A People's History of American Empire

A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn, Paul Buhle, and Mike Konopacki is a fresh perspective on United States history. With its graphic novel format, it unveils fresh complexities about “traditional” historical narratives. Too often history is taught and presented from the dominant and hegemonic perspective.

A People’s History of American Empire is a very different comic book history. Based on Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (as well as Zinn’s own life ) this is a graphic depiction of the times in American history where the nation failed to live up to the standards of liberty and equality for all. Mainly this concept involves the quashing of people within the United States (Indians, African Americans, immigrants, and laborers), wars in foreign lands (Phillipines, Vietnam, and Iraq) and intervention into the self-determination of other nations (Iran, El Salvador, and many more) for the benefit of powerful and wealth American elite. A comic version of Zinn narrates the book frequently turning over the story to characters contemporary to the events described. Scattered in this narrative are stories of the social movements in America such as Civil Rights, labor, and anti-war.

I tutor a senior who is interested in politics and history and will have him read this book (This could be an appropriate book for the right 10-12th grader). This book causes the reader to question the history they have learned from most textbooks. While I did not agree with all of Zinn's perspectives, I felt challenged about the ways that I think about U.S. history and teach history. This book could also be the source of many essay topics and future research papers for tutoring. I found myself wanting to do research about some of the new events that I knew nothing about (talk about cultural memory erasure).

While I enjoy reading young adult fiction very much, I discovered while reading this book that I do not read enough non-fiction books that are suitable for middle or high school students. Hmmm. Look for more LmC blog posts on non-fiction materials. Got any suggestions for me?