American Heroine Research Articles

Planted in the Shadows: Centering Sexual Violence in Prairie Lotus, Little House on the Prairie, and Oliver Optic's Hope and Have

Criticism of Linda Sue Park's Prairie Lotus (2020) has focused on this text as a rewriting of Little House on the Prairie, particularly the idea that this work—which stars an Asian American heroine—corrects the more troubling aspects of Little House. This essay instead focuses on the sexual violence that seeps into and concludes Park's work. I examine this alongside a 19th century text by Oliver Optic that also features sexual violence in the American West; in so doing I reframe Prairie Lotus as a text worth examining as a reflection of the history of sexualized violence against Asian American women and girls.

The Parthian Legacy: Irish Catholicism and Remaking Identity in Willa Cather’s My Mortal Enemy

The Parthian LegacyIrish Catholicism and Remaking Identity in Willa Cather’s My Mortal Enemy Vera R. Foley (bio) Despite its foundation in a romance plot that pits a highly particularized version of Irish Catholic heritage against a more generically Protestant version of the American Dream, Willa Cather’s 1926 novella My Mortal Enemy does not often figure in scholarly explorations of ethnic heritage in America. Like many of Cather’s works, My Mortal Enemy presents ethnic heritage as enriching and even exalting the experience of white American citizens. In this sense she writes in the same tradition as Randolph S. Bourne, who described in 1916 the power and value of what he calls “trans-nationality” (13)1—the belief that the United States is strengthened when the descendants of white immigrants refuse cultural assimilation in favor of retaining “cultural practices” from their families’ European countries of origin (Waters 115). The story of Myra Driscoll Henshawe—who goes from proud Irish American heiress to aspiring New York society wife to lonely, impoverished Catholic enthusiast during the course of her lifetime—embodies the dangers Cather sees for women who eschew ethnic ties in favor of American homogeneity. Based on her own experience growing up on the Nebraska frontier, Cather associated white ethnic particularity with “the splendid story of the pioneers,” in what she calls a “fluid and flexible” society defined by a patchwork of different cultures and heritages working together to tame the landscape and forge their fortunes (“Nebraska” 238). Throughout her career Cather presents retaining specific ethnic roots as symptomatic of strength and integrity; this is the model that her earlier immigrant heroines Alexandra [End Page 51] Bergson of O Pioneers! (1913) and Ántonia Shimerda of My Ántonia (1918) drew upon to become beloved matriarchs in their families and communities. Myra’s Irish American story is thus doubly valuable because Cather offers little insight elsewhere into her specific perspective on Irish immigrants or Irish Americans in the increasingly diverse early twentieth century, although her interest in Catholicism generally is well documented.2 Myra represents a departure from Cather’s usual brand of rural frontier nostalgia—on two levels. First, Cather gives her Irish American heroine, Myra, a birthplace in the United States rather than Ireland. Second, she situates Myra in a series of urban spaces, from the fictional setting of Parthia, Illinois, to New York City, to an unnamed Pacific coast metropolis. As a result Myra must negotiate different strategies for retaining an Irish heritage that meets her needs as an American woman; her definition of what it means to enact her Irish identity remains in flux, morphing to reflect her particular circumstances. The Second Boat: Family Origins and the “blood tie” of Parthia, Illinois Unlike Cather’s Great Plains heroines, with their lived experiences in places like Sweden and Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Myra is doubly removed from what sociologists would call her “ancestral place of origin” (Waters 86). She is not just removed generationally from Ireland but also from the large, established Irish American enclaves in the Northeast and, to a growing extent, the Midwest. Myra’s great-uncle John Driscoll, the original Irish immigrant in her family, would have been one of what David Emmons calls the “two-boat Irish”3: arrivals who did not stop their voyage west once they crossed the Atlantic but continued on into the American heartland (1). Like many such arrivals who emigrated during the famine, Driscoll found himself in a landscape far “more urban and industrial than” that of his Irish compatriots who remained in Boston and New York (Emmons 2). This does not mean, however, that the Midwest did not offer Irish and blended Catholic communities into which he could have integrated, had that been his wish. As Regina Donlon notes, “During the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of Catholics in the United States increased from [End Page 52] 663,000 to 3,103,000,” with established parishes and worshipers in St. Louis and Fort Wayne (149). Far from knitting himself into an existing ethnic or religious community, however, “John Driscoll made his fortune employing contract labour in the Missouri swamps,” exploiting the toil of men...

Disneys Reconstruction of the Traditional Chinese Heroine: a Comparative Analysis of the Three Mulan Movies

The legend of Mulan has been transmitted and remolded throughout China for hundreds of years. In recent years, this motif has also drawn significant attention from the US film industry. Three films are analyzed in this article: the Chinese Yu opera Hua Mulan [1], Disneys animated version Mulan [2] and the most recent addition, Disneys live-action version Mulan [3]. Under a cross-culture lens, the analysis compares three versions of the film to examine the transculturation and adaption of the narrative in reconstructing a traditional Chinese heroine. This paper concludes that to resist cultural hegemony and to attract a broader audience, Disneys 1998 version transforms a typical Confucian heroine into an individualistic American heroine. Finally, it shall be argued that the 2020 version of Mulan espouses and shapes Mulan into a synthesized Asian-American figure.

All Is Lost: The Inescapable Encounter with “the Other” in Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky

Abstract Emmanuel Lévinas’ philosophy of “the Other” has a resounding echo in Paul Bowles’ magnum opus The Sheltering Sky. Kit Moresby, the American heroine, who has a dehumanizing (totalizing) attitude toward the North African natives, experiences an allegorical pilgrimage from the comforting shelter of “the same” toward the unfamiliar world of “the Other.” This article offers a close-reading of the novel based on Lévinasian concepts such as “the Other” and “the Face” and attempts to show that how Kit is deprived of her worldly possessions and is compelled to desist from her totalizing attitude toward “the Other.

Tracy Fessenden, Religion around Billie Holiday

American Religion 27, no. 1 (Fall 2019), pp. 152–154 Copyright © 2019, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.1.1.10 Book Review Tracy Fessenden. Religion Around Billie Holiday (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018) Hannah C. Garvey Indiana University, Bloomington, USA “You do things in a beautiful way…” In Religion Around Billie Holiday, Tracy Fessenden asks readers to ­ consider what they can hear around Billie Holiday. How might one describe those impressions and remembrances? The jazz musician Charles Mingus referred to Holiday’s “elegance” (90). Holiday’s quasi-biographer William Dufty, describing her certainty that even after her death, “as long as language endures,” people would still listen to and be moved by her music, wrote: “Call it arrogance, serenity, hallucination, there it was” (90). Holiday’s friend and accompanist Bobby Henderson was captivated by her grace. When the two went out together, Henderson would look at Holiday and think: “You do things in a beautiful way” (90). These beautiful ways of Billie Holiday guide Fessenden through this third volume in the Religion Around series from Penn State University Press. While Fessenden’s work is steeped in Holiday’s “beautiful ways,” this book is less a biography of Billie Holiday’s religiosity than a revelatory model for the study of American religions. In Fessenden’s own words, “Religion Around Billie Holiday is not a brief for Holiday’s piety or impiety, her importance to religious history, or her prophetic voice for civil rights” (4). It is instead a study of the “spiritual weather through which Billie Holiday moved and still moves (as sound, Hannah C. Garvey 153 image, words, memory, desire)” (4). Fessenden taps into the elusive powers that surrounded Billie Holiday as she lived and performed in twentieth-century America. She weaves a picture of how Holiday interacted with these various powers and how they may have interacted with her. In this way, Fessenden’s method is less an investigation of a particular American figure and more a window into a particular American moment. While other reviewers of Religion Around Billie Holiday have lamented that Holiday is not more prominent, I am convinced that Fessenden’s work truly shines in tacking between Holiday and her American context(s), using the method of “around” to provide a much more whole vision of Holiday and of America. As Holiday’s friend and accompanist Teddy Wilson notes of the Hollywood version of Holiday’s pseudo-autobiography Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday was not a “wholly singular, unique” being. She was really “Billie Holiday only in the company of other musicians” (192). Holiday is Holiday in context, and Fessenden wants to tell that story, the story of Billie Holiday as inextricably wound with negotiations of what it is to be in and of America. Totellastory“around”–toattendtoitsmultiplicities–canbecomplicated,but Fessenden deftly threads readers through five chapters centering black American music and performance, American Catholicism, American jazz, American Judaism, and American heroin(e)-ism, using Holiday as both her needle and buoy. With John Hammond’s story-telling concert, “From Spirituals to Swing” (1938), as a guiding example, Fessenden begins by highlighting the unnuanced ways in which African American sonic productions have been coopted by white Americans to serve progressive and emancipatory roles in larger narratives of American identity. Fessenden counters that narrative with her telling of Holiday’s remarkably particular upbringing. While she and her mother struggled financially , Holiday moved through and around the streets of Baltimore working and sometimes singing in the city’s brothels and clubs to earn money, before being put into Catholic institutions like The Baltimore House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls (70). Fessenden demonstrates how Holiday was not steeped in the gospel traditions of black Protestant churches but, instead, cultivated her voice through Catholic prayer books during masses and Victrola turntables in the apartments of Baltimore club owners. Chapters three and four work together to characterize the specific sonic atmosphere in which Holiday moved, highlighting performers like Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, particular genres like blues and jazz, and the strong interaction between Jewish Americans and black Americans that surfaced in the song lyrics performed by black musicians (“Strange Fruit...

"Beyond All Ambitious Motives": Missionary Memoirs and the Cultivation of Early American Evangelical Heroines

"Beyond All Ambitious Motives": Missionary Memoirs and the Cultivation of Early American Evangelical Heroines

Stress, Depression, and Drug Use Among Aging Mexican American Men Living in the Barrio

Residing in Mexican American barrios might place individuals at heightened risk for chronic financial and acute stress, which are associated with adverse mental health outcomes. Stressors could be exacerbated for substance users. This research explores relations between chronic financial stress, acute stress, and depressive symptomatology among aging Mexican American heroin and other drug-using men. A prospective cohort study and field-intensive outreach methodology were used to recruit 227 men for in-depth interviews. Participants were categorized into depressed and nondepressed groups based on symptomatology measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Chronic financial stress (i.e., poverty) and acute stress (i.e., Life Events Questionnaire) associated with depressive symptomatology were tested using logistic regression. Findings suggest scores of depressive symptoms among substance users are highly related to chronic financial stress. Community-level interventions targeting chronic stressors present in the barrio could be especially salient in improving the mental health of Latino drug users.

Depression in the barrio: An analysis of the risk and protective nature of cultural values among Mexican American substance users

ABSTRACTUnderstanding the effect of cultural values on depression and how social networks influence these relationships may be important in the treatment of substance-using, Mexican American populations. Latino cultural values, familismo, personalismo, fatalismo, and machismo, may be associated with depression among Latinos. The current study identified the association of traditional Latino values on depressive symptomatology among a sample of Mexican American heroin injectors. A cross-sectional research design and field-intensive outreach methodology were utilized to recruit 227 Mexican American men. Participants were categorized into depressed and nondepressed groups. Relations among cultural values and depression were examined using logistic regression. Findings indicate that drug-using men with higher familismo and fatalismo scores are protected against depressive symptomatology. Relations between familismo and depression seem to be moderated by having a drug use network. In addition, findings reveal that age is inversely related to depressive symptomatology. Young Mexican American heroin users who do not ascribe to traditional Latino values may be highly associated with depression and therefore more vulnerable to riskier drug use behaviors. Moreover, drug-using social networks may affect the protective nature of certain cultural values. Further research is needed to identify whether culturally tailored treatments can cultivate these values while simultaneously undermining the effect of substance-using social networks in order to reduce depression symptoms among this group of high-risk substance users.

Diversity and evolution of the Middle American cichlid fishes (Teleostei: Cichlidae) with revised classification

We present a taxonomically complete and topologically robust molecular phylogeny of the Middle American heroine cichlids based on which we review their diversity and genus-level systematics. In order to ascertain the diversity of the group and its phylogeny we have used three nested taxon sampling analyses of the concatenated nDNA/mtDNA datasets and additionally to these analyses we present a summary of the results of a new Next Generation Sequencing-generated nuclear phylogeny based on a data set of ~ 140,000 informative characters. The NGS ddRAD phylogeny has a species-level sampling covering virtually all species (including the enigmatic Cichlasoma microlepis Dahl, 1960) with multiple sequenced specimens per species. Based on our results the Middle American heroine cichlids are made up of three main clades. The three clades (the herichthyines, the amphilophines, and the astatheroines) are however not each other sister groups since they are interspersed with South American (Australoheros, Caquetaia, Chocoheros, Heroina, Mesoheros) and Antillean (Nandopsis) genera and they represent probably two separate colonization events of Middle America from South America, probably via the Antilles. Our study reveals many cases of cytonuclear discordance and/or introgressive hybridization both at the genus and deeper levels stressing the importance to study the nuclear and mitochondrial phylogenetic signals independently and not solely in concatenated analyses. We have found that a great majority of morphological characters are ecologically correlated and that they form only a limited number of functionally-determined combinations – i.e. ecomorphs. We have found five main cranial ecomorphs but only two postcranial ecomorphs (the lotic and lentic ecomorphs, plus the undifferentiated ancestral character combination). The cranial and postcranial ecomorphs are not combined completely randomly having produced thirteen modular whole-body ecomorphs. Both the cranial and postcranial ecomorphs, and even their combinations, have evolved repeatedly in the Middle American cichlids in the same habitats both in sympatry as well as in allopatry. Our analyses of the diversity of Middle American cichlid clade support the existence of 31 genera in Middle America (plus six in South America and one in the Greater Antilles) as separate evolutionary lineages occupying separate adaptive zones. Nine new genera are described here for species and species groups that have lacked a genus level name to this day or were associated with other unrelated genera. We also review the species level diversity based on the mtDNA cytb gene population-level analysis. Furthermore, we provide a new biogeographical analysis of the group which explains their evolutionary history and demonstrates that biogeography is a much better indicator of evolutionary relationships in this fish group than are most morphological characters due to their ecological correlation.

Trajectories of Aging Long-Term Mexican American Heroin Injectors: The "Maturing Out" Paradox.

To examine the applicability of the "maturing out" theory to a sample of aging Mexican American men who are long-term heroin injectors. Ethnographic data were collected as part of a cross-sectional study of aging Mexican American heroin users in Houston with 20 current heroin users. Findings indicate that dysfunctions that emerge in the heroin lifestyle lead not to cessation but rather to "maturing in," a specific process of social readjustment that returns the heroin user to a stable maintenance pattern of use instead of a recovery phase. This process of paradoxical maturing out can be attributed to the unconditional social support provided to the heroin user by family, peers, and the tecato subculture embedded in Mexican American communities. Results highlight the implications for the intersection of heroin-related conditions, natural age-related impairments, and cognitive functioning that make this population increasingly susceptible to adverse health consequences.

Spatial accessibility of drug treatment facilities and the effects on locus of control, drug use, and service use among heroin-injecting Mexican American men

BackgroundThis study explores the spatial accessibility of outpatient drug treatment facilities and the potential relationship with drug use-related outcomes among Mexican American heroin users. MethodsSecondary data on 219 current and former heroin-injecting Mexican American men aged 45 and older were drawn from a research study in Houston, Texas. We used geographic information systems (GIS) to derive two spatial accessibility measures: distance from one's place of residence to the closest drug treatment facility (in minutes); and the number of facilities within a 10-minute driving distance from one's place of residence. Exploratory logistic regression analyses examined the association between the spatial accessibility of drug treatment facilities and several drug use-related outcomes: internal locus of control (LOC); perceived chances and worries of injecting in the next six months; treatment utilization; and location of last heroin purchase. ResultsParticipants with greater spatial access to treatment programs were more likely to report a higher chance of injecting in the near future. However, while current heroin users were more worried about injecting in the next six months, greater spatial access to treatment programs seemed to have a buffering effect. Finally, those who lived closer to a treatment programs were more likely to have last purchased heroin inside the neighborhood versus outside the neighborhood. Spatial accessibility was not associated with internal LOC or treatment utilization. ConclusionThe findings showed that the presence of outpatient treatment facilities—particularly services in Spanish—may influence perceived risk of future heroin use and purchasing behaviors among Mexican American men. Implications for future spatially-informed drug use research and the planning of culturally and linguistically responsive drug treatment programs are discussed.

Patient Perspectives on Choosing Buprenorphine Over Methadone in an Urban, Equal‐Access System

Recent policy initiatives in Baltimore City, MD significantly reduced access disparities between methadone and buprenorphine in the publicly funded treatment sector. This study examines reasons for choosing buprenorphine over methadone among patients with access to both medications. This study was embedded within a larger clinical trial conducted at two outpatient substance abuse treatment programs offering buprenorphine. Qualitative and quantitative data on treatment choice were collected for new patients starting buprenorphine treatment (n = 80). The sample consisted of predominantly urban African American (94%) heroin users who had prior experience with non-prescribed street buprenorphine (85%), and opioid agonist treatment (68%). Qualitative data were transcribed and coded for themes, while quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and bivariate statistics. Participants typically conveyed their choice of buprenorphine treatment as a decision against methadone. Buprenorphine was perceived as a helpful medication while methadone was perceived as a harmful narcotic with multiple unwanted physical effects. Positive experiences with non-prescribed "street buprenorphine" were a central factor in participants' decisions to seek buprenorphine treatment. Differences in service structure between methadone and buprenorphine did not strongly influence treatment-seeking decisions in this sample. Personal experiences with medications and the street narrative surrounding them play an important role in treatment selection decisions. This study characterizes important decision factors that underlie patients' selection of buprenorphine over methadone treatment.

“El Lado Oscuro”: “The Dark Side” of Social Capital in Mexican American Heroin Using Men

This article describes social capital in a cohort of 227 Mexican American men who are long-term injection heroin users. Social capital scores for current and former users were similar, suggesting equal absolute values of capital, but associated with illicit activities in current users and with cessation efforts in former users. Stable drug-using relationships provided high negative capital, whereas conventional relationships provided positive capital. Thus, social capital functions dichotomously in positive and negative contextualized roles. This study provides an alternative understanding of the dynamic interactions between individuals, environment, and drug abuse and can inform prevention and treatment interventions for an important demographic group.

Patient Perspectives on Choosing Buprenorphine Over Methadone in an Urban, Equal-Access System

Background Recent policy initiatives in Baltimore City, MD significantly reduced access disparities between methadone and buprenorphine in the publicly funded treatment sector. Objectives This study examines reasons for choosing buprenorphine over methadone among patients with access to both medications. Method This study was embedded within a larger clinical trial conducted at two outpatient substance abuse treatment programs offering buprenorphine. Qualitative and quantitative data on treatment choice were collected for new patients starting buprenorphine treatment (n = 80). The sample consisted of predominantly urban African American (94%) heroin users who had prior experience with non-prescribed street buprenorphine (85%), and opioid agonist treatment (68%). Qualitative data were transcribed and coded for themes, while quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and bivariate statistics. Results Participants typically conveyed their choice of buprenorphine treatment as a decision against methadone. Buprenorphine was perceived as a helpful medication while methadone was perceived as a harmful narcotic with multiple unwanted physical effects. Positive experiences with non-prescribed “street buprenorphine” were a central factor in participants' decisions to seek buprenorphine treatment. Conclusions Differences in service structure between methadone and buprenorphine did not strongly influence treatment-seeking decisions in this sample. Personal experiences with medications and the street narrative surrounding them play an important role in treatment selection decisions. Scientific Significance This study characterizes important decision factors that underlie patients' selection of buprenorphine over methadone treatment. (Am J Addict 2013; 22:285–291)

The Narcissistic Entrapment of Scarlett O’Hara

The popular image of Scarlett O``Hara``s character easily polarizes readers into extreme and equally superficial opposites. Her existence in readers` minds as feisty American heroine or self-centered princess neglects the nuanced depiction of her complex and destructive personality. The author`s achievement lies in providing a morally superficial and simplistic character with a complex subtext of motivations. In conjunction with a clinical understanding of narcissism, it can be shown that she ought neither to be admired as icon nor scorned as psychotic, but seen as the profoundly flawed character the text carefully conveys. The clinical understanding of narcissistic personality disorder is currently under debate again. It stands to be eliminated from the next edition of The American Psychiatric Association`s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) due to renewed uncertainty whether narcissism should be seen as a clinical disease or just a collection of signs and symptoms better understood in terms of other disorders. In Scarlett`s actions and motivations it is possible to see such a collection of signs that invite the broader label of narcissistic personality traits. Specifically, Scarlett`s narcissistic complex stems from the insufficient mirroring supplied by her distant mother Ellen and the resultant overidealization of Ellen`s womanhood. The aim of this essay is to show that Scarlett`s enchantment with the image of her mother and consequently her own ego-ideal, has consequences for relating adequately to others and being able to mature. Since her lack of self-analysis cannot aid her in detecting these flaws, she is also unable to avert a regression to girlhood strategies and fantasies. This dynamic can best be constructed as a narcissistic entrapment.

Species tree estimation and the historical biogeography of heroine cichlids

Heroine cichlids are major components of the fish faunas in both Central America and the Caribbean. To examine the evolutionary patterns of how cichlids colonized both of these regions, we reconstructed the phylogenetic relationships among 23 cichlid lineages. We used three phylogenetically novel nuclear markers (Dystropin b, Myomesin1, and Wnt7b) in combination with sequence data from seven other gene regions (Nd2, Rag1, Enc1, Sreb2, Ptr, Plagl2, and Zic1) to elucidate the species tree of these cichlids. The species examined represent major heroine lineages in South America, Central America, and the Greater Antilles. The individual gene trees of these groups were topologically quite discordant. Therefore, we combined the genetic partitions and inferred the species tree using both concatenation and a coalescent-based Bayesian method. The two resulting phylogenetic topologies were largely concordant but differed in two fundamental ways. First, more nodes in the concatenated tree were supported with substantial or 100% Bayesian posterior support than in the coalescent-based tree. Second, there was a minor, but biogeographically critical, topological difference between the concatenated and coalescent-based trees. Nevertheless, both analyses recovered topologies consistent with the Greater Antillean heroines being phylogenetically nested within the largely Central American heroine radiation. This study suggests that reconstructions of cichlid phylogeny and historical biogeography should account for the vagaries of individual gene histories.

Temporal diversification of Central American cichlids

BackgroundCichlid fishes are classic examples of adaptive radiation because of their putative tendency to explosively diversify after invading novel environments. To examine whether ecological opportunity increased diversification (speciation minus extinction) early in a species-rich cichlid radiation, we determined if Heroine cichlids experienced a burst of diversification following their invasion of Central America.ResultsWe first reconstructed the Heroine phylogeny and determined the basal node to use as the root of Central American Heroine diversification. We then examined the influence of incomplete taxon sampling on this group's diversification patterns. First, we added missing species randomly to the phylogeny and assessed deviations from a constant rate of lineage accumulation. Using a range of species numbers, we failed to recover significant deviations from a pure-birth process and found little support for an early burst of diversification. Then, we examined patterns of lineage accumulation as nodes were increasingly truncated. We assumed that as we removed more recently diverged lineages that sampling would become more complete thereby increasing the power to detect deviations from a pure-birth model. However, truncation of nodes provided even less support for an early burst of diversification.ConclusionsContrary to expectations, our analyses suggest Heroine cichlids did not undergo a burst of diversification when they invaded from South America. Throughout their history in Central America, Heroine cichlids appear to have diversified at a constant rate.

Impact of South American heroin on the US heroin market 1993–2004

Background The past two decades have seen an increase in heroin-related morbidity and mortality in the United States. We report on trends in US heroin retail price and purity, including the effect of entry of Colombian-sourced heroin on the US heroin market. Methods The average standardized price ($/mg-pure) and purity (% by weight) of heroin from 1993 to 2004 was from obtained from US Drug Enforcement Agency retail purchase data for 20 metropolitan statistical areas. Univariate statistics, robust Ordinary Least Squares regression and mixed fixed and random effect growth curve models were used to predict the price and purity data in each metropolitan statistical area over time. Results Over the 12 study years, heroin price decreased 62%. The median percentage of all heroin samples that are of South American origin increased an absolute 7% per year. Multivariate models suggest percent South American heroin is a significant predictor of lower heroin price and higher purity adjusting for time and demographics. Conclusion These analyses reveal trends to historically low-cost heroin in many US cities. These changes correspond to the entrance into and rapid domination of the US heroin market by Colombian-sourced heroin. The implications of these changes are discussed.

Teaching "dear Mihia": Sentimentalism and Cross-Cultural Education in S. Alice Callahan's Wynema: A Child of the Forest

Only few chapters into S. Alice Callahan's Wynema: A Child of the Forest (1891), believed to be the first novel by Native American woman, (1) Wynema Harjo, the young daughter of the chief of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe, reveals the deep affection that she has for Genevieve Weir, white Methodist woman who becomes Wynema's teacher when she is solicited by both Wynema's father and missionary, Gerald Keithly, to establish and run school for the Muscogee children. When Wynema happens upon meeting between Gerald and Genevieve not long after Genevieve begins teaching at the school, Gerald informs Wynema, whom he has not seen for some time, that he has telling Mihia [teacher in Creek] how [all of the students] like (19). Wynema responds by declaring, 'Mihia' knows I luf her,' while drawing herself away from him and looking up confidingly into her teacher's face (19). What is more, when Gerald points out that Genevieve is a pale-face and inquires about whether she thinks that Genevieve loves her in return, Wynema confidently asserts, Oh, yes, I know she does as she tenderly caress[es] her teacher's hand (19). The events that precede and follow this remarkable, romanticized scene suggest that the intimacy between the young Native American pupil and her white Christian instructor is made possible only by cross-cultural sensitivity and understanding. More specifically, Callahan's novel asserts that affectional bonds between women of different racial groups, especially between Anglo-American and Native American women, are socially desirable and, significantly, hinge upon familiarity with one another's cultural traditions and interests. While the text seems to propose that strong interpersonal connection between the Native American heroine and her white teacher depends in part upon cultural likeness, Wynema experiments with the traditional (white) teacher/(Native American) student binary in ways that underscore how educational practices might foster familiarity and deconstruct interpersonal barriers. The novel thus characterizes cross-cultural education as instrumental in the formation and maintenance of interpersonal bonds, thereby proposing that the sentimentalism of women's writing can effectively support rather than simply eradicate or impede cultural diversity. While cross-cultural education often is vague term associated with multiculturalism, term that has been rendered problematic in Native American studies, I use it in this essay as way to engage the broad anti-racist dimensions of sentimentalism. (2) Wynema thus usefully complicates ongoing critical discussions about the racist ideologies embedded in the American literary tradition. Recent studies of nineteenth-century women's sentimental literature frequently have examined what Shirley Samuels's collection The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth-Century America has aptly characterized as the highly vexed relationship between sentimentalism and race. In one such analysis, Rape, Murder, and Revenge in 'Slavery's Pleasant Homes,' Carolyn Karcher proposes that female abolitionist writers such as Caroline Healey Dall consciously chose to depict experiences of slavery in a literary form and language consistent with the tastes of nineteenth-century, middleclass, women readers (59); accordingly, they opted not to relay the brutal crimes committed against slaves, since such readers would have recoiled in horror (58). Although this restrained depiction maximized the successful reception of abolitionist ideas by wider American audience, Karcher maintains, playing to the feminine delicacies of middle-class female readers ultimately rendered anti-slavery fiction an incompetent conveyor of such horrific realities of slavery as sexual abuse and other forms of physical violence. (3) Other critics have gone further than Karcher to claim that literature not only failed to adequately address, but also perpetuated, racial oppression. …

An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d'Albert-Lake (review)

Reviewed by: An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake M. R. D. Foot An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia d’Albert-Lake. Edited by Judy Barrett Litoff. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8232-2581-X. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Index. Pp. xxxviii, 270. $29.95. This is a tale of quiet heroism, most of it in the heroine's own words, of [End Page 260] an American girl, a doctor's daughter born in Ohio and brought up in Florida. She married a Frenchman whose mother was English; was with him in Paris when the world war against Hitler began; and stayed with him when he started to help the "Comet" escape line, in which she became a courier. By mere bad luck, she was arrested by the Germans in western Normandy in mid-June 1944 in the company of an evading American airman; and just managed to survive Fresnes and Ravensbrueck. She kept a diary, till she was arrested, which is here reprinted. In the winter after her rescue, she wrote a long account of her prison and concentration camp experiences, in the form of a letter to her recently dead mother. The original memoir seems to have vanished; this too is reprinted, from a typescript in the family's hands. More than sixty years on, both documents have a ghastly immediacy: they bring back Hitler's war at its worst. The diary has been neatly edited by Professor Litoff, who also writes a long introduction; she footnotes events, well known at the time, which may not be readily remembered by today's readership. It presents a straightforward picture of life under Vichy France for someone who disliked it. The male SS guards left most of the immediate care of the prisoners to kapos, who were prisoners themselves. Woman's inhumanity to woman has seldom been as well described: witness the Polish woman kapo, without whose say-so no captive could reach the camp hospital, who kept an iron bar to hand with which she used to strike every other prisoner who came within arm's reach, as she did not want to catch their lice. In the closing stages, several hundred captives were crammed together in a vast marquee, most of them suffering from dysentery and many of them unable to stir to the latrine to relieve themselves. The stench alone must have been all but unbearable—yet they bore it. Virginia Lake's private motto was "never give in": she hung on. Efforts by her American family eventually got through to her, just in time. She and General de Gaulle's niece, Genevieve Anthonioz, were removed from Ravensbrueck to Liebenau near Lake Constance, in a six-day nightmare journey through ruins, late in February 1945. There she slept in sheets, was decently fed, was out of earshot of gunfire, and was liberated late in April. She was reunited with her husband in Paris after the war's end; she recovered her health, they had a son and settled near Dinard. The British gave her an MBE, the Belgians the Medal of King Leopold, and the French the Liberation Medal of Honor, a croix de guerre, and, eventually, the Legion of Honour. She died in 1997 aged eighty-seven. She had simply done what she thought she ought to do. Her story, movingly well told, was well worth putting into print. M. R. D. Foot Nuthampstead, England Copyright © 2007 Society for Military History