Vintage Valentine’s Day postcard depicting a swallow carrying a love note.

Stories Hold Power

CONNECTING PAST AND FUTURE
“The revelations about my father shook my sense of my own life’s trajectory to its foundations. I felt drawn into a reconsideration of where I came from and how I got to where I am now.” William Damon on learning about the father he never knew, plus the undeniable value of life review.

RELEVANCE CORRELATES TO MEANING
“When we hear stories from family members about their experiences, we usually ruminate longest over the ones that feel the most familiar to us.” Family stories have enduring value. Some you share now may not be relevant enough for your kids to care. But one day they will see themselves in your stories.

In the News

HISTORY UNDERFOOT
Before NYC’s Central Park came to be, Seneca Village was home to the largest number of African American property owners in New York before the Civil War. History of those who lived there is currently being researched and uncovered. “All we can do is honor the past,” says one descendant. “Nothing covered can ever get healed.”

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS TO INSPIRE
Timed to The New Yorker’s ninety-seventh anniversary, the magazine has curated an eclectic selection of profiles from their archive, including a 1929 portrait of Edith Wharton, a 2007 profile of innovative artist Kara Walker, and a 1996 exploration of Anatole Broyard’s choice to deny his true identity. This one’s worth bookmarking and coming back to frequently.

AFRICATOWN DOCUMENTARY
Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson discovered during a 2017 episode of PBS's Finding Your Roots that his ancestors were among those smuggled into the U.S. on the Clotilda in 1860. He has since produced a film, now screening at Sundance, called Descendant, that tells the story of descendants of the last known slave ship to America.

Experts with Memory-Keeping Tips

READY, SET, ACTION!
“There’s a lot to keep track of when filming a loved one, but each step adds an important layer toward creating a memory that ensures your loved one looks good, sounds good, and feels comfortable telling their incredible stories.” Tips from Austin–based Sacred Stories for capturing your family stories on film.

PRESERVATION TIPS
“I started asking questions during our monthly family Zoom calls and it opened Pandora’s box.” African American museum experts and family historians offer their best advice for preserving memories for future generations.

FROM PRINT TO PIXELS
Mali Bain, a custom publisher located in British Columbia, has put together a thorough list of options for digitizing family photos, with notes on how to choose which is right for your own project.

In Their Own Voice

BIRTHDAY TELEGRAMS, POEMS, PHOTOS
A major collection of James Joyce documents and books has been donated to the University of Reading. “Together with a lot of the personal items and the letters that he wrote to [his son] Stephen, it really shows Joyce as a family man, not just this literary giant. A lot of these items show him at his most human.”

LISTENING TO MLK
As part of the Saving Stories series, Doug Boyd, director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in the UK Libraries, highlights an extraordinary 1964 interview between Kentucky author Robert Penn Warren and Martin Luther King, Jr. at the height of his influence.

WORDS FROM A GRIEVING FATHER
“I’ve got to write and tell somebody about some stuff and, like I long ago told Larry, you’re the best backboard I know. So indulge me a little; I am but hurt.” After his son died in a tragic accident, Ken Kesey wrote this letter recounting the last day of his child’s life.

Reflecting Back: Words on Paper

THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ESSAY
“Perhaps nothing has so shaped the contemporary practice of essay writing as the rise of the personal essay.” Jackson Arn on “why personal essays have moved from the corner of the party to the center,” for better or for worse.

WORLD OF THE BOOK 2022
Not all stories live in books, of course, but books were indeed the first means of recording our histories, and the State Library of Victoria in Australia has launched an exhibition tracing the book’s journey through space and time. Browse the digital exhibit, and watch below as a senior librarian discusses how the evolution of the book has revolutionized the way we take in information and ideas:

From Whence Stories Emerge

YOUR SENTIMENTAL STUFF
“Letting go of an item can feel like letting go of a memory, and the tension between wanting to own fewer things and wanting to hold onto memories can be paralyzing.” Cat Saunders on how to declutter sentimental items.

IN PICTURES
“The family album is almost a kind of folk art. It was a way to make order: to understand ourselves, our families and our communities.” Filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris on discovering shared humanity through family photos.

“FOOD HAS ALWAYS BEEN ITS OWN KIND OF MEMORY”
“Food is sustenance, culture, environment, economics and politics. Food will always be at the heart of people’s stories.” Charmaine Wilkerson, author of the novel Black Cake, on the unbreakable connection between our stories and the things we eat.

THE LETTERS PROJECT
After her mother died, Eleanor Reissa made a discovery at the back of her mother’s lingerie drawer: 56 letters handwritten in German by her father in 1949—only four years after Auschwitz—to her mother, also a refugee, already living in the U.S. Thirty years later, with her father’s letters as her guide, Reissa went on a journey into the past. Here she is in conversation about the memoir that resulted: