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Ben Franklin, Protector of Americans Abroad

Ben Franklin, Protector of Americans Abroad 05-sketches (Bio 26-3) 9/4/03 8:22 AM Page 438 SKETCHES FROM LIFE BEN FRANKLIN, PROTECTOR OF AMERICANS ABROAD JULIA WATSON In 1985, as an assistant professor of English with a travel grant from the small college in upstate New York where I was then teaching, I took my almost-three-year-old son to Mexico City for the summer. My ambition, besides immersion in a sunny, warm metropolis, was that we would both learn some Spanish while exploring the city’s splendid layers of culture. Looking back, I realize that we learned more than either of us could assimi- late in our confrontations with a city that, then already at sixteen million, was too large, nomadic, and polluted to be a tourist’s dream. But it was a capital–E Education in more ways than I could have imagined. Midway through a summer of language classes and child-paced saunters, I was struck with the perverse yearning that has always moved me in new, overwhelming places: a desire to read American writers, to reflect on my own country’s past. In Freiburg it had been a hunger for Poe, in Dakar for Faulk- ner. In Mexico City, checking out books on Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Biography University of Hawai'I Press

Ben Franklin, Protector of Americans Abroad

Watson, Julia,
Biography , Volume 26 (3) – Oct 30, 2003
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Publisher
University of Hawai'I Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Biographical Research Center.
ISSN
0162-4962
eISSN
1529-1456

Abstract

05-sketches (Bio 26-3) 9/4/03 8:22 AM Page 438 SKETCHES FROM LIFE BEN FRANKLIN, PROTECTOR OF AMERICANS ABROAD JULIA WATSON In 1985, as an assistant professor of English with a travel grant from the small college in upstate New York where I was then teaching, I took my almost-three-year-old son to Mexico City for the summer. My ambition, besides immersion in a sunny, warm metropolis, was that we would both learn some Spanish while exploring the city’s splendid layers of culture. Looking back, I realize that we learned more than either of us could assimi- late in our confrontations with a city that, then already at sixteen million, was too large, nomadic, and polluted to be a tourist’s dream. But it was a capital–E Education in more ways than I could have imagined. Midway through a summer of language classes and child-paced saunters, I was struck with the perverse yearning that has always moved me in new, overwhelming places: a desire to read American writers, to reflect on my own country’s past. In Freiburg it had been a hunger for Poe, in Dakar for Faulk- ner. In Mexico City, checking out books on Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at the

Journal

Biography – University of Hawai'I Press

Published: Oct 30, 2003

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