Independence Day

One of my earliest meta-reading memories comes from fifth grade when my class read: My Brother Sam is Dead. I remember plenty of books I read before this one, but this one stands out in that I also remember thinking about books and the effect of reading after I finished it. I'm sure accolades are due to fabulous teachers for the many positive educative memories from fifth grade (we studied economics, I was on TV, I can still quote Patrick Henry's speech in its entirety, I can identify all the different kinds of clouds, I still use as a model a report I did on Gen. Custer, I remember being challenged to spell antidisestablishmentarianism and being successful, etc.). It was a public school, but they were using "open concept" and we rotated through the 3 amazing teachers who specialized in different subjects but cooperatively planned lessons for overlap. What a great school! I digress. Back to the influential book.

I don't know if it was because "My Brother Sam is Dead" is also the first book I remember reading that made me cry (the end of the story is in the title, yet I persisted in the hope that there would be a twist--there isn't) or if it was the theme of liberty vs. loyalty that really resonated with me, but that book stood as "my favorite" until 10th grade when it got supplanted by "A Separate Peace" (again I should thank a teacher for bringing out the visual metaphors in this book which really made me appreciate it). I read a lot of books between 5th and 10th grade. I liked a lot of them, but none of them held power over me like My Brother Sam.

My Brother Sam was a book that not only had a story, it had a message. Reading it, even at a young age, it asked questions of who I was and what I stood for. It hits at the core of one's quest for identity. Am I an onion entirely comprised of the influences and opinions of those around me such that my center is empty or am I an apple with a solid core that's been fleshed out but has no layers? In deciding that question, I have to address the responsibility I have to those who have influenced and shaped me which comes full circle to the tension between loyalty and liberty. Does loyalty mean I cannot stand apart or does liberty mean I cannot be assimilated? Or, in light of the speech referenced below, does loyalty mean I stand oppressed or liberty equate to a freedom to oppress others?

I think it's important that we regularly review these kinds of questions, but I find it particularly appropriate on this day in our history as US citizens. The documents, letters and journals of those who lived through the US American Revolution are fabulous resources for defining an Independence Day. Indeed, fast forwarding a few years from that, one can continue to experience the struggle in Frederick Douglass's Independence Day Speech of 1841. Where there is no freedom (keeping in mind that slavery exists wherever there is oppression), the following also holds true:
"What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

All this from a book I read in fifth grade.