All three tales of identity involve the subject manipulating the perceptions of others in order to achieve an important goal. The 3 authors, however, go about presenting these diverse identities in different ways using different sources. David Waldstreicher’s analysis of 18th-century slave runaways employs primarily ads placed by those runaways’ owners in newspapers. This type of source is fascinating – and informative for his goals – because he manages to tease out the various characteristics and identities of their slave that the owners either preferred to project, or, in some cases, were forced reluctantly to acknowledge. Waldstreicher also explored the depths of the runaway’s alternate identities – often as free men – and explained how they used various signals, such as literacy, language use, and advanced skills to pass as people who were free. The very idea of passing brings up extremely interesting questions about identity – if someone can change their identity at will, how can one account for identity at all?
One of the most important lessons to be learned from all of these articles is the importance of recognizing the many layers of identity that one person may consider part of himself or herself, or that one source may acknowledge. In Gay New York, for example, one of the crucial takeaway points concerns the fact that what may look like one group – in this case, gay men in New York in the pre-WWII era – may in fact be made up of people who identify in very different ways. George Chauncey’s exploration of the lives that gay men led in New York served to tear down several myths of gay life in this period and show that though there were many types and identities of gay men, there was a strong, vibrant and often visible community even within the intolerant atmosphere of the pre-war period.
Chauncey spent a lot of time focusing on distinctions between different identities that gay men took on – as “queers” or “fairies” in particular – as well as the different characteristics that each of these groups took on, as well as the intersection between their gay identities and the “straight” lives that some of them also lived. Chauncey’s most interesting and informative sources were the first-hand accounts and stories he had from gay men who had lived in New York during this era, and he often used police records, news articles, and some testimony from “normal” people in New York as a backdrop to these primary sources.
In her book on Confidence Men in the 19th century, Karen Halttunen uses the writings of a particular set of people – primarily advice books from the leaders of American society – to account for the changing identities associated with young men, and all of America, in the time of the confidence man. More important than any individual identities, Halttunen’s study of confidence men and the boys they preyed upon reveal the changing identity of America. The identity of young men, leaving home and community for the first time to join urban life, was changing drastically, and the writers of advice books was blaming these changes on confidence men. Halttunen uses her sources to suggest that these changes were not merely the doing of these confidence men, but were part of the changing fabric of America and American identity. Halttunen’s sources may not have covered every aspect of the identity of these confidence men, as she did not include anything written by any self-proclaimed confidence man or by any young man entering urban life. The advice books written had a very clear slant that Halttunen uses in her explanations – the authors were often some of the leaders of society and worried that their leadership would soon be ignored. Though it would have been interesting to read some accounts from confidence men themselves, they probably would have been very difficult, if even possible, to obtain based on the fact that confidence men were not open about their motives or intentions