds it up to the light of the sun, like a glass gathering and concentrating its rays to burn away the mists of myth we have collectively been hiding in for over 400 years.  The 19 historical essays, along with the works of poetry and fiction interspersed between those essays, delineate the ways that chattel slavery, present from the very origins of our national identity, has shaped our founding documents, institutional structures, and social policies.  More importantly, the essays make clear that our national desire to hide our shame, to “get over” it, to dismiss and disown it, has denied us the ability to rectify the past wrongs and forced us to compound error and mistreatment upon error and mistreatment.

 

Each essay, written by a different historian or cultural critic, looks at one facet of America and examines the way our slavery has shaped and continues to shape our country.  The essays follow a chronological arc from 1619, when, a year before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the first slave trade ship docked at Jamestown, to 2020 and the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  They bear single-word titles, showing both the broad scope of that influence into every corner of American life. 

 

Even if you are familiar with a lot of the history present in these essays, there will still be a lot to learn, both in terms of facts and in terms of the connective tissue that links everything together.  While I found every essay worth reading, there were certain essays that punched me harder than others.  Matthew Desmond’s essay on “Capitalism” made America’s version of capitalism make sense in a horrifying, eye-opening way.  I sat with that essay for a long time, and read it to my wife immediately upon completing it.  Likewise, Carol Anderson’s essay on “Self-Defense,” and its look at the history of the 2^nd Amendment is a powerful look at history that my extensive education has never afforded me.  Wesley Morris’s “Music” is artful and accomplished, making connections and a cultural argument is hard to deny.  Ibram X. Kendi’s “Progress,” the penultimate essay in the collection, looks at how America has been using the idea that we are making progress in overcoming our past to excuse great horrors for as long as we have been a nation.

 

When I first flipped through the book and saw the timeline and fictional passages and poems between essays, my original plan was to skip past them and just stick to the essays.  But once I got to them I appreciated what they were doing, and how they interacted with the essays. They provide historical anchors and poetic, human voices that bring the larger issues and events through another vein into pumping heart of the book and the its readers. Instead of skipping over those sections, I slowed down and took them in, reading many of the poems and passages aloud to myself.

 

I imagine many will argue that this collection of essays should be required reading for the American people, and I agree with them fully.  In fact, I think it is a civic duty, an important way to become a fully informed citizen.  Hannah-Jones has given us all a gift to collect all of this knowledge into one book.  What Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States did for understanding labor in America, The 1619 Project does for understanding racism.  Don’t let the size of the book dissuade you from picking it up. The essays range from 10 to 30 pages, and they are written in compelling, straightforward language that easily carries you through the arguments. The last 100 pages of the book are acknowledgments, endnotes, and index, so there are only about 480 pages of essays and poems and timeline.