April 16, 2021 • 15 mins
Tracy and Holly talk about the care needed when exploring the biographies of people in history who offer representation, but won't reflect the experience of everyone like them. They also talk about Sonora Webster Carver's autobiography and what an enjoyable read it is.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy
Eaglon and I'm Holly Fry. One of our episodes this
week was about Tersa to Cartagena, who I was very
excited about because I love the medieval women writers. As
(00:26):
I said, uh, most of whom are writing in some
kind of a religious context. But I also love that
part two. It is incredibly different from my own experience,
but I always find their work so fascinating, and Tersea
Cartagena is one that I don't think I had really
heard of until I stumbled across her, uh looking for
(00:51):
something completely different, and I was like, wait, I've never
heard of this particular nun. I'm very intrigued by this
whole story. Uh. One of the things that really interests
me about her is that I found several, uh several
sources from places like Gallula University, people who have studied
(01:11):
deaf history, who talk about her as one of the
sort of the four mothers of Deaf culture and one
of the earliest voices in deaf history in what's now Spain.
But some of the ways that she writes about her
own disability while totally making sense in the time, are
also ideas that people find damaging today, which makes it
(01:32):
kind of complicated. Well, and I think that's that's one
of the things. Anytime we talk about somebody with a
disability who writes about it, particularly if they write about
it as eloquently as she did, it's still one person's
experience and it may not be the beneficial viewpoint for
other people experiencing that same disability. That's like always the
(01:53):
trick when we look at historical figures. Yeah. Yeah, just
in my own personal life, I know, I know multiple people,
include multiple people in my own family who have some
kind of a disability or a chronic illness and have
just taken a lot of comfort and support in their
religious faith um related to all of that. But then
I also know people who are maybe not religious, or
(02:16):
maybe have been religious and aren't anymore or whatever, and
just find it incredibly harmful if they're talking about their
disability and somebody says, well, this will bring you closer
to God, Like, please do not use this episode as
a reason to do that, because it can be really
harmful and upsetting to people. Yeah, first of all, every
(02:37):
human is having their own experience, and you can't really
apply anyone else's. Sometimes other people's experience and and viewpoints
will be helpful and comforting, but other times not so much,
so you can never assume. Yeah. Yeah, I'm hopeful that
um more things about her will eventually be unearthed because
those two petitions sort of showing up in a in
(03:00):
a doctoral thesis in two thousand one. They give me
some hope that there maybe is more detail out there
that that we might be able to piece together a
little bit more about her and as a person, because like,
we don't even know when she became a nun Like
within the time it would have been um within reason
(03:21):
for people to join a religious order when they were
as young as twelve or fourteen, but the fact that
she had also been betrothed suggests that maybe it was
a little later. We just don't know. We don't have
the detail on any of that. Fingers crossed. Yeah. I
also went down a rabbit hole of trying to confirm
(03:41):
whether the Deluna family that gets a very brief name
drop in here UM is at all connected to the
the Deluna side of the Nino Taro Warren family that
we talked about UM and I was like, Uh, too bad,
I don't have that book anymore because I remember there
being a family tree and that would have at least
(04:04):
given me more of a starting point than I have
right now. Tracy, you don't memorize every page of every
book that you used for research. And I know, I
know not everyone with the last name Deluna is related
to to anyone else, but like, this was specifically a
very prominent family that talked about their their lineage from
(04:28):
Spain right, and how how extensive and how many, how
high placed many of those folks were. So anyway, maybe
I will manage to figure that out. I definitely ran
out of time to try to figure out. Before recording
this episode, we talked about Sonora Webster Carver. This week
we did. I was deeply surprised that you had chosen
(04:51):
this one because you you sent me a ping uh,
in which you asked if I had her on my list? Um,
and wow, did I have a giant soft spot for
that movie which came out when I was I think sixteen. Um,
I was extremely into it and just fascinated by by
Gabrielle on Noir. And UH was like, wait, Holly, Holly
(05:16):
is picking one about diving horses. This surprises me. Yes, um,
and I'm glad I did, because I will say, um,
reading her autobiography is one of the delights of this
year so far for me. That book is so fun.
I recommend everyone grab it you can. Um. You can
get a digital version for super cheap UM. And it
(05:37):
is a legitimately very fun read. Like a lot of
times when you and I either check out a book
or we buy a new book for the research for
the show, I would say probably neither of us often
reads them cover to cover, right, We're kind of looking
for the information we need. Um. But in this case,
I literally couldn't stop reading a school I'll just read
the next chapter. I know this doesn't really have anything
to do with the show, but I just want to read. Yeah,
(06:00):
because her writing and it's it's written as told to
another writer that helped her put the book together. But
like her tone is so funny. Her descriptions of her
mother had me just crying with laughter. I posted a
couple of them on Twitter because they made me laugh
so hard. Um. But Yeah, it's a super enjoyable one.
(06:20):
And there's uh. I admitted to the top of it
that I had a lot of trepidation about it, because
I am one of those people that doesn't like to
see animals used in entertainment. Um, But I won't say that.
I came around it was like, yes, you should absolutely
do this, but I softened about my kind of hard
reaction of don't ever do that. Um. Again, we're getting
(06:42):
it through the lens of people that did this and
loved it. But they honestly do all seem when you
read accounts from her sister things that Dot Carver said,
thinks that she said, it really does seem like they
were all very devoted to the animals as well. Um.
And we're in in Doc Carver's case, anybody that ever
(07:02):
had any minor injury like or more serious injury like
their nose got hurt there, you know whatever. He was
always like, it's never the horse's fault, is your fault,
you're the dummy, um. Which is interesting and it apparently
broke his heart when he would have to take horses
out of the show for whatever reason. There was one
horse she talked about that just developed some habits that
(07:26):
weren't safe anymore, and normally they would like theoretically they
would sell the horse, but he couldn't bear to part
with it. So they carried this horse with them everywhere
to all of their tours, just to stand in its
stall and eat and go for rides. Now to get
like somebody would ride it. And her husband was always,
you know, like before he was her husband. It's like,
(07:47):
why why are we Why are we paying this really
expensive to keep a horse? And it's just because you
can't bear to sell. We are a business. So we've
talked before how I grew up kind of out in
the country and our neighbors had a pasture where they
periodically would board horses, and whenever there were horses in
(08:10):
that pasture, going to look at the horses was like, so,
I'm so excited about it, and I kept trying to
get my parents to get a horse, which was way
beyond our financial need, like ability, because horses are expensive.
And I was like, but like, we could board the
horse with the neighbor, it would be right here. I
(08:31):
would take care of the horse. Was no. I think
a lot of people had that. I am actually one
of those people that never went through a horse fascination
as a kid. Yeah, I had a friend that jumped
horses and I went with her once and I was like,
this is terrifying. I don't want to be round these animals.
I think they're absolutely beautiful, but they always scared me
(08:52):
a little. They're just so large. They're very big. Well,
and I was always separated from these ones in the
pasture by the fence. You know, the horses could put
their head over the fence, but there was a barrier
between me and them. So it wasn't until I was
a a probably in college, that I saw and rode
(09:13):
on a full sized adult horse instead of like a
pony at the fair or whatever. It was like, this
animal is quite large. Yeah, it's a yeah. Um. There
are some really really wonderful passages in her autobiography where
she talks about learning just all the basics again without
(09:36):
her sight, and some of which is very as I said,
very funny. She is a very funny woman. Um. And
she talked about how we quoted her talking about people
um always trying to help the blind in a way
that actually is in some ways demeaning or her surfeelings.
And she got really upset when one of her friends
(09:56):
came over and she was making the bed and she
had only started making the and again recently at this point,
it was pretty early in her recovery after her her
surgery and her other treatments, and she found out later
that she had put the bedspread on upside down and
that this friend had not wanted to hurt her feelings
by telling her, and it got her so angry about
(10:17):
she's like, that's how I'm gonna learn and figure this out, Like,
people have to be honest with me at all times. Um.
The other ones that were honestly, very very funny. We're
her talking about her husband al because he of course
knew who he was marrying and that she was this
very independent person. But she found out a little ways
into her her um, you know, post vision life, that
(10:45):
he had been secretly moving her food around on her
plate for her, like to make sure her fork got
into the potatoes and stuff. And she was so furious,
Oh my goodness. And of course he's again trying to help,
but she's like, I have to learn how to eat
for myself. But she does mention that soup was particularly difficult,
(11:07):
and that peaches really alluded. They're very They're slippery and
hard to eat when you can see perfectly well what
you're doing. So but she was really like she took
those challenges. She also talks a lot about how she
was always pretty fastidious about her appearance um and how
(11:27):
she did not want that to go away. Like she
was like, I don't want to look like a sloppy
mess and have people go, oh, it's okay because she's blind.
She's like, no, I want to look as great as
I can at all times. And if you see pictures
of her throughout her life, she could turn a look
like she was always super put together. She always looked perfect.
She learned how to apply her makeup um even though
(11:48):
she couldn't see, and she would get her husband to
just spot check it. But like, how this what I
really loved and it was almost kind of inspiring for
me to rethink how I handle things. Is that she
was saying, I've always been fastidious, but I also used
to be careless, Like I would just throw things wherever.
I didn't have that approach of like everything has its place,
And I found that I needed to get really systematic
(12:09):
about where I stored things, learning my clothing by touch,
where I could be like I know this is this
dress because I have done it. You know I can
feel this button on it. She even started sewing the buttons,
sewing buttons onto her swimsuits, so she had like a
code of like if it has a button on the
right shoulder, that's a red suit, If it has a
button on the left leg, that's a blue suit. Which
(12:31):
is pretty interesting. But it's just a wonderful read, and
she's so frank about what was difficult and and what
came easy to her, and she has such great humor
about it that it it's really an enjoyable look at
her process and how very you realize she was. It's
almost a pity that she dropped out of school because
she also could have done a million things in academia
(12:55):
because she was very smart. Um not. But she's on
her great love, which was horses, of course. But yeah,
she's I found myself with great admiration for her. By
the end of it. I think I will uh pick
this up and read it myself. Although I do have
a soft spot for that movie, the way that they
framed her accident and recovery does kind of come off
(13:18):
as like inspiration porn, which is not great. Yes, she
did not like any of that treatment at all, Like
she was like if my if my story inspires people great,
but it needs to be my story as it happened.
And I like that. She always, I mean, not long
before she lost her sight. She was always very sort
(13:39):
of pragmatic, and she recognized like it's when she talks
about like, oh, I I was doing interviews, but it
wasn't about me. I couldn't get a big head. They
cared about diving horses and uh. She talks a lot
about her relationship with Doc Carver and how it was
all about like him kind of testing her for a
long time to see if she had like the grit
it took to do this job, which for a lot
(13:59):
of people would be nerve racking. Um. Their relationship fascinates me.
He started calling her after she started diving. UM. Up
to that point, he had been a little standoffish with her,
and she realized it was because he was testing her
and didn't want to invest emotionally in her. But once
she started diving, he started calling her Daddy's girl as
(14:19):
her name all the time, and like to her like
that was like the greatest praise she could have ever received.
So that relationship that plays out in the press, I
think to them they were father and daughter in a
lot of ways. So uh, there's a whole that's a
whole lot to unpack and like the psychology of two
people that need each other in that way, uh that
(14:41):
we can't ask questions about it at this point is
a lot to conjecture about, but it is pretty interesting
to read. So thank you for spending time with us
this week. We hope that you have a great weekend
the head. If you have time off, we hope that
you relax and recharge. And if you don't have time off,
we hope that everything goes as smoothly as possible it
in your days. We will see you here tomorrow with
(15:02):
a classic and next week with all new episodes. Stuff
you missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy
Eaglon and I'm Holly Fry. One of our episodes this
week was about Tersa to Cartagena, who I was very
excited about because I love the medieval women writers. As
(00:26):
I said, uh, most of whom are writing in some
kind of a religious context. But I also love that
part two. It is incredibly different from my own experience,
but I always find their work so fascinating, and Tersea
Cartagena is one that I don't think I had really
heard of until I stumbled across her, uh looking for
(00:51):
something completely different, and I was like, wait, I've never
heard of this particular nun. I'm very intrigued by this
whole story. Uh. One of the things that really interests
me about her is that I found several, uh several
sources from places like Gallula University, people who have studied
(01:11):
deaf history, who talk about her as one of the
sort of the four mothers of Deaf culture and one
of the earliest voices in deaf history in what's now Spain.
But some of the ways that she writes about her
own disability while totally making sense in the time, are
also ideas that people find damaging today, which makes it
(01:32):
kind of complicated. Well, and I think that's that's one
of the things. Anytime we talk about somebody with a
disability who writes about it, particularly if they write about
it as eloquently as she did, it's still one person's
experience and it may not be the beneficial viewpoint for
other people experiencing that same disability. That's like always the
(01:53):
trick when we look at historical figures. Yeah. Yeah, just
in my own personal life, I know, I know multiple people,
include multiple people in my own family who have some
kind of a disability or a chronic illness and have
just taken a lot of comfort and support in their
religious faith um related to all of that. But then
I also know people who are maybe not religious, or
(02:16):
maybe have been religious and aren't anymore or whatever, and
just find it incredibly harmful if they're talking about their
disability and somebody says, well, this will bring you closer
to God, Like, please do not use this episode as
a reason to do that, because it can be really
harmful and upsetting to people. Yeah, first of all, every
(02:37):
human is having their own experience, and you can't really
apply anyone else's. Sometimes other people's experience and and viewpoints
will be helpful and comforting, but other times not so much,
so you can never assume. Yeah. Yeah, I'm hopeful that
um more things about her will eventually be unearthed because
those two petitions sort of showing up in a in
(03:00):
a doctoral thesis in two thousand one. They give me
some hope that there maybe is more detail out there
that that we might be able to piece together a
little bit more about her and as a person, because like,
we don't even know when she became a nun Like
within the time it would have been um within reason
(03:21):
for people to join a religious order when they were
as young as twelve or fourteen, but the fact that
she had also been betrothed suggests that maybe it was
a little later. We just don't know. We don't have
the detail on any of that. Fingers crossed. Yeah. I
also went down a rabbit hole of trying to confirm
(03:41):
whether the Deluna family that gets a very brief name
drop in here UM is at all connected to the
the Deluna side of the Nino Taro Warren family that
we talked about UM and I was like, Uh, too bad,
I don't have that book anymore because I remember there
being a family tree and that would have at least
(04:04):
given me more of a starting point than I have
right now. Tracy, you don't memorize every page of every
book that you used for research. And I know, I
know not everyone with the last name Deluna is related
to to anyone else, but like, this was specifically a
very prominent family that talked about their their lineage from
(04:28):
Spain right, and how how extensive and how many, how
high placed many of those folks were. So anyway, maybe
I will manage to figure that out. I definitely ran
out of time to try to figure out. Before recording
this episode, we talked about Sonora Webster Carver. This week
we did. I was deeply surprised that you had chosen
(04:51):
this one because you you sent me a ping uh,
in which you asked if I had her on my list? Um,
and wow, did I have a giant soft spot for
that movie which came out when I was I think sixteen. Um,
I was extremely into it and just fascinated by by
Gabrielle on Noir. And UH was like, wait, Holly, Holly
(05:16):
is picking one about diving horses. This surprises me. Yes, um,
and I'm glad I did, because I will say, um,
reading her autobiography is one of the delights of this
year so far for me. That book is so fun.
I recommend everyone grab it you can. Um. You can
get a digital version for super cheap UM. And it
(05:37):
is a legitimately very fun read. Like a lot of
times when you and I either check out a book
or we buy a new book for the research for
the show, I would say probably neither of us often
reads them cover to cover, right, We're kind of looking
for the information we need. Um. But in this case,
I literally couldn't stop reading a school I'll just read
the next chapter. I know this doesn't really have anything
to do with the show, but I just want to read. Yeah,
(06:00):
because her writing and it's it's written as told to
another writer that helped her put the book together. But
like her tone is so funny. Her descriptions of her
mother had me just crying with laughter. I posted a
couple of them on Twitter because they made me laugh
so hard. Um. But Yeah, it's a super enjoyable one.
(06:20):
And there's uh. I admitted to the top of it
that I had a lot of trepidation about it, because
I am one of those people that doesn't like to
see animals used in entertainment. Um, But I won't say that.
I came around it was like, yes, you should absolutely
do this, but I softened about my kind of hard
reaction of don't ever do that. Um. Again, we're getting
(06:42):
it through the lens of people that did this and
loved it. But they honestly do all seem when you
read accounts from her sister things that Dot Carver said,
thinks that she said, it really does seem like they
were all very devoted to the animals as well. Um.
And we're in in Doc Carver's case, anybody that ever
(07:02):
had any minor injury like or more serious injury like
their nose got hurt there, you know whatever. He was
always like, it's never the horse's fault, is your fault,
you're the dummy, um. Which is interesting and it apparently
broke his heart when he would have to take horses
out of the show for whatever reason. There was one
horse she talked about that just developed some habits that
(07:26):
weren't safe anymore, and normally they would like theoretically they
would sell the horse, but he couldn't bear to part
with it. So they carried this horse with them everywhere
to all of their tours, just to stand in its
stall and eat and go for rides. Now to get
like somebody would ride it. And her husband was always,
you know, like before he was her husband. It's like,
(07:47):
why why are we Why are we paying this really
expensive to keep a horse? And it's just because you
can't bear to sell. We are a business. So we've
talked before how I grew up kind of out in
the country and our neighbors had a pasture where they
periodically would board horses, and whenever there were horses in
(08:10):
that pasture, going to look at the horses was like, so,
I'm so excited about it, and I kept trying to
get my parents to get a horse, which was way
beyond our financial need, like ability, because horses are expensive.
And I was like, but like, we could board the
horse with the neighbor, it would be right here. I
(08:31):
would take care of the horse. Was no. I think
a lot of people had that. I am actually one
of those people that never went through a horse fascination
as a kid. Yeah, I had a friend that jumped
horses and I went with her once and I was like,
this is terrifying. I don't want to be round these animals.
I think they're absolutely beautiful, but they always scared me
(08:52):
a little. They're just so large. They're very big. Well,
and I was always separated from these ones in the
pasture by the fence. You know, the horses could put
their head over the fence, but there was a barrier
between me and them. So it wasn't until I was
a a probably in college, that I saw and rode
(09:13):
on a full sized adult horse instead of like a
pony at the fair or whatever. It was like, this
animal is quite large. Yeah, it's a yeah. Um. There
are some really really wonderful passages in her autobiography where
she talks about learning just all the basics again without
(09:36):
her sight, and some of which is very as I said,
very funny. She is a very funny woman. Um. And
she talked about how we quoted her talking about people
um always trying to help the blind in a way
that actually is in some ways demeaning or her surfeelings.
And she got really upset when one of her friends
(09:56):
came over and she was making the bed and she
had only started making the and again recently at this point,
it was pretty early in her recovery after her her
surgery and her other treatments, and she found out later
that she had put the bedspread on upside down and
that this friend had not wanted to hurt her feelings
by telling her, and it got her so angry about
(10:17):
she's like, that's how I'm gonna learn and figure this out, Like,
people have to be honest with me at all times. Um.
The other ones that were honestly, very very funny. We're
her talking about her husband al because he of course
knew who he was marrying and that she was this
very independent person. But she found out a little ways
into her her um, you know, post vision life, that
(10:45):
he had been secretly moving her food around on her
plate for her, like to make sure her fork got
into the potatoes and stuff. And she was so furious,
Oh my goodness. And of course he's again trying to help,
but she's like, I have to learn how to eat
for myself. But she does mention that soup was particularly difficult,
(11:07):
and that peaches really alluded. They're very They're slippery and
hard to eat when you can see perfectly well what
you're doing. So but she was really like she took
those challenges. She also talks a lot about how she
was always pretty fastidious about her appearance um and how
(11:27):
she did not want that to go away. Like she
was like, I don't want to look like a sloppy
mess and have people go, oh, it's okay because she's blind.
She's like, no, I want to look as great as
I can at all times. And if you see pictures
of her throughout her life, she could turn a look
like she was always super put together. She always looked perfect.
She learned how to apply her makeup um even though
(11:48):
she couldn't see, and she would get her husband to
just spot check it. But like, how this what I
really loved and it was almost kind of inspiring for
me to rethink how I handle things. Is that she
was saying, I've always been fastidious, but I also used
to be careless, Like I would just throw things wherever.
I didn't have that approach of like everything has its place,
And I found that I needed to get really systematic
(12:09):
about where I stored things, learning my clothing by touch,
where I could be like I know this is this
dress because I have done it. You know I can
feel this button on it. She even started sewing the buttons,
sewing buttons onto her swimsuits, so she had like a
code of like if it has a button on the
right shoulder, that's a red suit, If it has a
button on the left leg, that's a blue suit. Which
(12:31):
is pretty interesting. But it's just a wonderful read, and
she's so frank about what was difficult and and what
came easy to her, and she has such great humor
about it that it it's really an enjoyable look at
her process and how very you realize she was. It's
almost a pity that she dropped out of school because
she also could have done a million things in academia
(12:55):
because she was very smart. Um not. But she's on
her great love, which was horses, of course. But yeah,
she's I found myself with great admiration for her. By
the end of it. I think I will uh pick
this up and read it myself. Although I do have
a soft spot for that movie, the way that they
framed her accident and recovery does kind of come off
(13:18):
as like inspiration porn, which is not great. Yes, she
did not like any of that treatment at all, Like
she was like if my if my story inspires people great,
but it needs to be my story as it happened.
And I like that. She always, I mean, not long
before she lost her sight. She was always very sort
(13:39):
of pragmatic, and she recognized like it's when she talks
about like, oh, I I was doing interviews, but it
wasn't about me. I couldn't get a big head. They
cared about diving horses and uh. She talks a lot
about her relationship with Doc Carver and how it was
all about like him kind of testing her for a
long time to see if she had like the grit
it took to do this job, which for a lot
(13:59):
of people would be nerve racking. Um. Their relationship fascinates me.
He started calling her after she started diving. UM. Up
to that point, he had been a little standoffish with her,
and she realized it was because he was testing her
and didn't want to invest emotionally in her. But once
she started diving, he started calling her Daddy's girl as
(14:19):
her name all the time, and like to her like
that was like the greatest praise she could have ever received.
So that relationship that plays out in the press, I
think to them they were father and daughter in a
lot of ways. So uh, there's a whole that's a
whole lot to unpack and like the psychology of two
people that need each other in that way, uh that
(14:41):
we can't ask questions about it at this point is
a lot to conjecture about, but it is pretty interesting
to read. So thank you for spending time with us
this week. We hope that you have a great weekend
the head. If you have time off, we hope that
you relax and recharge. And if you don't have time off,
we hope that everything goes as smoothly as possible it
in your days. We will see you here tomorrow with
(15:02):
a classic and next week with all new episodes. Stuff
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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