Drew Gilpin Faust, in her memoir Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) dives unabashedly into the theatre of American privilege and post-war consciousness. Born in the twilight of 1947 in Virginia’s aristocratic corridors, she found herself entangled within the gilded constraints of the Southern elite. A world where one’s birth predetermines destiny. And yet, Faust—much like a modern Antigone—chose to rebel against the very norms her lineage upheld.
Young Faust’s dalliance with the profound racial injustices of her era found a most eloquent expression when she addressed President Eisenhower, eloquently castigating the concept of segregation. Such audaciousness was a harbinger of the formidable spirit she’d embrace at the avant-garde environments of Concord Academy and later, Bryn Mawr College. While most would have found solace in literature such as “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Faust, stirred by monumental figures like Martin Luther King Jr., allowed it to be a catalyst for her socio-political transformation.
Consider the mosaic of mid-century America: a nation teetering on the brink of vast change, rife with Cold War suspicions, civil rights tumult, and the shadows of Vietnam. Into this heady mix, Faust, inspired by her family’s wartime legacies, charted her own odyssey. Her father, a spectral figure bearing the scars of WWII, was juxtaposed against ancestors from the era of the Great War. While they had responded to their generation’s clarion calls in traditional martial roles, Faust embarked on a more cerebral rebellion.
One must appreciate the duality of Faust’s formative surroundings. On one hand, the sylvan serenity of Virginia, with its implicit racial and gender codes. On the other, the burgeoning intellectual fervor of academic institutions. Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury is a testament to her discerning character that she didn’t merely accept these prejudices. Instead, informed by the quiet resistance of her Black staff and the larger societal narrative, Faust’s spirit rose to challenge the status quo.
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Her narrative, reminiscent of an American tapestry, is not a simple linear recollection. It’s an interplay of intimate memories with the broader sweep of American history—a chiaroscuro of personal tales and grand political theatre. Through the lenses of personal experiences and broader events, Faust demonstrates an uncanny ability to dissect the American zeitgeist. A dissection, I dare say, that would make the most seasoned of our nation’s critics nod in appreciation.
Much like the cyclical nature of history, where themes of past eras emerge in new avatars in subsequent ages, Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury is a bridge between two epochs. It’s a narrative that seems at once distant, evoking the distinct milieu of post-war America, yet is also hauntingly relevant, foreshadowing the very tapestry of our contemporary socio-political fabric.
As we approach the denouement of her tale, we find Virginia—once a bastion of old-world conservatism—casting its lot with America’s inaugural Black president. Herein lies the crux of Faust’s account. The winds of change, however gradual, are inexorable. They force us to confront, evolve, and ultimately transcend our past. However, while one can savor the optimistic endnote of her tale, the discerning reader—ever skeptical—will find a subtext: a poignant reminder of the miles we must yet traverse.
One might argue that Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury serves not just as a chronicle of personal evolution but as a litmus test for the American soul. It beckons us to introspect, to question, and ultimately to realize that history, if not heeded, tends to reprise its most poignant acts. And so, through the prism of her life, Faust, with a historian’s precision and a rebel’s passion, gives us a masterpiece that is both a reflection and a prophecy.
WORDS: Earnest Hutton.