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              1. So there's an article about Lafcadio Hearn in the new issue of the @NewYorker. I have some thoughts about it. newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/why-lafcadio-hearns-ghost-stories-still-haunt-us
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            1. …in reply to @wcaleb
              @NewYorker First and foremost, the article does not do justice to the beautiful new novel by @Monique_Truong, The Sweetest Fruits, which I highly recommend to all readers, & particularly to historians for its exploration of memory & marginalized voices.
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            @NewYorker @Monique_Truong Truong's novel is told from the perspective of three women in Hearn's life--his mother; his first wife, a formerly enslaved woman named Alethea Foley; and his second wife, a Japanese woman named Setsu.
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        1. …in reply to @wcaleb
          @NewYorker @Monique_Truong Their voices are rarely heard or considered in the voluminous writing that exists about Hearn's voluminous writing, & they are especially silenced in one of the earliest biographies of Hearn by a fourth woman, Elizabeth Bisland.
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      1. …in reply to @wcaleb
        @NewYorker @Monique_Truong Hearn also appears in my new book, Sweet Taste of Liberty, because he wrote up an extended interview with Henrietta Wood in 1876. Like Foley, Wood was a formerly enslaved woman; like Foley, early Hearn enthusiasts barely noticed her.
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    1. …in reply to @wcaleb
      @NewYorker @Monique_Truong As I write in my book, "For decades, [Wood's interviews] were forgotten, except among collectors of the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, all of whom were more interested in him than in her." So her story remained un-researched & unexamined, despite its being in Hearn anthologies.
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  1. …in reply to @wcaleb
    @NewYorker @Monique_Truong What disappoints most about the @NewYorker piece on Hearn is that it continues the long tradition of being most interested in Hearn's reporting for what it tells us about him, his life & psychology. The women of color whose stories he imperfectly told remain in the background.
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