Book review of On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

Origin stories also matter, Gordon-Reed reminds us, for the Indigenous people who populated the American landscape before Europeans arrived; they matter to those who came seeking religious freedom; and they matter for those who declared independence and settled on land that was not originally theirs. Telling the stories of our nation through conflict, annihilation, negotiation, slavery, war and freedom is to tell history through the people who shaped it. “The American story is,” she rightly claims, “endlessly complicated.”