America By Another Name:
Photos and Stories of the Road and a History that United Us
Equality—Understanding—History
Through image and text, America By Another Name: Photos and Stories of the Road and a History that United Us renews a reader’s understanding of the Declaration of Independence’s promise of equality.
This book’s photographs of people and places from across the land emphatically show multiple social classes, religions, gender and sexual identities, and races and ethnicities—all in equal light.
This is a modern portrait of the United States as seen through an antique lens—the name Columbia.
Included writings show how Columbia is a perfect metaphor for the nation itself: steeped in idealism, while also freighted by its roots in Christopher Columbus and European empire building.
Columbia = United States
Poets, songwriters, and orators forged Columbia into:
Our nation’s poetic nickname, and a symbol for the American ideals of liberty, union, and progress.
A liberty goddess named Lady Columbia (created in 1775 by African American poet Phillis Wheatley).
National anthems like “Hail, Columbia” and “Columbia, Gem of the Ocean.”
Roadtrips—Writings—Photographs
The reader joins me on my travels—from Maine to Hawaii, from Alaska to Florida—over some 160,000 miles in a DIY camper van and photographing in over 65 places named Columbia.
Captions and short essays tell stories of the road, and Columbia-related histories portray the good and the bad of our development—even as perpetrated by my direct ancestors.
These elements combine into an evocative—and necessary—counterforce to divisive social currents.
