Blurring the Lines Between Fact and Fiction: Can Historical Fiction be Unethical?

If you've read my previous post on historical fiction, you know that I've long been a fan of the genre. Well, I may be more than a decade older now, but my taste in literature for pleasure reading has remained largely the same; I still read almost anything in the genre that I can get my hands on.

For example, I most recently completed Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes, a novel about slavery, identity, power and self-determination in the early nineteenth century and found it a thoroughly enjoyable read right from the first page. Overall, I found Hill’s prose powerfully written and his main character both sympathetic and inspiring. I would strongly recommend this book to any lover of good fiction, historical or otherwise.

With Book of Negroes finished, my current novel of choice is Jenna Blum’s Those Who Save Us. On its most basic level, the book is about the lives of two women, a mother and a daughter, their relationship with one another, and the experiences which have shaped the way that they each view and interact with the world and each other. The narrative of the story bounces between the perspective of Anna, as a young Aryan girl living in Germany during the Second World War, and the present-day United States where her daughter, Trudy, is a professor of German History at an unnamed university somewhere in Minnesota.

The book’s dust jacket hails the novel as “a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame,” a summary which I think is actually pretty accurate thus far (I’m only about half-way finished the book at this point). So far, I’m finding the plot engaging and the characters complicated and flawed enough to be interesting. I certainly look forward to reading each new chapter.

That said, I think that I would have been better off not reading the blurb about the author at the back of the novel before finishing the book. Blum’s author bio states “Jenna Blum is of German and Jewish decent. She worked for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation for four years, interviewing Holocaust survivors. She currently teaches at Boston University and runs fiction workshops for Grub Street Writers.” That’s it, just three run-of-the-mill sentences that pack a lot of punch. In fact, these seemingly innocent details about Ms. Blum’s background are enough to make me, as a student of history, more than a little uneasy.

I’m sure that the details about her heritage were strategically included to legitimize her role as a storyteller whose work focuses on Second World War Era Germany and German history and culture more generally. Some of the issues dealt with by the characters in this book are of a sensitive nature and it’s understandable that the publisher would have wanted to underline Blum’s “authentic” voice as much as possible so that the readers would have confidence in Blum’s ability to speak for her characters. That’s fine. That’s not the part I find disturbing.

What does get under my skin is the fact that Ms. Blum worked for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation for four years before writing this book. This experience, combined with mentioning her current teaching position at Boston University, were undoubtedly her publisher’s way of placing Ms. Blum within academia, a position which many may perceive as giving her more “authority” over the historical aspects of the novel than the majority of the public reading it. A good thought, but Ms. Blum’s association with the Shoah Foundation ultimately leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Fair or not, I find myself wondering exactly when Ms. Blum began conceptualizing her novel and how/if she went about conducting background research for it. For instance, I can’t help but wonder how many of the details of her interviews with Holocaust survivors made it into this novel either consciously or unconsciously. Or, if these survivors had any inkling when they took part in interviews with Ms. Blum how some of their most painful memories might be used beyond the agreed upon Shoah Foundation oral history projects.

Like I said above, it might not be fair of me to question Ms. Blum’s integrity like this without any concrete evidence, but I feel I that have to acknowledge at least the possibility for the exploitation of Holocaust survivors to occur when an historian’s academic work is also reflected in their works of fiction. It all seems just a little unethical to me.

The Making of a History Nerd: Historical Fiction for the Burgeoning "Buff"

For as long as I can remember, I have been a voracious reader. As a child I read almost anything I could get my hands on, but my favourite was always historical fiction. I can remember many a trip to the library where as soon as I had opened the library's heavy glass doors and stepped onto their truly hideous green astro turf-like carpet, I would make a beeline for the Young Adult section, skimming titles until I had discovered every last book on a historical topic or time period that I could find. In fact, my appetite for historical fiction was so great that it didn't take me long to read nearly every book of this type owned by the Whitby Public Library. (When this happened, I just begged my parents to take me to Oshawa so that I could borrow the books out of their libraries as well.)

Taking a page from previous Public History bloggers Jenna Leifso and Sophie Malek, I wanted to share with you a few of my favourite examples of historical fiction written for Young Adults.

1) Kit Pearson's Guests of War Trilogy (The Sky is Falling, Looking at the Moon, and The Lights Go On Again): It's been well over a decade since I last read these books, but something about this trilogy has stayed with me. The books are set during the tumultuous years of the Second World War and follow the lives of two English children (Norah and her younger brother, Gavin) who are forced by their parents to evacuate their country and move to Canada for the duration of the war. Centering on the coming of age of a female protagonist that was approximately my age when I first read the books and set at least partially in my own country during the historical time period that I have always been most interested in, it is no wonder these books quickly became some of my favourites.

2) Karleen Bradford's The Nine Days Queen: Sophie was a fan, and so was I. This book tells the story of Lady Jane Grey, a young woman who was a reluctant pawn in a chess game played by more powerful men than her. Set in Tudor England, Jane Grey becomes the Queen of England for only nine days before she is dethroned by Mary I and shut away in the Tower of London. If I recall correctly, this was the first book to introduce me to Henry VIII, his wives, and the ensuing struggle between Mary I and Elizabeth I and I have been hooked ever since. In fact, I took a course in 4th year undergrad on Queen Elizabeth I's court. Although a number of other more significant factors played into that decision, my interest in the topic of the English courts probably had some of its roots in my reading of this book.

3) Tie - Ann Rinaldi's A Break With Charity and Arthur Miller's The Crucible: After exhausting my library's WWII historical fiction, I moved on to many other books which prominently featured young female characters. A Break With Charity was my first exposure to the subject of the Salem Witch Trials, a topic which has interested me ever since, inspiring me to read more detailed and accurate historical monographs and to write university level papers on the Salem "witch craze".

It is no secret that traditional history - that which deals with topics such as war, conflict, monarchy and religion - often focuses on old, white men, either as the subject of the piece or as its storyteller. Conversely, historical fiction for young adults - especially books which are geared at younger females - tend to be written by women and focus on young, female characters. They often relate the experiences of middle or lower class families, resulting in a story which is just as likely to feature an extraordinary female at the centre of a conflict or controversy as they are to feature an unnamed witness to the event (an "any woman," if you will). In a lot of cases, these books were my first taste of social history and they had the ability to show me at a very young age the potential that the study of history had.

It might also be interesting to note that reading these books, combined with my subsequent interest in history, has led me to visit both London, England and Salem, Massachusetts to see first-hand the places described in the novels I read as a child. Speaking from first-hand experience, I fully believe that historical fiction has the ability to expose children to history if not in an always accurate or nuanced way, a meaningful way nonetheless. Obviously my understanding of these historical events which I originally obtained through reading these books has been refined, expanded and/or corrected in the years that followed, but the fact remains that this early exposure was critical to the development of my interest in the discipline.