Kathleen Donegan

Just as a tween awkwardly straddles the period between childhood and adulthood, so does Seasons of Misery attempt to bridge an expanse between history and literary criticism, and similarly looks uncomfortable in doing so. Kathleen Donegan, a professor of English at Berkeley, notes the following in the Acknowledgements: "At Yale, I had the extreme good fortune to work extensively with John Demos, who took a literary reader into the historian's workshop and offered the kind of mentorship that represents the very best we do for each other in academia" (257).

I have nothing against interdisciplinary work per se (I have a graduate degree in comparative literature, where one does nothing more than wear divers academic hats, none of them quite fitting right), but Misery is structured neither as history nor as a literary reading of specific historical documents. The author explains: "As a reader of the texts of early settlement, I am interested in both literary exegesis and historical recovery, and throughout this study I use the tools of both literary criticism and narrative history" (13).

But the texts take a back seat. (Ostensibly they are written in the English language, making them fair game for a professor of English, but I digress). Instead of giving a literary reading of one or more texts specific to her topic, Donegal structures the book into four separate seasons of misery--Roanoke, Jamestown, Plymouth, and Barbados--and it is these seasons or epochs themselves that are "read," with various texts such as George Percy's Trewe Relacyon playing a supporting role within the governing seasons (which are not proper histories themselves). Vague topics like "bodies", "catastrophe", "colonialization", and "identity" are discussed.

With neither the history nor the literary explication in focus, readers from both fields are left wanting. Misery has an interesting subject matter and benchmark texts that are worthy of greater and sharper focus, but in its present guise warrants only three out of five stars.… (más)

I have to say that this book was hard for me to start and continue. It was somewhere around the point of the Jamestown colonists that it began to flow better for me, and it really grabbed my interest more.

What I really liked about this was the insights into what really shaped the individual, and society as a whole, of the early colonists. It really was a mindset driven by stress and horrors.

While I understand the lineage leading to the chapter in Barbados and sugar production, but it just felt out of place to me. I think a final chapter as a summation or overview that Roanoke and the confrontations in Jamestown had on the subsequent colonization efforts would have been much better suited and appreciated. The afterward is actually one of my favorite reads in this book due to the authors narrative, explanation, and discussions on interpretation from the original writings.… (más)

An unconventional look at early English colonial settlements, through the lens of the catastrophes that very often shaped their early years. The chapters on Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth are excellently done, relying on close readings of atypical sources and making truly novel arguments about how the brutal conditions faced by the early settlers played a key role in the colonies' development. The fourth chapter, on Barbados, wasn't as successful for me, though I was glad it was included.

Tough to read at times, but an excellent addition to the shelves of early American historians.… (más)