My grandparents, 1917 With my new book coming out, Against My Dreams, I've been thinking about my grandmother a lot, because the poems in the collection are written in her voice.
As I was preparing to go to press, I had a revelation that came in the form of a question: What if the heroic stories we grew up with, the ones we learned in school, the ones that provided the underpinnings of history, were stories of people like my grandmother?
She grew up in a poor family on a small mountain farm, emigrated from her homeland as a young woman, was widowed in the Great Depression and raised two children on her own, spent her whole life working as a domestic servant, never owned anything except some clothes.
What if her story and the stories of people like her defined heroism, rather than the stories of generals and diplomats, presidents and industrialists, inventors and explorers? How would American society be different if lives like hers were honored and celebrated? What values would emerge? How would we see each other?
As I was preparing to go to press, I had a revelation that came in the form of a question: What if the heroic stories we grew up with, the ones we learned in school, the ones that provided the underpinnings of history, were stories of people like my grandmother?
She grew up in a poor family on a small mountain farm, emigrated from her homeland as a young woman, was widowed in the Great Depression and raised two children on her own, spent her whole life working as a domestic servant, never owned anything except some clothes.
What if her story and the stories of people like her defined heroism, rather than the stories of generals and diplomats, presidents and industrialists, inventors and explorers? How would American society be different if lives like hers were honored and celebrated? What values would emerge? How would we see each other?
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