Life Story Links: February 28, 2023
“I have always encouraged collecting memories—it helps people form a connection with something that makes their lives more meaningful.”
—Martha Stewart
Vintage illustration of diners at the Hotel St. Regis in New York City, circa 1905, courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
First person narratives, for the record
“AMERICA’S MISSING STORIES”
Julieanna Richardson has been preserving Black Americans’ first-person stories for decades. The digital archive she created “had grown so vast, the collection so significant, the Library of Congress agreed to become its permanent repository.” Explore The History Makers archive here, and learn about Richardson’s extraordinary journey here and below:
SCHOLARLY RESEARCH INTO FAMILY MEMORY
A new study “focuses on how memory is constructed, communicated, accomplished, negotiated, and hindered in the family context” in a changing media environment.
PANDEMIC PROJECT
“Most Americans think they know the story of the pandemic. But when I immersed myself in a Covid oral-history project, I realized how much we’re still missing.” One reporter delves into the stupefyingly large archive.
“IT IS MY JOB TO SHARE OUR STORIES”
“Lately, I’ve wondered how my son will view Black History Month. I don’t want him to feel like his history is an aside. I want him to know that his history is a part of who he is.”
Artifacts of collective memory
A NEW LIFE FOR HEIRLOOMS
Don’t let your family mementos sit in boxes collecting dust, advises Clémence Scouten. On the blog for The Biographers Guild of Greater New York, she shares tips to curate family artifacts and preserve their stories in a book.
LOST AND FOUND
The result of one man’s extraordinary efforts, the Museum of Lost Memories helps reunite misplaced family mementos with their owners. Listen in to “the Sherlock of TikTok” as he describes his why:
FOLLOWING THE VISUAL CLUES
A photo album found on the shrapnel-strewn beaches of Okinawa in 1945 made an incredible journey across decades and an ocean, with serendipitous help from a friend of a friend of a friend…
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Even photos with no context submitted by community members of Black Archives are “still filled with stories. I think it’s so beautiful when people recognize something in that photograph that resonates with them, and they think back to their childhood...”
REVEALING RESEARCH, RESPONSIBLE STORYTELLING
“To create the narrative, I had the mindset of ‘start chipping away at the archives.’ In the end, we wanted to display the truth being an equally painful and uplifting story because that is the history of the continuous battle for racial equality.”
Memoir through various lenses
ART APPRECIATION
“My heart is full, my heart is breaking, and I badly want to stand still a while,” Patrick Bringley writes in his memoir, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, reviewed here.
FOOD AS A PORTAL TO THE PAST
“There’s a cozy vibe, like a church supper cookbook (with famous congregants),” writes this reviewer of My First Popsicle: An Anthology of Food and Feelings edited by Zosia Mamet, a collection of personal essays that explore memories and identity through food.
A HOUSE WITH MEMORIES
On a recent meandering through the archives of The New Yorker, I encountered this wonderful piece by Jamaica Kincaid. “It is only now that I can think of the luxury of a man’s children choosing to dispose of the substantial things he might have left for them, choosing to keep only the recipes for pies and cuttings of old roses—choosing memories, as opposed to the real thing, the house.”
THE CHALLENGES OF PERSONAL NARRATIVE
“I’ve been writing about myself and my family for two decades, but masking it in fiction. And that made it easy. But now I’m putting myself out on Front Street. Who do I write about? Who don’t I write about?” After 15 books, Bernice McFadden says her first memoir is the most difficult thing she’s ever written.
Miscellaneous
RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
Last week I shared a detailed primer on how to create your own heritage cookbook, from recipe gathering and testing to editing, designing, and printing your family cookbook.
TWO JEWISH KIDS AND AN IDEA
“From time to time, Joe would pause and look in the mirror, striking a pose or screwing up his face he imagined a character would make, then go back to his paper and try to re-create it.” The bedroom origins of Superman.
AUTOMATED “MEMORIES”
“When your smartphone tosses up a photo memory, it’s a bit of a crapshoot. Sometimes you get to…enjoy a compilation of your children’s birthday parties over the years. Other times, it’s heartache.”
...and a few more links
March is Women’s History Month, and this year’s theme is “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories.”
an interview with Annie Brewster, co-author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma, and Loss
Review: NYC Storefronts by Joel Holland, a book of colorful pencil drawings of well- and lesser-known mom and pop shops around greater New York.
Arthur Balfour’s parents’ love letters published by the National Records of Scotland
Read an excerpt from the new memoir Sink: A Memoir by Joseph Earl Thomas.
Short takes
