The Arizona Humanities Council and ASU’s Project Humanities held a conversation titled “Perspectives on Place: Phoenix Rising” at the Ellis-Shackelford House on Tuesday to discuss the cultural history of Phoenix and efforts to exemplify connections in the community.
The discussion focused on author and ASU Regents professor David Williams Foster’s book “Glimpses of Phoenix,” which presents observations on a variety of narrative works and their place in Phoenix history, as well as the not-so-perfect truth behind the city’s past.
Arizona Humanities Council Executive Director Brenda Thomson introduced the discussion and said humanities affect what we do every day, especially our ability to think critically and know what’s happening around the world.
“People that we live with, even in our own neighborhoods, are a mystery to us,” she said. “So it’s an opportunity to come together and share a little bit about the human experience. That is the mission of Arizona Humanities: creating opportunities for sharing the human experience through listening, learning and reflection.”
Foster said in the 60s Phoenix was not considered the best of cities. However, he recognized the potential of the area and made the commitment to move downtown, which he said not many people were willing to do.
He began to realize he was living in a very interesting city that had been going through immense transformations. His curiosity grew about its history and what others thought of it.
“Artists create texts, and humanists work with the texts that they create, including other types of cultural production: photography, cartoon art, theater, biography, essay. There are innumerable forms of texts that humanists have to deal with,” Foster said.
He began looking into these types of works within Phoenix. As he began telling others of his work, it was questioned because people had already reached the general consensus that there was barely any cultural element to Phoenix.
He said this was almost true, giving the example that if one were to visit the Library of Congress and look up fictional representations of Seattle, hundreds of hits would come up. However, if Phoenix were to be looked up, there would maybe be 40.
“You start to sift through this,” Foster said. “You start to find the really, really interesting things that have been written about Phoenix.”
Foster discussed three people in particular that had a literary impact on Phoenix’s history. He began the book with Erma Bombeck, who he said was one of the true gems of Phoenix, not just as a writer, but also as a personality.
“She had a lot of very interesting things to say about what today we call soccer moms and suburban life,” Foster said.
Although all of her papers are in the library at the University of Dayton where she grew up, virtually everything she wrote was written in Phoenix, Foster said. However, Phoenix is not mentioned on the library’s website.
“It’s as though we didn’t even exist, as if Phoenix was of no importance in Bombeck’s life,” Foster said. “A lot of (her work) doesn’t directly reference Phoenix, but anyone who grew up in Phoenix and knew the emerging Phoenix of the 60s knew that Erma Bombeck was talking about us.”
Foster said his research involved other prominent Phoenicians, specifically authors that exposed the “dirty secrets” of Phoenix. These authors included Jon Talton, who Foster said wrote detective fiction to shed light on the darker aspects of Phoenix, and Jana Bommersbach, who wrote a book on “Trunk Murderess” Winnie Ruth Judd.
“There are a lot of dirty secrets in Phoenix,” Foster said. “We think of Phoenix as an all-American, fun-in-the-sun city, and there’s no history here, and that’s not the case. Phoenix has had a very nasty history.”
Along with discussing the exploration of this side of Phoenix, Foster spoke of prominent Latin-American novelist and Phoenix native Stella Pope Duarte, who was the first Chicana novelist to write about Phoenix, he said.
“Now there are a lot of people from the Latino community who are associated with Phoenix. Some have come into Phoenix, and others, like Stella, are from Phoenix. But Stella is the first woman to write about the Chicana experience from a woman’s point of view,” Foster said.
People who work in humanities want to be able to connect with the larger community, he said.
“I take very seriously the responsibility that those in humanities have for bringing humanities to the public,” he said. “This book on Phoenix is part of my commitment to public humanities and part of my commitment to Phoenix.”
Project Humanities director Neal Lester said he’s always looking for endeavors to bring people together to talk, listen and connect.
“I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to do a kind of co-hosting and the event tonight showcases someone who is not only connected with the Phoenix community, but he’s also connected with the downtown community,” Lester said.
Contact the reporter at Rebecca.Brisley@asu.edu
