As a Candian living the the U.S. I've always felt ambivalent about Americanism. Many Americans are my best friends. Yet I don't think of them as Americans. I think of them as people. They are not the obnoxius insulare folk that much of the world associates with being American.
Assination Vacation & The Partly Cloudy Patriat by Sarah Vowell are the first books that made me realize that being American trancends the stero types. After all, you are always a human first and a citizen of a country second. Not that Sarah Vowell is humanist-- she loves America. It's just that she tackels the thorny issues in American histrory-- slavery, assinations, the war against the American Natives, head on with out glossing over it or ending the narative with "And that's why America is the best country in the whole world!"
In short, Sarah Vowell has produced a definition of America that I can't ignore and that I comprehend and accept.
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