Zinn's Influential History of America
Introduction
This paper offers a critical insight or perspective on Howard Zinn’s article entitled “Speaking Truth to Power
with Books”. About influence book for change the world. Howard Zinn’s background. History about United State relating
to Christopher Columbus.
Howard Zinn
(1922-2010) was a historian, playwright, and activist. Zinn grew up in Brooklyn in a working-class, immigrant household.
At 18 he became a shipyard worker and then flew bomber missions during World
War II. These experiences helped shape his opposition to war and passion for
history. After attending college under the GI Bill and earning a Ph.D. in
history from Columbia, he taught at Spelman, where he became active in the
civil rights movement. After being fired by Spelman for his support for student
protesters, Zinn became a professor of Political Science at Boston University,
were he taught until his retirement in 1988.
Zinn say something about Christopher
Columbus. When his book, A People’s History of the United States came
out, he began to get mail from around the country. He found that most of
the mail dealt with the first chapter of the book, which of course made me
very suspicious! He refused to accept or believe that people only read
the first chapter. Instead, he came to the conclusion that all the mail
about the first chapter was because it was upsetting to those brought up
in the United States who learned about Columbus the hero, Columbus the great
discoverer, Columbus the pious Bible reader. To read about Columbus as a
murderer, a torturer, a kidnapper, a mutilator of native people, a
hypocrite, a greedy man looking for gold, willing to kill people and mutilate
people – it was shocking.
Books
are another form of memory. In some cases the book serves as a dissenting
opinion that threatens the established order of a regime or civilization.
Howard Zinn book, for example, A People's History of the United States, is a
hard slap that a civilization which looks noble and gallant constructed from
cruelty. Zinn book had sparked a long debate historians have
regarded as a delusion, and anti-American nonsense. As Harvard historian Oscar Handlin wrote in The
American Scholar.
The book is one of the best tool for
learning and education. A good book is always beneficial impact in the minds of
readers. He will exalt the soul and thoughts. It also will increase knowledge
treasures. Howard Zinn said that, we want to what books do and get at least a
partial answer to the question partial because he do not think we know exactly
what books do or writing does. One reason is that it is very rare to find a
direct line between the writing of a book and the changing of a policy. But he think you can find indirect lines and
you can find eras in which writings appeared and people’s consciousness was
raised and policies were changed, sometimes after decades had passed. The long trajectory between writing and
changing consciousness, between writing and activism and then affecting public
policy, can be tortuous and complicated. But this does not mean we should
desist from writing. The important of
books simply by my own experience.
Summary
There are several basic points that Zinn wrote on article entitle ‘Speaking Truth to Power with Books’.
First, he
was a bombardier in the Air Force in World War II, and he dropped bombs on cities,
towns, and people. And yet he did not know what bombing did to human beings. He
dropped
bombs from 30,000 feet high and he saw no human beings, heard no screaming, saw
no blood, did not see children dismembered by the bombs. He was guilty of the
murder of innocents but did not understand what he had done. Shortly after the
war was over, he read John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima, where he visits
Hiroshima and talks to the survivors and brings them before your eyes: people
without arms or legs, or blinded, with skin that you cannot bear to look at.
Reading John Hersey’s book, he finally understood: this is what we do when we
drop bombs on people.
So there is knowing and there is knowing and there is
knowing. The most powerful anti-war book he ever read, that brought me close to
understanding war, was Dalton Trumbo’s novel, Johnny Got His Gun. It is
told in the first person by a soldier on a hospital bed, a person who has no
legs, no arms, who is blind, deaf, mute, just a torso with a beating heart and
a thinking brain, reflecting on his life and on war. He would have my students
read it because it did more to get to the reality of war than any five lectures
of mine.
Second, about Columbus, Indians, and Progress Humans
on book entitle ‘A People’s History of the United States’. These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like
Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say
again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits
did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the
religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked
Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher
Columbus.
Columbus
wrote:
As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island
which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might
learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.
The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is
the gold? He had persuaded the king and queen of Spain to finance an expedition
to the lands, the wealth, he expected would be on the other side of the
Atlantic -the Indies and Asia, gold and spices. For, like other informed people
of his time, he knew the world was round and he could sail west in order to get
to the Far East.
Critique
There are three points on Zinn’s article.
First, the
book was very influential to change
the world but to change the world for
someone who wants to read. When someone did not want to read then
the change will not be there. Second, should be Zinn before
dropping some bombs he should be more careful if it is under no man, the little
boy who will be hit by a bomb that he dropped. Thus making him feels guilty for the murder of innocent people but he
did not understand what he had done. Third, Zinn better call the slaughter of
the people of America Columbus as not only a torturer, rapist, murderer.
Conclusion
There are two basic points that can be concluded from
Zinn’s article. First, he came to
the conclusion that all the mail about the first chapter was because it
was upsetting to those brought up in the United States who learned about
Columbus the hero, Columbus the great discoverer, Columbus the pious Bible
reader. To read about Columbus as a murderer, a torturer, a kidnapper, a
mutilator of native people, a hypocrite, a greedy man looking for gold, willing to kill people and mutilate people –
it was shocking. Second, he was guilty of the murder of innocents but did not
understand what he had done. Shortly after the war was over, he read John
Hersey’s book, Hiroshima, where he visits Hiroshima and talks to the
survivors and brings them before your eyes: people without arms or legs, or
blinded, with skin that you cannot bear to look at. Reading John Hersey’s book,
he finally understood: this is what we do when we drop bombs on people.
REFERENCE
Anthropology
off the Shelf: Anthropologists on Writing Edited by Alisse
Waterston and Maria D. Vesperi
© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-18920-0
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