Museum of the American Military Family & Learning Center
Celebrating Almost 400 Years of American Military Family History
The museum presented an audio-visual preview of its exhibit at a special program at the Cherry Hills Library in Albuquerque, NM. The upcoming exhibit Host Nation Hospitality was funded, in part, by a generous grant from New Mexico Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The anthology Host Nation Hospitality is available for purchase on Amazon.
When US military troops serve abroad, they are often accompanied by their families. Host Nation Hospitality presents more than a hundred first-hand stories and commentary documenting their living and working experiences in all parts of the world. There are memories dating from the rubble of World War II to the present. The stories come from US and Host Nation perspectives and cover topics from friendships to fiascos.
Compiled by MAMF’s 2020-2022 Writer-in-Residence Valerie Bonham Moon, editors Circe Olson Woessner and Allen Dale Olson, and illustrator Joan Y. Olson, this book is a companion to Schooling with Uncle Sam, MAMF’s tribute to the 75th anniversary of the Department of Defense world-wide school system for the children of military personnel. Schooling is available on Amazon.
HOST NATION HOSPITALITY is available on Amazon and other book retailers.
Some quotes from the anthology:
“When they asked me for my “shot record,” I was bewildered as I had never had a shot in my life. That first day, they gave me Tetanus, Small Pox, Yellow Fever, and a TB test. Thankfully, no horrible reaction resulted!”
“The village custom is to gather everyone together during the Qingming Festival for a communal dinner, a ‘block party’ as it is known in the USA. We walked down the road to the community center where dozens of tables and red plastic chairs were waiting for the entire population of Baiqi.”
“The first night my mother went to cook dinner in our new flat, we learned a lot! For starters…there was a coin-fed meter in the cabinet under the stove burners. When Mother went to cook, she first had to feed the meter a few coins. If cooking took longer than expected, and she used up her gas purchase, the gas burners on the stove would start to go “pop-pop-pop” as the gas ran out. Like most folks back then, we learned to keep a cup in a drawer near the stove with coins to feed the meter.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“The motto, E Pluribus Unum, means ‘out of many, one.’ The museum’s latest project E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE Under Pressure — gives title and substance to a newly-released multi-faceted study exploring if the many do indeed become one,” Dr. Circe Olson Woessner, Executive Director of the Museum of the American Military Family (MAMF) explains. “E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE under Pressure curates, in one volume, stories from hundreds of military-connected individuals based on their service experience seen through the lenses of GRAICE (Gender; Religion; rAce; Identity; Culture; and Ethnicity.).”
The 276-page book results from MAMF’s most ambitious undertaking to date. The museum team and the museum’s Veteran•Family•Community Collaborative used an anonymous survey and written essays to answer a series of questions based on a simple theme: How do MANY become ONE without losing ONESELF. “How,” Woessner asks, “do we unite in service and still keep our personhood?”
The “GRAICE Project” involved hundreds of people, including a team of university anthropologists who analyzed the data and sorted it into specific categories in line with topics in the book. In addition to the book, the museum will present a series of podcasts and social media stories.
The book contains art by Brandon Palma, a military brat artist, and compositions by the museum’s two Writers-in-Residence, Valerie Bonham Moon and Connie Kinsey, who wrote essays on single-word prompts. Woessner adds that “almost two dozen other military-connected authors aged 9 to 91 also wrote essays on the same topics –almost like chapter bookends– different generations and perspectives, and these varied voices tell their stories, the good, the bad, the in-between, and the truly awful!”
“During the first 14 years of my life,” Connie Kinsey says, “I had 24 home addresses and experienced things much different from my civilian counterparts. This project is a serious look at life in a military environment as experienced by Brats like me. The stories are heartwarming, thought-provoking, and insightful. This book should be read in small doses, picked up, set down, digested, and revisited.” Valerie Bonham Moon adds, “It’s also a professional analysis of contemporaneous social pressure that affects the people affiliated with the services.”
The project was grant-funded, in part, by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New Mexico Humanities Council, and the McCune Foundation.
Woessner says that proceeds from this book and other MAMF publications help support the museum’s literary projects and residency programs. To buy a copy of E Pluribus Unum, please click the link:
The museum will be releasing E Pluribus Unum: GRAICE Under Pressure in late July 2022. This is part of a multimedia project exploring Gender, Religion, Race, Identity, Culture and Ethnicity in the military/family. In October 2022, look for the companion anthology to Schooling with Uncle Sam to be published. Host Nation Hospitality explores relationships and memories of life overseas. Additionally, the museum will launch its exhibit by the same name in late fall 2022.
