American novelist
Alexander Saxton
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Born
| (
1919-07-16
)
July 16, 1919
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Died
| August 20, 2012
(2012-08-20)
(aged 93)
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School or tradition
| Leftist
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Main interests
| Asian American studies
,
Labor History
,
Racism
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Notable works
| - Indispensable Enemy
(1975)
- The Great Midland
(1948)
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|
Alexander Plaisted Saxton
(July 16, 1919 ? August 20, 2012) was an American historian, novelist, and university professor. He was the author of the pioneering
Indispensable Enemy
(1975), one of the founding texts in
Asian American studies
.
Life and works
[
edit
]
Saxton was born in
Great Barrington, Massachusetts
to Eugene and Martha Saxton, one of two children.
[1]
His older brother was the author
Mark Saxton
(1914?1988).
[1]
His father became the editor in chief of
Harper & Brothers
, his mother taught literature at a private girls' school in Manhattan.
[1]
Saxton was raised on the East Side of Manhattan, his parents were known to have famous writers over for dinner such as
Thornton Wilder
and
Aldous Huxley
.
[1]
He attended
Phillips Exeter Academy
and
Harvard
(
John F. Kennedy
was a classmate), but dropped out in his junior year to become a laborer in Chicago.
[1]
He said he wanted to see "how people live in the other America ? the real America."
[1]
After dropping out of Harvard, Saxton made the intentional transition from a privileged upbringing to the working class where he labored at various times as "a harvest hand, construction gang laborer, engine-wiper, freight brakeman, architectural apprentice, assistant to the assistant editor" of a union newspaper, railroad switchman and columnist for
The Daily Worker
.
[1]
Saxton published his first novel,
Grand Crossing
in 1943, when he was 24 years old. His next novel was his most acclaimed,
The Great Midland
published in 1948.
[2]
It examines the 1920s and 1930s labor movement through the lives of a man and a woman.
[2]
His last novel,
Bright Web in the Darkness
(1958), is about two women - one white, the other black - who meet in a factory during World War II.
[2]
Saxton never returned to the novel, two years before his death he said "The novel claims only a brief span in human culture and may not continue to play a key role."
[2]
While working on the novels, Saxton was a full-time organizer of maritime workers and longshoremen in San Francisco, and he also wrote prolifically for many left-wing publications.
[1]
Saxton did eventually get his bachelor's degree from the
University of Chicago
, mainly to appease his parents.
[1]
During World War II he served with the
Merchant Marines
.
[1]
After the war, due to his left-leaning activities and with the Cold War in full swing, he found it difficult to find publishers for his fiction.
[1]
At the age of 43 he returned to school, earning a Ph.D. in history from the
University of California, Berkeley
and soon became a professor at the
University of California, Los Angeles
.
[1]
He said he was part of a generation "radicalized by the Great Depression," going on to say:
This was a group relatively small in numbers but impressively influential in its time. Whether organizing unions, advocating for civil rights or fighting fascism in Spain, all shared an urgent sense that the time had come in human history for crossing from an ethics of individual achievement, to one of moral responsibility for the social order one lived in.
[1]
Saxton was one of the founding fathers of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center and the creator of new courses in American history, including the first course on
Filipino-American history
and another on Film and History.
[3]
He was the author of the pioneering,
Indispensable Enemy
(1975), one of the founding texts in Asian American history/studies.
[4]
As
Claire Potter
wrote in
The Chronicle of Higher Education
soon after his death:
- He was one of the first historians to think seriously about how racial whiteness coalesced as an identity for European-descended working-class men in California; and how the demonization of immigrants from the Asian diaspora by nativist elites served the politics of capitalism in the Western United States.
[5]
Saxton taught American history at UCLA from 1968 until his retirement in 1990.
[1]
Saxton had two daughters, one who died in 1990 and another who died of cancer in April 2019. His wife Trudy died in about 2002. Saxton's death was by a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in
Lone Pine, California
on August 20, 2012.
[1]
His daughter said her father wished to choose the time and place of his death, like other transitions in his life.
[1]
Bibliography
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
n
o
p
Paul Vitello (September 1, 2012).
"Alexander Saxton, Historian and Novelist, Dies at 93"
.
New York Times
. Retrieved
September 2,
2012
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
"Alexander Saxton, historian and novelist, dies at age 93"
.
The Neglected Books Page
. September 2, 2012
. Retrieved
September 2,
2012
.
- ^
"In Memoriam: Professor Alexander (Alex) Saxton"
. UCLA Department of History. August 2012. Archived from
the original
on September 8, 2012
. Retrieved
September 2,
2012
.
- ^
"Passing of UCLA Professor Emeritus Alexander Saxton"
. UCLA Asian American Studies Center. August 2012. Archived from
the original
on 2013-03-25
. Retrieved
2012-09-03
.
- ^
"The Indispensable Alexander Saxton"
.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
. September 2, 2012
. Retrieved
September 2,
2012
.
External links
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International
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National
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Other
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