Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World Book

I wanted to like this book better than i liked it. at the end of the day, i like sarah vowell's writing: it's funny & engaging, it's smart & self-deprecating & informative. but there's so much strangely blind patriotism in here. yeah, it comes from a liberal perspective, what with vowell being all over NPR & being really critical of the bush administration & everything, but there's so much of, "if we could just fix these huge glaring problems with the government, this country would be awesome!" & i think that's really naive & short-sighted. probably the piece in here that bothered me the most was the one about andrew jackson & the trail of tears. vowell is all, "i am part native american, so i wanted to travel the trail of tears like my ancestors did." i mean, right off the bat, the whole concept was grating on me in a way i just can't quote explain. she gets into the whole history of the cherokee nation being pretty inspired by the new u.s. government & copying a lot of their ideas & starting a newspaper & a written language & all this shit that other indian tribes hadn't really thought about doing before, & how the cherokee people were supposed to be considered a sovereign nation within the boundaries of the u.s., but a lot of white settlers wanted them to move off their land so the white people could claim it for farms & such forth, & a few tribe members who felt their eviction was inevitable anyway went ahead & signed a treaty with jackson & agreed that everyone would clear out. when the tribe failed to meet the deadline set down in the treaty (because the overwhelming majority of the tribe was totally opposed to the treaty), they were forced into stockades & set out on the six-month march along the trail of tears, which vowell drove with her sister, stopping at indian- & jackson-themed landmarks along the way. the whole thing...it seemed a little bit histrionic. not that the trail of tears wasn't a barbaric thing, but i couldn't help but feel that some of vowell's rage was a little bit appropriative. it just struck a sour note with me, as does much of her "rah rah america" crap. i'm into the whole concept of exploring the seedy underbelly of american history, peeling up the carpet & seeing where the roaches run, etc, but there was something just a touch insincere about this book. i'm still working it out in my head.