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Homesickness: An American History
Homesickness today is dismissed as a sign of immaturity, what children feel at summer camp, but in the nineteenth century it was recognized as a powerful emotion. When gold miners in California heard the tune "Home, Sweet Home," they sobbed. When Civil War soldiers became homesick, army doctors sent them home, lest they die. Such images don't fit with our national mythology, which celebrates the restless individualism of colonists, explorers, pioneers, soldiers, and immigrants who supposedly left home and never looked back.
Using letters, diaries, memoirs, medical records, and psychological studies, this wide-ranging book uncovers the profound pain felt by Americans on the move from the country's founding until the present day. Susan Matt shows how colonists in Jamestown longed for and often returned to England, African Americans during the Great Migration yearned for their Southern homes, and immigrants nursed memories of Sicily and Guadalajara and, even after years in America, frequently traveled home. These iconic symbols of the undaunted, forward-looking American spirit were often homesick, hesitant, and reluctant voyagers. National ideology and modern psychology obscure this truth, portraying movement as easy, but in fact Americans had to learn how to leave home, learn to be individualists. Even today, in a global society that prizes movement and that condemns homesickness as a childish emotion, colleges counsel young adults and their families on how to manage the transition away from home,
suburbanites pine for their old neighborhoods, and companies take seriously the emotional toll borne by relocated executives and road warriors. In the age of helicopter parents and boomerang kids, and the new social networks that sustain connections across the miles, Americans continue to assert the significance of home ties.
By highlighting how Americans reacted to moving farther and farther from their roots, An American History revises long-held assumptions about home, mobility, and our national identity.
Using letters, diaries, memoirs, medical records, and psychological studies, this wide-ranging book uncovers the profound pain felt by Americans on the move from the country's founding until the present day. Susan Matt shows how colonists in Jamestown longed for and often returned to England, African Americans during the Great Migration yearned for their Southern homes, and immigrants nursed memories of Sicily and Guadalajara and, even after years in America, frequently traveled home. These iconic symbols of the undaunted, forward-looking American spirit were often homesick, hesitant, and reluctant voyagers. National ideology and modern psychology obscure this truth, portraying movement as easy, but in fact Americans had to learn how to leave home, learn to be individualists. Even today, in a global society that prizes movement and that condemns homesickness as a childish emotion, colleges counsel young adults and their families on how to manage the transition away from home,
suburbanites pine for their old neighborhoods, and companies take seriously the emotional toll borne by relocated executives and road warriors. In the age of helicopter parents and boomerang kids, and the new social networks that sustain connections across the miles, Americans continue to assert the significance of home ties.
By highlighting how Americans reacted to moving farther and farther from their roots, An American History revises long-held assumptions about home, mobility, and our national identity.
356 pages, Hardcover
First published August 11, 2011
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About the author
Susan J. Matt
30 books4 followersSusan J. Matt is Presidential Distinguished Professor of History at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. She is the author of Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 22, 2012
This is an exhaustive history about the american concepts of homesickness and nostalgia as suffered across the entire history of the nation. It's almost too exhaustive for its own good though, and can be a long read.
The terms have changed a little over time. Homesickness is a longing for your home, and that remains somewhat the same. But nostalgia used to mean an acute form of homesickness than manifested with physical effect. People could waste away and die from nostalgia, and were often hospitalized or if possible, sent back home. As travel became easier and more affordable, nostalgia changed to timesickness. Where homesick people want to go back home, timesick people want to go back in time as well. People seem to be dealing with it better, but even now the transient and rootless nature of the average American or immigrant still inflicts them with homesickness.
She details a lot of tools people used to combat it, like the YMCAs (which often had newspapers from other states so young men away from their homes could catch up on news) the idea of cheerfulness, trying to import women in (who often also suffered from homesickness) and the creation of immigrant communities which tried to mimic the old world they left as much as possible. Things like the modern PX, USO tours, and care packages were used to help soldiers deal with it, and before WW1 the desertion rate due to homesickness was incredibly high.
It's very interesting and makes you think. One of the troubling things for modern man is that to counteract the trend to being homesick when uprooted, the military and corporations try to create a loyalty to the organization and strip people of their civilian or regional ties. You look at a thing like summer camp in a completely different light; it is designed to help children break the strong sense of place that causes homesickness and help them become the kind of individualistic, transient person the modern economy asks for. I don't think she covered in detail "going away to college," but a lot of modern rites of passage seem designed to make us overcome strong attachment to our homes we were raised in and in many ways separate us from that sort of link to our past. It's a rich book to mull over and think on how human beings connect to places and suffer often severe trauma when we either are forced to move or willingly choose to.
However the book is too long for its own good. It covers a tremendous timeframe and documents it with many letters and pictures, as well as news events. It's not a particularly dense read at all, but it just feels repetitive with all the testimony, and is best read in small chunks. It also feels a bit unbalanced, as she documents the pre-civil war era very heavily and the current day one a little sparsely. This may just be me though, as I admit to some fatigue reading through the text. I would have liked to see more on the Organization Man and homesickness, and more on the modern aspect of how technology combats it. No mention of Facebook as I remember is a bit of a crime.
It's still a good book, though. It also helps you to imagine how different people were back then. It's hard to look at the song "Home Sweet Home" unironically for a modern person, but back during the Civil War it caused desertion and hospitalization, and was forbidden to be played in the Union camp. People also wasted away because they were separated from home by distances most of us could drive in a day. It was a truly different world back then.
The terms have changed a little over time. Homesickness is a longing for your home, and that remains somewhat the same. But nostalgia used to mean an acute form of homesickness than manifested with physical effect. People could waste away and die from nostalgia, and were often hospitalized or if possible, sent back home. As travel became easier and more affordable, nostalgia changed to timesickness. Where homesick people want to go back home, timesick people want to go back in time as well. People seem to be dealing with it better, but even now the transient and rootless nature of the average American or immigrant still inflicts them with homesickness.
She details a lot of tools people used to combat it, like the YMCAs (which often had newspapers from other states so young men away from their homes could catch up on news) the idea of cheerfulness, trying to import women in (who often also suffered from homesickness) and the creation of immigrant communities which tried to mimic the old world they left as much as possible. Things like the modern PX, USO tours, and care packages were used to help soldiers deal with it, and before WW1 the desertion rate due to homesickness was incredibly high.
It's very interesting and makes you think. One of the troubling things for modern man is that to counteract the trend to being homesick when uprooted, the military and corporations try to create a loyalty to the organization and strip people of their civilian or regional ties. You look at a thing like summer camp in a completely different light; it is designed to help children break the strong sense of place that causes homesickness and help them become the kind of individualistic, transient person the modern economy asks for. I don't think she covered in detail "going away to college," but a lot of modern rites of passage seem designed to make us overcome strong attachment to our homes we were raised in and in many ways separate us from that sort of link to our past. It's a rich book to mull over and think on how human beings connect to places and suffer often severe trauma when we either are forced to move or willingly choose to.
However the book is too long for its own good. It covers a tremendous timeframe and documents it with many letters and pictures, as well as news events. It's not a particularly dense read at all, but it just feels repetitive with all the testimony, and is best read in small chunks. It also feels a bit unbalanced, as she documents the pre-civil war era very heavily and the current day one a little sparsely. This may just be me though, as I admit to some fatigue reading through the text. I would have liked to see more on the Organization Man and homesickness, and more on the modern aspect of how technology combats it. No mention of Facebook as I remember is a bit of a crime.
It's still a good book, though. It also helps you to imagine how different people were back then. It's hard to look at the song "Home Sweet Home" unironically for a modern person, but back during the Civil War it caused desertion and hospitalization, and was forbidden to be played in the Union camp. People also wasted away because they were separated from home by distances most of us could drive in a day. It was a truly different world back then.
November 4, 2022
As someone going through quite a spate of homesickness these days myself, I needed a book to read about it. Matt charts the history homesickness (or "nostalgia") in American culture, especially relevant since we are a country full of immigrants, including people kidnapped and taken from home to work as slaves. The first chapters are chock full of quotes from letters, newspapers, and journals, including the high percentage of immigrants who WENT BACK HOME rather than stick it out in the U.S. Homesickness was a widely recognized medical condition, even often listed a cause of death, in the 19th century. The later chapters about homesickness, displacement, and mobility in modern America were most interested to me - now it's considered a sign of immaturity or something only children go through. Very disorienting when you have a strong attachment to place and it's hard to understand why you feel the way you do.
November 16, 2012
I love what Ms. Matt has to say about homesickness, and I don't think that's true for entirely selfish reasons.
I've always suffered from homesickness. I was the preschooler crying so hard that my naptime pillow was soaked, the camper who learned to fake happiness during the day while burying myself in my sleeping bag at night so no one heard me cry, and the college student who tried so hard to be cool . . . only to sneak back to my dorm room, hide under a quilt, and read my favorite books from childhood. After college, when I lived in Washington, DC, I'd watch "Family Ties" and pretend I was back home in Ohio.
It was such a relief to find that homesickness hasn't always been a shameful secret! Granted, I've read enough history to be familiar with the fact that nostalgia was considered to be an actual disease, one that could cause people to languish and die. But I'd never applied that knowledge to my own life!
And boy, was the section on "helecopter parents" enlightening! As the parent of two children who love to be at home and who still enjoy hanging out with their father and me even though adolescence has entered stage left, I am so pleased to hear that teenagers don't really think it's weird to stay in touch with their parents nowadays. While my husband and I believe quite strongly that it's important for children to learn to handle most of their own problems with teachers and friends -- and I think I can extrapolate that to encompass professors, managers, and significant others -- it's nice to know that they won't suffer too much if (and I do realize that most of this is up to them!) they decide to maintain a solid relationship with us. I do still refuse to be a helecopter parent, but it's encouraging to see that the family is pushing back on corporate culture!
And speaking of corporate culture, if I weren't already highly suspicious of the effects of that monolithic entity on the individual, I think Ms. Matt's book would have cause me to start a fire in the old brainpan.
I've always suffered from homesickness. I was the preschooler crying so hard that my naptime pillow was soaked, the camper who learned to fake happiness during the day while burying myself in my sleeping bag at night so no one heard me cry, and the college student who tried so hard to be cool . . . only to sneak back to my dorm room, hide under a quilt, and read my favorite books from childhood. After college, when I lived in Washington, DC, I'd watch "Family Ties" and pretend I was back home in Ohio.
It was such a relief to find that homesickness hasn't always been a shameful secret! Granted, I've read enough history to be familiar with the fact that nostalgia was considered to be an actual disease, one that could cause people to languish and die. But I'd never applied that knowledge to my own life!
And boy, was the section on "helecopter parents" enlightening! As the parent of two children who love to be at home and who still enjoy hanging out with their father and me even though adolescence has entered stage left, I am so pleased to hear that teenagers don't really think it's weird to stay in touch with their parents nowadays. While my husband and I believe quite strongly that it's important for children to learn to handle most of their own problems with teachers and friends -- and I think I can extrapolate that to encompass professors, managers, and significant others -- it's nice to know that they won't suffer too much if (and I do realize that most of this is up to them!) they decide to maintain a solid relationship with us. I do still refuse to be a helecopter parent, but it's encouraging to see that the family is pushing back on corporate culture!
And speaking of corporate culture, if I weren't already highly suspicious of the effects of that monolithic entity on the individual, I think Ms. Matt's book would have cause me to start a fire in the old brainpan.
June 4, 2014
I enjoyed the main argument of this book but I think it would have made its point in essay length. Some of the supporting arguments were stretched thin because of a need to lengthen the content.
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June 6, 2015Not interested enough to finish
November 10, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews