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A review by lory_enterenchanted
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Chris Tomlinson, Jason Stanford, Bryan Burrough
challenging
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
4.0
Although I am descended from one of the men who died at the Alamo, and have even been enrolled by relatives in the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, I have never been to Texas, and grew up knowing nothing about what actually happened in the famous battle. Thanks to this book, now I have learned the true story, or at least what comes closer than the incredible muddle of lies, fabulation, and racist propaganda that has been handed down over the centuries.
The central fact that needs to be established is this: though the Alamo defenders may have been brave men sacrificing their lives for a cause they believed in, that cause was the perpetuation of slavery in Texas. The "freedom" for which they died was the freedom to own slaves. Even at the time, the white Texians did not want to openly admit this, and so the tale of the Alamo was immediately transformed into an inspiring emblem of Anglo resistance against evil Mexicans, a story which played a key role in the following victory at San Jacinto. Not because it was tactically important -- indeed, from that point of view, it was a useless military blunder -- but because it fuelled a desperate, last-stand attitude in the Texian forces. Desperate armies can do amazing things, the authors point out.
The Alamo embodies both what is most noble and honorable, and what is most despicable and base, in human nature. Our brains do not like such contradictions; they want to keep things simple. Thus, one-sided myths of heroes and villains are created, suiting the binary off-on switches of our brains, but bypassing the greater wholeness known by our hearts. This whole truth is the knowledge that humanity is one organism with different, diverse members, and that othering and killing any part of humanity weakens us all. At the moment, we are caught in a struggle between this knowledge, which would require us to utterly change the way we relate to one another, and the divisive strategies by which we have survived up until now, a struggle for which the Alamo provides a fascinating flashpoint.
How strong, and how dangerous, the impulse is in human beings to believe only what they want to believe, rather than submitting to acknowledge the actual truth! I thought the authors did a fine job of explaining how the story of the Alamo came to be in such a mess, with reasonable objectivity, but also some pretty damning evidence concerning the ones who are determined to uphold the "Heroic Anglo Narrative" at all costs. This has got to stop, though it's hard to see how -- will an emerging Latino majority in Texas finally turn the tide?
The book is a work of popular history (or historiography, as the authors call it), and it's written in a colloquial style, which might otherwise bother me, but in this case I thought it fit the subject. Above all the Alamo myth is a work of the popular imagination and of low culture, not of the scholarly mindset. So the slangy diction seemed appropriate, and didn't make me doubt the authors' journalistic rigor, which was thoroughly backed up with references.
A very thought-provoking read, which illumined a corner of my personal history as well as a cultural landmark that desperately needs to be reassessed.
The central fact that needs to be established is this: though the Alamo defenders may have been brave men sacrificing their lives for a cause they believed in, that cause was the perpetuation of slavery in Texas. The "freedom" for which they died was the freedom to own slaves. Even at the time, the white Texians did not want to openly admit this, and so the tale of the Alamo was immediately transformed into an inspiring emblem of Anglo resistance against evil Mexicans, a story which played a key role in the following victory at San Jacinto. Not because it was tactically important -- indeed, from that point of view, it was a useless military blunder -- but because it fuelled a desperate, last-stand attitude in the Texian forces. Desperate armies can do amazing things, the authors point out.
The Alamo embodies both what is most noble and honorable, and what is most despicable and base, in human nature. Our brains do not like such contradictions; they want to keep things simple. Thus, one-sided myths of heroes and villains are created, suiting the binary off-on switches of our brains, but bypassing the greater wholeness known by our hearts. This whole truth is the knowledge that humanity is one organism with different, diverse members, and that othering and killing any part of humanity weakens us all. At the moment, we are caught in a struggle between this knowledge, which would require us to utterly change the way we relate to one another, and the divisive strategies by which we have survived up until now, a struggle for which the Alamo provides a fascinating flashpoint.
How strong, and how dangerous, the impulse is in human beings to believe only what they want to believe, rather than submitting to acknowledge the actual truth! I thought the authors did a fine job of explaining how the story of the Alamo came to be in such a mess, with reasonable objectivity, but also some pretty damning evidence concerning the ones who are determined to uphold the "Heroic Anglo Narrative" at all costs. This has got to stop, though it's hard to see how -- will an emerging Latino majority in Texas finally turn the tide?
The book is a work of popular history (or historiography, as the authors call it), and it's written in a colloquial style, which might otherwise bother me, but in this case I thought it fit the subject. Above all the Alamo myth is a work of the popular imagination and of low culture, not of the scholarly mindset. So the slangy diction seemed appropriate, and didn't make me doubt the authors' journalistic rigor, which was thoroughly backed up with references.
A very thought-provoking read, which illumined a corner of my personal history as well as a cultural landmark that desperately needs to be reassessed.