Zinn Mourning

I'm not big on mourning or obituaries, particularly for public figures, but the death of Howard Zinn has made me reflective. The New York Times obituary is a solid if uninspired discussion of his life and career (and now I really want to read those plays he wrote!), but A People's History of the United States had a formative impact on the person and the scholar I am today.

I was fortunate enough, in the conservative suburb in which I was raised, to be taught entirely by socialist history teachers in high school. In the summer between my junior and senior years, everyone in my class was required to read one real, scholarly history book. From long list of possibilities, I chose (on the teacher's recommendation) A People's History of the United States. This book taught me, at a very impressionable age, that scholarship can be entertaining and engaging, that history can (and always does) have a perspective and an opinion, and to question the power structures that shape the world. This, perhaps more than anything else I read in high school, prepared me for college and academia and has stayed with me. I've carried this book with me every place I've lived, and seeing a copy on a bookshelf has helped me identify many a kindred spirit.

Zinn's ideas and opinions, and more than that the strength of his convictions, is inspiring to me. Reading obituaries has been even more inspirational, because it reminds me at a period in which I have no purchase, no power, and no real existence in academia that more is possible and that this tiny world isn't all that important compared to the global and ideological struggles in which we are engaged. Zinn's work takes me back to my own core beliefs, but also inspires me to question and think critically about everything. All I can really say is: Thank you, Howard Zinn. I hope his works continue to be read well into the future.