Cry Me a River: The Challenges of Growing Up in America

Abstract

Mintz may well have thought the same thing about halfway through writing his survey of the history of American children; this is a thorny subject requiring at least a passing knowledge of a number of historical fi elds. It also resists a straightforward chronological narrative, for changes in the lives of children and youth are gradual and overlapping. But readers of this fi ne book will be grateful that Mintz took on this particular challenge, for at its best, Huck’s Raft reorients United States history, with children and youth at the center of American life rather than the periphery. Mintz’s choice of title is extraordinarily evocative. (The colorized cover photograph of a young Charles Lindbergh rafting on the Mississippi half a century after Huck’s fi ctional journey provides its own delicious set of metaphorical possibilities.) The stories of the two most famous boys in American literature suggest confl icting images of childhood. The Disney version, of course, focuses on Tom and features the carefree, good-hearted stereotypes represented in Mintz’s descriptions of the child-centered society that middleclass Americans designed in the middle of the nineteenth century and renewed in the middle of the twentieth century. When the focus shifts to Huck, however, more sinister versions of childhood appear—closer to David Lynch than to Disney. Whenever Huck leaves the relative safety of the raft, an abusive father, kidnappers, feuding southern aristocrats, and suffocating aunts threaten his life and his freedom, and Mintz fi nds fl esh and blood equivalents for all of them. The stories of Huck and Tom have become mythic, and Mintz aims “to strip away the myths, misconceptions, and nostalgia” that often lead contemporary Americans to despair about youth. As Mintz argues, “There has never been a time when the overwhelming majority of American children were well cared for and their experiences idyllic. Nor has childhood ever been an age of innocence, at least not for most children” (p. vii).