Tracey L. Thompson, author of Fatropolis, sent me some questions to be answered via email. I will answer them tomorrow on this blog.
In FatLand (2): The Early Days, the archivists use interviews as a way to authenticate and add to the information they have gleaned from written sources. They find, to their surprise, that there were two logical sides to the question of whether FatLand should stay a territory or become a state.
A little extra wink and knowledge tidbit here: If any of you have seen The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, you may recognize that the Convention scene: in FatLand: The Early Days was in many ways a rewrite/re-visioning of the Statehood Convention in the movie. Most FatLanders who cared enough to be politically active cared enough about the fate of FatLand to vote for it to remain a territory instead of becoming a state. Ironically, in this instance, the last thing most FatLand citizens wanted was for FatLand to have to follow the directives of the Health and Diet Laws that ruled at this point on The Other Side/USA.
Yet later in the book, Vespa raises some issues around territoriality. She points out that if they had decided to go for statehood, they would have had roads, electricity and infrastructure way faster than they actually obtained them, and that they would have had to accept funding from Winston Stark, whose love-hate affair with FatLand started around then.
But as many people pointed out, most people in FatLand at the time did not regard statehood as an option.
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