Shownotes Transcript
Hey there, this is Rob. Welcome to a little bonus episode of Sound School.
I'm going to offer some additional thoughts about the conversation I had on the last episode of the show. It was a popular episode. We got a lot of positive response, and I hope you had a chance to hear it. It featured a live recording of my chat with Chenjerai Kumanyika. Chenjerai talked about his latest podcast, Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD.
Chenjerai delivered what I feel like were a slew of important and helpful thoughts on an unusual question. And by unusual, I mean a question that's not asked enough. Who is the you telling this particular story?
I repeated it on the last episode. I'll repeat it here again because it's a little complicated. Who is the you telling this particular story? Thinking about this question of who is the you. Here's something Chenjerai said on the previous episode. One of the reasons why I think it's important to do that is all of us are like so multifaceted.
Right. And when you're when you're getting ready to write, whether you're writing a memoir, but if you're hopefully you're doing radio, you've got to choose. I think in sound and radio, you really got to choose. You can't bring your entire life to the mic. Right. And we but at the same time, we know that part of the power of our medium is that we are able to bring the personal in and have the stakes. Right. That's literally the power. So it's a it's a problem. You've got to bring yourself. But what part of yourself you've got to choose.
I want to take this idea of choosing and explore it a little more with a personal story about a time I was struggling to figure out who I was writing an audio documentary about a racist incident in the state of Maine. This was a complex story to report and tell, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to start the story. Nothing I tried seemed to work despite throwing my shoulder into it again and again and again.
I solved the problem by asking myself a question. Who am I as a storyteller? It's not quite as psychological as Chenjerai's question, but it's in the same ballpark. I discovered an answer to that question paying attention to how I tell stories.
One thing I know about myself is this. If you visit me where I live, I'll give you a guided tour, whether you want one or not. And so back when I lived in Maine, when friends visited, I'd be sure to show them the coast of Casco Bay and talk about the lighthouses and forts and other points of interest. We'd drive to a place, get out of the car, walk around, and I'd have some little story to tell about that place. And it dawned on me one day, oh, do that.
tap into Rob the tour guide for some of the writing. And that's how I managed to figure out how to write the opening to the documentary. I need to move my kayak up a little bit. Don't want it to float away. And there's a thunderstorm moving in and starting to rain a little bit. This is Malaga, Malaga Island on the mid-coast of Maine. It's part of the town of Phippsburg.
In 1912, in fact July 1st, 1912, George Pease took a short boat ride over to Malaga. He landed his boat and probably stood right about where I'm standing now on this shell-covered beach. George Pease came here as an agent of the state of Maine. It was his job to carry out the final steps of a state-sponsored eviction. Pease was here to clean out the island, to make sure everyone who lived here was gone, and to burn down their houses.
But there was no one here. Malaga was empty. Here, let's walk this way. Malaga is a small island. It's about 40 acres. It's covered with spruce trees. There's rocky shores. It's really a textbook Maine island. The community that lived on Malaga was poor. It was a poor fishing community, like most fishing communities on the Maine coast 100 years ago. What made Malaga different was the people. They were black, white, and mixed race. And that set them apart, far apart.
Here, let's step up on this ledge. Newspaper headlines screamed about the island's immoral and shiftless population. Many residents in Phippsburg considered the islanders a blight. They wanted them dispersed. Even the governor of Maine got involved in the uproar over the settlement. And in the end, the state forced the islanders to leave. The first thing the state did as part of the eviction was commit eight people to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded.
Then they evicted the remaining islanders, giving them about a month to go. And on the July 1st, 1912 eviction deadline, George Pease found an empty island. No people, no houses to burn down. They took their homes with them. The islanders left two things behind. Take a look up over on that ridge.
Over there was the school, and back in the woods was the graveyard. The state moved the school to another island, then they dug up the graveyard. They reburied the bodies in the cemetery at the main school for the people-minded. The Malaga community was erased, wiped out. Few people have talked publicly about Malaga over the last hundred years.
Many in Phippsburg would rather forget the incident. The eviction lingers darkly in the town's history. And descendants of the evicted islanders have largely remained silent too. The local stigma of mixed blood and feeble-mindedness is still present, even today. In fact, some say Malaga is a story best left untold. Well, this is that story. That's from a radio documentary I produced in 2009. It's called Malaga Island, A Story Best Left Untold.
Listening to it now, I hear Rob, the tour guide in that clip, but I can also hear Rob, the wannabe public radio reporter too. I was trying too much to sound like the people I heard on the radio. For a much deeper dive into the question, who is the you telling this particular story? Be sure to listen to the previous episode of Sound School. It's called Amen, Chenjerai.
Sound School is a production of PRX and Transom in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the radio center of the universe. I'm Rob Rosenthal. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the program.