The Shoemaker and the Tea Party

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party by Alfred Young revolves around two bibliographies written about one of the last living participants of the Boston Tea Party, and the authors own interpretations of the events surrounding the Tea Party and the American Revolution as a whole. In this particular novel, Young explores what it means to rediscover history, and how history is continually redefined. Particular attention in the novel is given to public history, and how highlighting people otherwise lost to time can completely change how an event is perceived. Readers are given the opportunity to see the history behind the American Revolution through the lenses of an average man of that time. In this essay I will review the novel and the message that Young is conveying through it.

In the introduction, Young makes it abundantly clear that in this novel he aims to make his own views surrounding public, and to an extent social history, known. He begins by posing the question “how does an ordinary person win a place in history?” (vii). Automatically I recalled the saying that “the victor writes history.” Historically, the victors and the writers of history have been those in positions of power on a particular side of a conflict. The everyday people who are the true forces behind these events unfortunately fade into obscurity and become the lost heroes and heroines of history. Often, it is not until specific groups learn of a particular person in history that attempts are made to have that person remembered. Such was the case with Crispus Attucks, a half African half Native American victim of the Boston Massacre, by the African American community of Boston. By shedding light on the story of Crispus Attucks, the African American community was ab...

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...f secondary sources written about him makes Hewes a surprisingly relatable character.

In conclusion, I believe that Young argues his interpretation well. He certainly brings a fresh new perspective on memory and public history that I have never seen before in a novel. Young tries to make his readers think the way that a historian should, and in the process find questions that you did not originally have. I cannot say I fully enjoyed the book because of its organization, but I was certainly able to learn a new way of looking at history. I also learned how it is possible to take someone or an event from obscurity and to give it the light and reorganization that it deserves. The rediscovering of history is truly a means of reconstructing history itself. It forces everyone to look at a situation in a different light and can even redefine how people identify themselves.