24 pages • 48 minutes read
Anna QuindlenA Quilt of a Country
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Patriotism and National Identity
One of the most salient themes Quindlen explores is how to define patriotism and national identity—or rather, what these concepts actually mean in the American context. The essay proposes her own criteria for national pride and patriotism.
In his seminal and oft-cited book on the subject, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson defines the nation as “imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, 1991). This concept of belonging to a nation emerged with and through a common language and discourse that itself resulted from the 15th-century proliferation of the printing press. Anderson employs the term “imagined” not to mean that the nation does not exist but to argue that it exists because of its members reading the same texts and inhabiting a shared mental landscape. More recently, the media and national news have come to occupy the role of “texts,” shaping a common perception of the nation.
Thus, despite their seemingly infinite differences, Americans ostensibly perceive themselves as part of a common group. However, this does not explain what the defining characteristics of this group are—that is, what holds (or should hold) the sense of nation together. Quindlen’s essay dialogues with this debate regarding “Americanness.” Her notion of patriotism is an open one that acknowledges and embraces plurality, as opposed to a more closed perception that defines being American using exclusionary criteria (e.g., white, Anglo, Protestant, heterosexual, etc.).
Though Quindlen postulates that there is no singular national character, this does not mean there are no national tendencies or behaviors that keep the country unified. Quindlen’s United States is imagined as a nation held together by a love for conquering challenges and by a generalized belief in fairness. Most importantly (if paradoxically), Quindlen argues that America’s defining quality is its plurality: What binds the country together is its embrace of difference. She tries to persuade the reader that this is also its best quality, reminding readers that the perception of what is considered plural or different has shifted over time.
Though Quindlen is primarily concerned with combatting racially or ethnically restrictive criteria for “Americanness,” it is worth noting that her definition of patriotism also implies the embrace of ideological differences; the intrinsic value of pluralism is baked into her argument. In this, her position is similar to the philosophy of “civic nationalism,” which grounds national identity in shared political culture—typically, one that embraces pluralism (among other things). Civic nationalism is often juxtaposed with “cultural nationalism,” which implies a more sweeping set of shared values as the basis for national identity and often (though not always) overlaps with ethnic identity. These divergent notions of patriotism have informed debates such as that surrounding NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling for the national anthem, variously interpreted as an embrace of an American value (the right to protest) or as disrespectful to the American flag. Quindlen’s position places her in the same camp as Kaepernick—both view the nation as stronger for its difference in viewpoints.
Multiculturalism in the United States
The essay’s title and central metaphor of the quilt dialogue with the concept of multiculturalism, for which Quindlen is mostly advocating. Multiculturalism is a complex concept that can be understood through the lens of political philosophy, sociology, policymaking, and more. It generally involves ethnic/cultural pluralism within a particular community or country, either as the result of waves of immigration or of long-standing cultural differences within a region’s borders. It is both a concept that is descriptive (explaining the actual state of things) and a philosophy that is prescriptive (explaining how things ought to be).
In the United States, multiculturalism is not firmly established as policy at the federal level, but it is implemented throughout the country to varying degrees, depending on factors such as the ethnic and cultural makeup of a particular area and/or the political philosophy of the region’s dominant lawmakers. Multiculturalism has tended to increase over the course of US history due to repeated waves of immigration. It is considered the dominant philosophy in American universities and has unseated the “melting pot” paradigm that arose in the 19th and 20th centuries. The melting metaphor signifies the mixing and amalgamation of different immigrant groups into a more homogenous cultural stock. It is a concept that in part describes what happened historically, since a large portion of Americans are in fact the result of this ethnic “mixing.” This corresponds to Quindlen’s metaphor of a “mongrel nation,” which she uses in a descriptive capacity to characterize the United States.
However, the melting pot as a prescriptive philosophy has declined in popularity because it implies assimilation into a preexisting, dominant culture. Quindlen argues that America’s strength and pride lie in both the differences between its constituent parts and its simultaneous ability to stand together as one nation. This is where Quindlen’s metaphor of the quilt comes into play. She argues for multiculturalism with a degree of integration (represented by the stitches that make the squares overlap and bring them together as a whole) instead of total assimilation of differences (each square remains distinct in texture, pattern, color, etc.). Other metaphors advocates of multiculturalism have used include the “salad bowl” or “mosaic”. These terms emphasize the heterogeneity of the constituent ingredients or pieces, which nevertheless come together to form a whole dish or artwork (i.e., a nation).
Opposition to multiculturalism is frequently underpinned by the belief that the nation possesses a certain (ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic, etc.) essence that should be maintained and is being actively endangered by newcomers bringing their own cultures. In the case of the United States, opposition to multiculturalism tends to be bound up with the idea of whiteness and the anxiety among some white Americans that they will no longer constitute a dominant majority of the population in the future. Although Quindlen does not discuss hostility to multiculturalism at length, she alludes to this strain of sentiment with her dismissal of the “English-only advocates” (7). Here, language stands in for a broader set of cultural and ethnic characteristics that some would seek to ground national identity in. Quindlen suggests that such a position is almost willfully ignorant, as anyone assessing the country honestly will conclude that multiculturalism has always existed: “[M]ost […] admit that […] the new immigrants are not so different from our own parents or grandparents” (7).
American Exceptionalism
Quindlen draws on some tropes related to the concept of American exceptionalism—the belief that the United States is inherently different from other countries (typically with the implication that those differences are positive). In some ways, this concept overlaps with the ideal of the “American dream.” The perceived differences may include the circumstances of the US’s founding (i.e., Puritan settlers’ cultural and moral tendencies), America’s commitment to capitalist democracy, its status as a military and economic superpower, its social mobility, or (as Quindlen highlights) its culturally and ethnically diverse composition. She dedicates a significant portion of the essay to discussing what makes the US distinct from other countries, historically and sociologically. For example, she refers to a study in which the respondents agreed that “[t]he US is a unique country that stands for something special in the world” (6), which she interprets in favor of her argument that the United States is a uniquely diverse nation.
Most factors cited in connection to American exceptionalism have drawn criticism, either on the grounds that they are not unique (e.g., Is the United States really more multicultural than some European countries?) or on the grounds that they are not in fact desirable (e.g., Is America’s economic system really working well for everybody?). It is nevertheless a powerful notion that has guided American domestic and foreign policy throughout its history, including as a justification for intervening in other countries’ affairs. This is also controversial, as some would argue that American foreign policy has overstepped the fine line between the belief that the United States is unique and the belief that it is superior (and therefore entitled to play a disproportionately powerful role on the world stage).
Though Quindlen acknowledges the US has often fallen short of its ideals, she hangs on to a sense of American exceptionalism, even lamenting the fact that discussion of the country’s flaws can obscure what is “spectacularly successful” about it. Ultimately, she defines patriotism as “partly taking pride in this unlikely ability to throw all of us together in a country that across its length and breadth is as different as a dozen countries” (8). Whether this would satisfy critics of American exceptionalism is debatable, as it can in practice be difficult to disentangle a view of US civic society as exceptional from the impulse to export it elsewhere; even plurality can (ironically) be used as a justification for foreign policy interventions in other countries.
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