Synopsis
I'm History ... but do I repeat myself? is a memoir by Lee Knapp, a Southern woman who grew up in the suburban world of Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy. When she returned to teach history at her old high school there, she found it had transformed from being almost all-white to one of the most diverse in the state. This unforeseen turn in her life produced a memoir of her own personal transformation. She would leave the certainty of an evangelical youth, leave her marriage of over three decades, begin a second-chance relationship with a colleague, and reckon with the complicity of her beloved grandmother in America's story of racial injustice. Knapp writes eloquently about the difficulty of squaring her grandmother's positive influence with that same woman’s eagerness to see the mutilated bodies of two Black men after they had been lynched in her small town. In her college years, Knapp also recounts how she fell under the spell of a charismatic pastor until he accused her of harboring "the spirit of Jezebel," which began a long struggle to find a broader expression of her faith. Woven throughout the book is the long history of accommodating a spouse's unreliability and self-destructive behavior which took a toll on her health and dreams until it became unsustainable.
Written with relatable historical parallels, enlightening classroom scenes, and absurd, at times dark, humor, this memoir of one Southern American woman in midlife, "carries intellectual and emotional weight, and as such stands out from the crowd of beat-by-beat life story recollections." (review below) It is a memoir of reckoning with a beloved. In that, it is Knapp's memoir, but it is also an account for our times, one that may not repeat history, but, as Twain said, it definitely rhymes.
About the Author
Educator and entrepreneur Lee Knapp was born in 1957, the loudest reverberation of the Baby Boom. She was raised in suburban Richmond, Virginia where the symbols and legacy of the Civil War defined that city. After graduating from high school in America's bicentennial year, she went on to study history at the historic College of William and Mary, where it was not uncommon to see Patrick Henry, George Wythe, or James Monroe throwing back beers at the Greenleaf Cafe before riding their mopeds off towards Jamestown Road. Despite a professor's admonition that "there's no future in history," Knapp's life has been unavoidably circumscribed by it.
After graduating from college, Knapp began teaching history in her home county in 1980 and by 1986 had three sons. She took a seventeen year hiatus from education during which she began an art business, creating whimsical teapots, relief sculptures of area colleges, and precise architectural replicas of private homes out of clay.
In early 2003, she published a book of fifteen essays through Baker Books called Grace in the First Person. In the fall of that year, she returned to a classroom at her alma mater to teach modern European and US history, and Theory of Knowledge, essentially epistemology, as part of the rigorous International Baccalaureate program. In 2008, she launched her second business, grammarRULES! a line of plates, mugs, and greeting cards that addresses grammatical pet peeves with a wry, slightly judgmental tone.
Knapp retired from public education in 2021 and now lives in rural Virginia, reveling in the beauty of the horses and mountains across the street. She also revels in the beauty of the lives of her sons and their families, who still endlessly fascinate her.
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