The Day the World Came to Town

Recommended by my mother-in-law, and I borrowed her copy and read it in two days. She had seen the play - I'm curious now to see how a play was made of this book.

First of all, I don't think I have ever given a second thought to what happened outside the U.S. on September 11th, nor what happened to all the planes that were still in the air when the airspace over the U.S. was shut down and everything grounded. That 38 planes were diverted to this little airport in Newfoundland was incredible to read about, particularly as the air traffic controllers and pilots scrambled to get everyone on the ground, and how the community rallied together to take the 6000-some-odd passengers in.

There were a lot of names, and I couldn't always remember who was who (passenger or townie), but I got the gist of it; DeFede did a decent job for the most part of reminding you who these names were when picking up their stories again.

The thing that started nagging at me pretty early on though, was that despite these planes coming from all over, with passengers of many different nationalities and languages, DeFede chose to focus primarily on white, European, and English-speaking passengers and their stories. I wanted the perspective of more people of color, the ones who understood the language and the ones that didn't, the ones who may have felt uncomfortable being in an all-white community they didn't know, the ones who might have had to bear the brunt of the other passengers' fears of their planes being hijacked as well, even after taking refuge in Canada. It was a missed opportunity; the author seemed mostly interested in praising the Newfies for their generosity rather than examining anything closer.

So yes, I enjoyed learning this history, and yes, Feel Good About Humanity, but take it with that very white grain of salt.