Seven Oaks Magazine.

The incomplete Voices of A People's History of the United States
July 12, 2005
Dale McCartney

As I have stated before in the pages of Seven Oaks, I am a very great fan of Howard Zinn, especially his masterwork, A People’s History of the United States. Thus, I greeted the recent publication of a new volume co-edited by Zinn (with Anthony Arnove) entitled Voices of a People’s History of the United States with great enthusiasm. The book, however, has proven my enthusiasm to be slightly misplaced. Although it is an innovative and exciting project, the overwhelming political response one feels when reading Voices is not radical anti-authoritarianism, but instead pathos and desperation.

The idea behind Voices is great. Zinn and Arnove have compiled some of the sources used for the writing of A People’s History, rightly recognizing that some of the best passages in the original were quotes from other writers. Another elder American radical, Utah Phillips, has often commented that the most radical idea in America today is the idea of the long memory, and Zinn and Arnove are clearly trying to prove him right. Within Voices are the words of more than half a millennium of oppressed peoples on the North American continent. Beginning (as he did in A People’s History) with the arrival of Columbus in the New World, and chronicling his attempts to slaughter the inhabitants to ensure his ability to call it the “New World,” Zinn and Arnove have tried to make the original source material for their historical conclusions available to average people. They reinforce their attempt to make links between past oppression and the injustice of today by including writings discussing the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is the most innovative aspect of the book. By making this sort of source material available, Zinn has built on the promise of his past work. A People’s History carried the conclusions of a professional historian, presented in a fashion that made them accessible, and open to discussion, to people who had not spent several years learning the intricacies of academic language. With Voices he has done one better, making the materials historians use to reach conclusions available to everyone. With accessibility comes, hopefully, discussion. Zinn and Arnove are clearly attempting to make American history available and important to those it affects most.

But their selection of material betrays a desperation that makes the book difficult to read for extended periods. Voices is page after page of accusation, a chronicle of the horrible crimes committed against people on the North American continent for hundreds of years. In A People’s History, Zinn used his careful touch to tell the story not only of these crimes, but also of the resistance they engendered, the movements that struggled against oppression, and the victories as well as defeats these movements suffered. In Voices, there are no movements, no coherent resistance, and most depressingly, almost no victories. Instead there is simply an endless recounting of the brutalities committed against the Indigenous, Africans, immigrants, women, gays and lesbians, and the working class. Without the corresponding movements these people built, without a discussion of their tactics, or where they succeeded or failed, the book is extremely depressing.

The history of A People’s History was more than a long memory of oppression – it was the long memory of resistance. This book is amazing for what it demonstrates about the suffering of America’s subjects, but it desperately needs a jolt of the hopeful spirit that infuses Zinn’s other work.