Historical Fiction

Yesteryear

I've spoken in previous posts about literary phases and literary crushes I've had in the past. One phase, or rather, genre, that I continue to revisit today is historical fiction. Some of my favorites from yesteryear: Wolf by the Ears, a Young Adult (YA) Fiction book about Thomas Jefferson and the children of his slave Sally Hemings; Of Nightengales that Weep, another YA novel set during the wars between the Heike and Genji clans in feudal Japan; Catherine Called Birdy, a YA book about the daughter of a noble family set in England during the Middle Ages; Escape from Egypt, a romance about a Hebrew boy and Syrian girl based on Exodus; and lastly, The Bronze Bow, another YA novel about the life of Jesus from a teenage boy's perspective.

Is fiction, well . . . fiction?
The concept of historical fiction seems kind of oxymoronic at first glance. If it's historical, as in, actually happened in history, how can it be fiction? Well, the events surrounding the plot are historical, but then the gaps are filled in with what we call fiction. But that statement prompts a somewhat philosophical argument to brew in my brain, though, about whether fiction is simply "filling in the gaps" with imagination or if it's something actually closer to fact than, well, fiction.

Toni Morrison
But back to historical fiction. Over Christmas break, I read A Mercy by Nobel Literature Prize-winner Toni Morrison. It's a departure from her earlier work, which usually revolves around 20th century black American life and the impact of the terrible past upon it. This time, she writes about the terrible past before it was the terrible past. This novel is set in 17th century America before it was America, before colonies, land boundaries, racial categories and slavery were defined and set institutions. Portuguese traders, English indentured servants, Dutch landowners, African skilled laborers and Native Americans populate the pages. From watching a very interesting NY Times interview with Morrison, I got an idea of the research she undertook to write her book. In the end, what I realized is that long before the idea of slavery was wedded to being black, it was a common experience for many types of people who lived in and arrived in America.

Colonial literature
This semester I'm taking a survey course on Colonial Hispanic Literature specifically as it pertains to Spanish exploration in the present United States. Our American History books usually begin with Plymouth Rock and Jamestown. But long before the pilgrims, were the conquistadores. We watched an excerpt of a documentary produced by the History Channel about Spanish exploration, and I saw the historical documents and maps we'd previously discussed spring to life in film. It made the youthful, arrogant, steely-eyed resolve of men like Coronado real to me.

Maybe that's what historical fiction is. It's a way of making the stuffy and at times ambiguous facts and figures come to life. Not in a way that's a departure from truth, but in a way that's the closest approximation to it that our 21st century eyes will ever see.