Q&A with Ann Bausum

 

 

 

Ann Bausum is the author of the new young adult book White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the History. Her many other books include The Bard and the Book. She is based in Wisconsin.

 

Q: What inspired you to write White Lies?

 

A: I’ve been fascinated by history since my childhood in Lexington, Virginia. The town was ground zero for Confederate commemoration at the time, and my schoolbooks reinforced that perception with glorifying accounts of the Confederacy and the South.

 

I didn’t realize it then, but this so-called Lost Cause point of view was deliberately crafted to empower the region’s white ruling class. I had to move beyond the South and study history afresh before I recognized how seriously my books had deceived me.  

 

For the past 25 years, I’ve written nonfiction that creates the opposite learning environment for young people and teens, one that is grounded in facts instead of propaganda. White Lies is the culmination of that effort. It’s my reveal of the vast reach of the Lost Cause and its continuing influence not just in the South but throughout the country.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The title dates to the book’s earliest days. Author-generated ideas don’t always survive to publication, but we’ve never wavered on this one.

 

The book White Lies pulls no punches, so I wanted a title that does the same. Sometimes, we’re too cautious in our use of language, afraid to offend or concerned about reactions, but an exposé on the Lost Cause requires the use of bold, clear, language, not equivocation.

 

When people from their earliest ages are deliberately misled and manipulated through books, popular culture, commemorative monuments, and political discourse, it’s important to label this content clearly and categorically as lies.

 

My commitment to thoughtful word choices inspired the book’s four(!)-page language note about the “verbal traps lurking in American history.”

 

Q: You write, “This book marks a personal journey to make myself a little bit more whole, to wash clean some of the fabrications that burrowed into my brain, and to find ways to love again a city and a part of the country that I had ceased to understand.” Can you say more about that, and about the impact writing this book had on you?

 

A: I’ve reached an age where one can look back over a half-century of lived experience, and this book gave me the opportunity to do that in a very personal way.

 

I appreciated being able to understand the manipulative backstory behind the beguiling and inaccurate textbooks of my youth. By identifying the forces and reasons behind this deception, I was able to remove the taint they’d given to my childhood love of history.

 

At the same time, I was able to witness real-time changes to scenes that had been static since my youth. Local statues came down or were recontextualized while I worked on this book. Institutions that had seemed frozen in time are catching up with the current century.

 

Such insights and actions have allowed me to better understand my past and appreciate the potential for change to transpire during a lifetime.

 

More broadly, my research helped me understand the enormity of the Lost Cause campaign of propaganda and its ongoing influences. By identifying the reach of the effort, I was able to see how I’d become snagged within its web in the first place, and seeing that helped me fully reject its sticky grasp.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book, given the political situation currently unfolding in the U.S.?

 

A: All of us, including teens, or maybe especially teens, are swimming in a sea of misinformation. We need critical thinking skills more than ever as we sort fact from fabrication and consider the motivations behind misleading streams of content.

 

White Lies offers readers the chance to weigh the facts, compare them to a record of past distortions, and draw their own conclusions about examples of manipulation and deception. I also offer arguments that can be used to counter flawed defenses of Confederate commemoration and other examples of commemorative historical propaganda.

 

I hope the book will further empower readers by providing them with the historical context for contemporary debates about racism, social injustices, and whether our national story should be told with facts or as a propaganda-style tale of American greatness.

 

Taken together, readers have the potential not only to better understand our past but also to nurture skills in historical and critical literacy that can last a lifetime.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m researching a book for teens about the intersection of the public life of Thomas Jefferson and his private dependence on enslaved labor. I’m absolutely fascinated by the richness of the history and look forward to working with Roaring Brook and Macmillan to share my account, we hope, in 2028.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m also working on a middle grade nonfiction title for Peachtree Publishing that follows up on last year’s MG account of the story behind the publication in 1623 of the first collection of William Shakespeare’s plays, The Bard and the Book.

 

The subject may sound dry as dust, but I brought the history alive with a playful voice that I hope to revive with this new work, an ode to libraries shared through five episodic stories about our love of libraries and books. Tentative release is planned for Fall 2027.

 

These joyful projects are the perfect counterpart to my dives into darker history, at least for me as I work, and maybe for readers, too.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Ann Bausum.