Homesickness An American History

In the 19th century, Americans died of homesickness. When gold miners in California heard the tune "Home, Sweet Home," they sobbed. When Civil War soldiers became homesick, army doctors sent them home, lest they die. Such images don't fit with our national mythology, which celebrates the restless individualism of colonists, explorers, pioneers, soldiers, and immigrants who supposedly left home with ease and never looked back. Homesickness challenges this mythology. It shows how difficult it was for generations of migrants and immigrants to leave home. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, medical records, and psychological studies, this far-ranging book uncovers the torn feelings of Americans on the move. Colonists in Jamestown longed for and often returned to England; '49ers in California pined for Connecticut; immigrants nursed memories of Sicily and Guadalajara and after years in America, frequently traveled home. These iconic symbols of the brave, forward-looking American spirit were in fact, homesick, hesitant, and often reluctant movers. National ideology and modern psychology obscure this truth, painting movement as easy, but in fact, Americans had to learn how to leave home, learn to be individualists. Even today, in a global society that prizes movement and that condemns homesickness as a childish emotion, Americans have not fully mastered the lessons of individualism. In the age of helicopter parents and boomerang kids, and new technologies that sustain connections across the miles, Americans continue to assert the significance of home ties. By studying not just where Americans went, but how they felt as they moved on, Homesickness: An American History revises long-held assumptions about home, mobility, and our national identity.

Susan J. Matt is Presidential Distinguished Professor of History at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. She is the author of Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930.