On prominent display at All Good Books.
Over the weekend, my wife and I were browsing at All Good Books in Five Points — which you should definitely visit often, because Good Books are the only kind you find there — and ran across the volume you see above: America, América, by Greg Grandin.
From the jacket blurb:
The story of how the United States’ identity was formed is almost invariably told by looking east to Europe. But as Greg Grandin vividly demonstrates, the nation’s unique sense of itself was in fact forged facing south toward Latin America. In turn, Latin America developed its own identity in struggle with the looming colossus to the north. In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World, Grandin reveals how North and South emerged from a constant, turbulent engagement with each other…
Intriguing. Given my background, I want to read this book. I’ll put it on my Gimme List for Father’s Day, etc. I know many of the ways influence has flowed from the U.S. to the South, but I’m very interesting to see how he backs up the claim that it flows strongly the other way.
Since I lived in Ecuador longer than in any other one place in my childhood, Latin America had a huge effect in forming me. But I’ve been looking around me ever since, and the lack of consciousness of the rest of the hemisphere that I see in my fellow gringos continues to shock, after all these years. And of course, the foolishness that led to the results in our recent election has sunk us as a nation to new depths in that regard.
But until I read it, I can’t say much about the book. It reminds me, however, of something else I’ve been meaning to mention: Our new American pope — who was born in Chicago, to be sure, but has spent so much of his adult life in Peru — even to the point of dual citizenship. (Which I suppose drives the MAGA types who claim to be Catholic nuts. I mean the people who complained that he spoke no English in his first papal greeting.)
No doubt, Pope Leo XIV spent way more time in Peru than I spent in Ecuador. But hey, those were adult years. Kid years are like dog years, if not more so. A year is like an eon. Although I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, those two years, four-and-a-half months (from the ages of 9-11) seemed far longer than any one of the recent decades of my life.
You can tell as soon as he opens his mouth — in Spanish, that is. Also, when it comes to knowing a place and a people, I’m sure his time as a shepherd in Peru gave him an exponentially greater understanding and affinity than I gained goofing around in the streets of Guayaquil.
But still, I feel an affinity. Sort of the way I did with both John McCain and Barack Obama in 2008. I wrote columns about that at the time (and ahem, I headlined the one about Obama “Barack Like Me,” a not-so-subtle literary reference that I have played upon again above).
He’s my kinda pope, so far. He’s also my kind of American — the kind who can think in languages other than English (alas, my own Spanish is in sad shape today), and cares about the rest of the world. This is the kind of leader the Church needs. It’s also the kind of leader America needs, more desperately than at any time in our chauvinistic history. I look forward to him being able to influence the course of events back in his own native country, which is no longer what it was when he and I were kids.
Of course, the parallels with Pope Francis are enormously sharper than any shared characteristics I can claim. Leo is an American who spent his ministry until recently in Peru. He was elevated to cardinal, and carefully placed in a pivotal position) by a son of Italian immigrants who spent his pre-papal life in Argentina.
My man Joe Biden failed rather spectacularly to set up some other sane, qualified person with the electoral appeal to succeed him. And as much as I love Joe, that’s what got us into our current disastrous predicament. (All I can say in Joe’s defense is that the Church offered more material to work with than the Democratic Party has lately.)
It appears that Francis succeeded just as spectacularly, setting up a seemingly ideal successor — who (while it remains to be seen for sure) seems to be like him in more meaningful ways than coming from South America. I pray that impression proves to be accurate.
Of course, Francis didn’t do it alone. I told y’all, during that brief hour or two between the white smoke and learning the new pope’s identity, that I was “trusting the Holy Spirit on this.”
I still am. And I’m very eager to see what happens next…
POSTSCRIPT:
Speaking of Black Like Me (parenthetically, several grafs above), when one applies the “one-drop” rule, Leo is also our first black pope. Well, I can’t claim to touch him in that category. Ancestry keeps going back and forth on just how Scottish I am, but it never wavers on the idea of me being totally, unforgiveably, European.
(Mind you, 23andMe says I’m .1 percent Somali. And Helix — the service MUSC used to analyze my DNA — has somehow discovered I am .3 East Asian! “Austronesian-Filipino,” to be exact. But as a white boy who routinely shifts by 10 or 20 percent on Scottishness, depending on how Ancestry is reading the data that day, I suspect those tiny fractions are well within the margin of error. I will make no extragagant claims to possessing “color.”)
The Holy Father just keeps getting more cosmopolitan every moment! Especially since that part of his heritage came through New Orleans, the most cosmopolitan place I ever lived (that was right after Ecuador).
This is great, and very much as it should be. Remember above when I referred to “the MAGA types who claim to be Catholic?” I put it that way because “catholic” most assuredly does not mean “America First,” or America Only.
It means “universal.” And that’s what the Church, and all believers, must be…
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