In 1998, author Sarah Vowellwent on a road trip and followed the Trail of Tears. Vowell grew up in Oklahoma; her ancestors were Cherokee. She visited Chattanooga and North Georgia, seeking the trail’s beginnings, then followed it to the West and created an hour-long episode of This American Life about her journey.
The trip changed her.
“It actually had a profound effect on how I write about history,” she says, “especially American history and the way I write it, because I do go to a lot of historic sites, which means my job involves a lot of road trips. Which are never entirely miserable, no matter how miserable the story… part of that documentary was me driving around, revisiting my ancestors’ misery, and then we’d stop for barbeque, or we’d stay at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, or we’d listen to Chuck Berry in the car, so it’s those extremes of American culture, the fun and the horrors.”
In this conversation, Vowell tells us more about that road trip; also, how a Cherokee-themed play inspired her initial love of history. She expresses her distaste for Andrew Jackson—“Maybe I’ll come back to Tennessee when they take Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill,” she says.
Vowell is a New York Times bestselling author. Her most recent book is Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, about the Marquis de Lafayette's role in the Revolutionary War, and we discuss that as well.
From NPR’s reviewof the book:
Be careful about calling Sarah Vowell's latest a history book. The term fits in the broadest sense, sure — but for many, that phrase may also drum up visions of appendices and ponderous chapter titles, obscure maps and pop quizzes. Knee-deep as it may be in the history of the American Revolution, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States doesn't look or act much like its textbook brethren. Gilded with snark, buoyant on charm, Vowell's brand of history categorically refuses to take itself — or any of its subjects — too seriously. That's not to say her subjects aren't serious. Here she dives into the tale of the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who, as a glory-hungry teen, crossed an ocean to join a revolution in a land he'd never before visited. Braving danger, befriending George Washington and taking bullet wounds on behalf of the rebellious colonists, Lafayette earned more than a generalship in the newborn Continental Army. He became America's "best friend" — and, little did he know, fodder for street names and city parks across the U.S. Given how painfully august Lafayette and the American founders have gotten centuries later — cast as they are in marble and framed on our currency — it's awfully refreshing to see Vowell bring our founders down from their lofty pedestals. In her telling, they're just men again, not the gods we've long since made of them.
