Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (July 22, 2011)
8 street roots July 22, 2011 An eye for character TtirnTnakeTjofm "Sayles tackles American imperialism on the page BY MIKE WOLD votes for the white Democratic candidate exceed the number of registered voters. he end of the 19th century was a Even the upright African-American doctor busy time in American history: We marries his daughter off to a man she’s - fought a war with the Spanish and never been intimate with, rather than another to suppress the independence shame his family with the “low-elass” soldier movement in the Philippines; Jim Crow Who has fathered her child. And the nascent scored a critical victory in the South; the movie industry is doing all it can to make Alaska Gold Rush got into full swing; and a the brutal suppression of freedom abroad president was assassinated. seem like a mission of liberation. John Sayles, a filmmaker as well as a There are periods of history when all fiction writer, ties these events together in people can do is survive; this sounds like “A Moment in the Sim,” using close to a one of them. The characters are less the dozen major characters — black, white, creators of historical events than subject to Native American, Filipino, and Chinese — them, victims of a machine of domination whose lives intersect One thread follows a and empire that proceeds under its own trio of African-American soldiers from momentum. Sayles acknowledges the many Wilmington, N.C., who help liberate Cuba. ways that people resist, but he’s chosen a They are then sent to defeat freedom period when resistance movements were fighters in the Philippines, even as the mostly on the losing end — the Populists mixed-race city council in their hometown is defeated, Jim Crow having its final victories overthrown by a white racist insurrection. and the Filipino independistas surrendering. Sayles delineates his characters well; He finds human dignity in the ways that even though the narrative moves back and people care for and find love for each other, forth among their stories, it's never in tiie most extreme circumstances and in confusing. And he is a master of back story. the lives they make for themselves in spite A major theme running through the novel is of their losses. the unimaginable complexity of people’s The novel ends with a real historical lives in this first period of globalization, event, the electrocution of an elephant on epitomized by his saga of a North China Coney Island. You can never ignore an peasant who marries a white American farm elephant The same is true about the boy and ends up running a hamburger stand rainped-up colonialism and racism that in the Philippines. ushered in the 20th century in America. No Another recurrent theme is that “the fix matter how much the media tried to make it is in.” In the early scenes, a white miner in look like something else, eventually people Alaska is conned out of his grubstake and were going to notice. then winds up in a prize fight, substituting for a man who just froze to death. He soon M ike Wold: What was the starting point learns that he’s not expected to .knock his fo r “A M om ent in the S u n ”? opponent out, but survive just enough rounds so that his promoters can collect on John Sayles: I stumbled across this their bets. As the Americans invade the story doing research on my last novel about Philippines, the islands’ Spanish defenders the Spanish-American War. I kept running make a deal to put up just enough into “the Philippine insurrection” and I resistance so they won’t get into trouble at thought: “How come I’m 37 years old and home; in return, the Americans will protect never heard of this?” Doing some research them from being massacred by the Filipinos. about the same period I came across this As a crucial election comes up in racial coup in Wilmington, N.C. The two Wilmington, nobody blinks an eye when the events are connected by race, but also by C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R BOOK REVIEW: “A Moment in the Sun By John Sayles, McSweeney’s, 2010, Hardcover, 968 pages, $29 a the way the United States was thinking about itself. So I figured, what if I had some African- American characters from Wilmington who have gone off to fight for the flag while their rights are being taken away? Other major characters are a working class white guy and a guy up from the South involved in the beginning of the movie industry because it’s not just what happened, it’s how the media treated what happened. What the media said is what people thought the war was. Our movie “Amigo,” coming out in August, is also set during the Philippine- American War and the parallels are unavoidable: The situation that occurs again and again when one country occupies another and doesn’t really understand the culture that they’ve invaded. "O ur movie 'Amigo,' coming out in August, is also set during the Phllipplne-American War and the parallels are unavoidable: The situation that occurs again and again when one country occupies another and doesn't really understand the culture that they've invaded." M.W.: One o f your Filipino characters talks about American soldiers aS cruel but also innocent like children. Can you talk about that a little? J.S.: Americans want everybody to like them - American soldiers want to get down and smoke dope and shack up with women and feed kids candy bats and be liked. There’s this sense of hurt when local people are angry at them for bombing their huts or killing their livestock. Whereas the Spanish knew they were there to * See JOHN SAYLES, page 9
