Otherworlders

What a good read! Daniel Immerwahr's How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States is a very readable history of the Greater United States, i.e. a history with deliberate focus on the US's territories. Page-wise, most the book is about the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and on the rank after that comes Alaska, Guam and Hawai'i, with the smaller islands and various military bases to follow.

On the broader level it's a history of the US's outlook towards its territories first as consequence of colonialism (all empires were doing it at the time, so why not get some) which eventually turns into globalisation and an "empire of bases" as colonialism became unfashionable. Immerwahr starts with the expansion of the US westward from the east coast, using the argument that the creation and annexation of mainland territories was in the continuum of colonisation in the claiming of land and displacement of the Native Americans, with Immerwahr drawing a straight line to why some mainland territories became states very quickly, with other territories were prevented from becoming states for as long as possible because of their non-white majority (Alaska, Hawai'i), while other territories remain disenfranchised (Puerto Rico in particular, for its large population and impact to the mainland).

For me on a personal level the extended history of the Philippines as a US colony is fascinating (a SEAsian neighbour I continue to learn more about, as I know comparatively so little of her), in how they took it from Spain, didn't know what to do with it, and then it ended up being the site for the only US-Japan land battle during WWII, during which (as which Immerwahr reports) many US GIs didn't even know the Philippines was part of the US when they landed. Puerto Rico's history is a little more well-known, I think, but appreciate his further detailing how human experimentation led to chemotherapy and birth control, but only the good results are remembered on the mainland, while PR remembers the human cost.

What Immerwahr does really well is in drawing lines from [this] policy or action led to [this] consequence, even for things that don't look obvious or would be more interesting in further detail. As an example, he argues that Liverpool UK saw a high concentration of modern rock bands (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and so on) compared to other British cities because Liverpool is near a US base, which after WWII saw the import of American music by US military personnel stationed there, which influenced the locals to develop their own music.

The later part of Immerwahr's book lays out his argument that the US let go of its colonies after WWII due to the rise of the colonised in forming nation states, but also that the reasons for old-school colonisation became no longer relevant because of the arrival of new technologies for communication, resource control and logistics (i.e. globalisation) which means that only strategic bases and holdings are only necessary, especially military-wise. But the imperial mindset remains, as can be seen by the gulf war and uhhhh everything going on the middle east.

I've been feeling a little meh lately, I think a combo of the strain of travel, weather and long-distance driving activities. This isn't really helped that as soon as it gets really really hot in the daytime (as it's been this week or so) I just don't want to do anything that takes effort, physical or mental. Consuming stuff is okay, doing occasional chores is okay, but priority is for the critical things and everything else more complicated is stuck in a backlog.

In an attempt to make a post! I've been watching/listening to micthesnare's Deep Discog Dives, which look at the entire catalogue and associated creative history of huge artists like Stevie Wonder, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, Queen, Daft Punk, etc. and although these are well-known artists it's not like I've listened to everything they've ever done, so it's been fun listening to his chatter about their work and discovering previously-unknown-to-me music that I can add to my playlist. Like, for example, some of Madonna's later comparatively-lesser-known stuff is surprisingly my jam.

Books in the old unread pile: 4 (I'm SO CLOSE)

I picked up Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist when I saw it at a book fair, though at the back of my mind I did have a niggling thought that that doesn't sound like the title of the book I remembered her having written. And it isn't! The Princess Diarist is the 2016 Star Wars (the first movie)-centric memoir that revealed to the world her affair with Harrison Ford, while the other memoir that she's famous for and made a whole show about was Wishful Drinking (2008).

Fisher died a few months after I got my copy of The Princess Diarist, so I felt uncomfortable about reading it and put it away in a drawer. A decade on, I have finally read it!

In that decade of time, I've watched and read enough discussion about Fisher's writing, stand-up and script-doctoring to know her writing skill. Even then, it's such a delight to finally read her words, with her distinct style and humour and occasional deliberately run-on poetic sentences. She lives in her own head and has studied it, often to her own detriment! She is so clearly a writer, and I don't mean that to knock on the other celebrity memoirs I've read, but to acknowledge that writing is a skill and to show appreciation of that skill when I see it. The frame work of the memoir is adult Fisher looking back on what she remembers, but in the middle there's a segment of journal writing she did when she was nineteen and filming Star Wars, with all that young adult angst and anxiety and disgust at her own eagerness-to-please, painted beautifully and painfully.

The whole thing is more exhibitionist than any celebrity memoir I've ever read before, but is that way so to be cleansing for Fisher, as she reckons with her affair and young love with Harrison Ford. I don't feel like Fisher published this as a lesson for young women who are desperate for connection, but as a snapshot of that particular time and environment, and the inner world of a young woman on a cusp without the glamour and tragedies of addiction that were to come.

I have to say that I wasn't expecting more than half of the book to be dedicated to the affair with Ford, she had a lot of thoughts about it! But on the whole I found it illuminating specifically about the loneliness of filming on location for months at a time, and the risks inherent in being a women in a sea of majority men, in that era, and how easy such mini-communities (that are temporary, and so "nothing really matters") enable certain kinds of behaviour that could very easily turn into abuse. Fisher's experience was not abusive, but she did feel that pressure of being an attractive young woman, just legal, and alone among strangers that she wanted so badly to please. It's not the point of the memoir, but it does make clear to me how a lot of what can go on does go on, and of the courage of actors of various minorities to stand up for themselves against the risk of being labeled "difficult".

ETA: In the acknowledgements, Michael Rosenbaum is one of the many people that Fisher thanks personally, I didn't know they were friends.👀