Memories Matter
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Life Story Links: August 31, 2020
A wealth of reading on the value of family photos for prompting memories and stories, plus memoir writing tips and how to leave a meaningful legacy.
“One thing I have learned about remembering is that it is a social process: it happens in collaboration with other people. [My grandmother’s] memories with me may not be the same as her memories with others. The reality of remembering is always contextual.”
—Charles Fernyhough
Ah, if only the back-to-school season were as carefree as past years… Kids in an unidentified school circa 1913. Photograph by William Davis Hassler, printed from original glass plate negative, courtesy New-York Historical Society, New York Heritage Digital Collections.
Kitchen Confidential
THE STORIED RECIPE
Last week I interviewed Becky Hadeed, the story- and food-loving host of the inspiring podcast The Storied Recipe. Read about a few of my favorite episodes here (probably unsurprisingly, they’re with everyday folks about their most cherished food memories).
A LIFETIME’S WORTH OF FADED RECIPES
“My recipes tell stories. If they were pared down, edited and orderly, my memories would be, too.” Joyce Purnick makes a case for revisiting your old, grease-stained recipes every once in a while (even if you no longer cook from them).
The Power of Photographs
A PLACE FOR PICTURES
“There’s nothing wrong with storing your favorite snapshots on Instagram or in the cloud, but digitally browsing through your memories will never feel as special as taking a photo album off the shelf and physically flipping through the pages.” Amen. The Strategist showcases 10 great photo albums for every occasion.
SAVE YOUR PHOTOS MONTH
September is Save Your Photos Month, and among the 40 free virtual classes available are a few by personal historians including my own, Share the Story of Just One Photo, as well as Martie McNabb’s live Show & Tale: Where Were You On 9/11? Pre-registration is required, but you are free to watch the videos at your convenience through November 1, 2020.
SORTING YOUR FAMILY PHOTOS
“The difference between 3,000 unlabeled photos versus 300 photos organized by category can be the difference between your child learning their history or not,” Eric Niloff of photo organization company EverPresent says in this piece that provides a basic framework for getting your own mass of family photos in some semblance of order.
TREASURE HUNT
“Through experience, I have learned what does and doesn’t work when it comes to reaching out to long-lost cousins” in an effort to get family history photos that aren’t online, Melissa Knapp writes in this post with concrete tips for using descendancy research to find new (old) photos of your relatives.
“REBOOTING MEMORIES”
“People are forgetting wartime memories. We need to revitalize those old memories by using the latest method of expression and delivering it to the hearts of many people.” In this case, “melting frozen memories” via colorized photographs.
Personal Iconography
BELOVED STUFF, REBORN
“It’s so satisfying to give new life—and new purpose—to old stuff. You get to keep the memories while renewing your home.” Susan Hood of NYC–based Remarkable Life Memoirs shares some inspired ideas from her own life.
POSTER GIRL
“Even before I’d seen a single episode of Sex and the City, I was versed in the art of performative self-reflection. And then Carrie Bradshaw sashayed into my life. She didn’t just make auto-documentary look glamorous. She made it look like a job.” Brittany K. Allen uses touchstones of popular culture to walk us through her journey as a writer.
On Nonfiction Writing
ELEVATE YOUR MEMOIR
National Association of Memoir Writers is running a six-week virtual Memoir Boot Camp starting September 22 with a different teacher each session, including Jacqueline Woodson, Claire Bidwell Smith, and Larry Smith.
AN INVITATION FROM HISTORY
“The pandemic is only one of the seismic forces that converged on American life this year,” Oregon–based personal historian John Hawkins writes. “There is a certain advantage to being the one using the keyboard or the microphone instead of relying on others to record their thoughts.”
TRUTH OR DARE
“I’d done my best to get the facts correct as I wrote, but I had thousands of pages of archival documents, photos, trial transcripts, and newspaper clippings, as well as hours of interviews.” Emma Copley Eisenberg thoroughly and thoughtfully dives into the topic of fact-checking nonfiction writing.
STORY SHARING FOR NON-WRITERS
The experts at the Biographers Guild of Greater New York this week share three basic approaches you can take to ensuring your life stories are told and preserved for the next generation, even if you do not consider yourself a writer.
Legacy through Stories
A LETTER TO THE DEAD
I often tell people who are struggling to craft a meaningful tribute of their lost loved one to write a letter to them—tell the deceased directly what you loved and admired about them. This letter to John Lewis in the wake of his recent passing is a sublime example of this approach.
“MY FAMILY’S SHROUDED HISTORY”
“Inhibited by the silences in our families, we turn to books. But here was something rare: the answers to questions I hadn’t known how to ask, and a way to map my family’s stories into what I had learned of this history, each illuminating the other,” Alexander Chee writes.
THEIR PAPU
Ricardo Ovilla “lives on in his granddaughters’ stories. To them, he will always be the tender hearted, marimba-loving, menudo aficionado who stopped at nothing to see his children laugh. They knew him simply as ‘Papu.’ ” Listen in below:
DIASPORA, RECONSTRUCTED
“My Kashmiri grandmother is illiterate. I wonder what she’d say if she knew her progeny wrote her unsent letters, wrote so she wouldn’t be lost to history. My grandmother, all four feet and nine inches of her. Housewife. Teen bride. When she video calls, she stares at my father and she cries and she cries.” High school student Yasmeen Khan on her fractured provenance.
...and a Few More Links
Photographs of generations of Black suffragists crafted narratives and became “decidedly civic currency.”
A look at an array of services for creating a digital legacy for a lost loved one
Watch Thomas Allen Harris in dialogue with Marci Brennan, a professional photo organizer, followed by a Labor Day–themed community photo share.
Colorful murals help prompt memories for people with dementia.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: August 11, 2020
On the craft of life story writing, commemorating lives lost, enticing memoir excerpts, digital preservation tips & more recommended reads for memory keepers.
“We have become a generation of unstorytellers…. We need to return to the campfire. And we can. It’s as simple as saying to someone, Tell me the story of your life. And when they’re finished, say, I’d like to tell you mine.”
—Bruce Feiler, Life Is in the Transitions
Postman, 1896. Photograph courtesy The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Saving Family Stories
A LITTLE MYSTERY
If you are unsure about an ancestor’s real life, don’t flesh out their story with conjecture and imagination, suggests Patricia Pihl, a personal historian based in Western New York. “Transparency will bring clarity to the picture of our lives, a true gift for future generations.”
(NON)TRADITIONS
Nashville–based family historian Taneya Y. Koonce wonders “I don’t have family traditions. Or do I?” Her take: “Recording facts and snippets about relationships and values for future generations can add as much to your family story as passing down the ways your family celebrates the holidays or other more conventionally considered traditions.”
Gone but Not Forgotten
LIFE CELEBRATIONS
As part of StoryCorps’ efforts to help people commemorate lives lost during the Covid-19 pandemic they have put together a two-page guide with genuinely helpful advice for setting up and recording a memorial conversation.
STORIES FROM POST-LOSS LIFE
“Before [my mom and grandmom] died I hadn’t even thought to attempt making a brisket or kugel or kasha and bowties, but afterward I felt this deep urgency to learn how to carry the tradition forward.” Rebecca Soffer talks to Allison Gilbert about keeping lost loved ones’ memories alive.
Inside the Issues: Recent Magazines & Books of Note
LIBRARY LOVE
The new issue of Broadside, the magazine of the Library of Virginia, includes an array of summery images from their digital collections, the intriguing ancestry of former football player Torrey Smith, a behind-the-scenes look at their Conservation Lab (with tips for preserving family papers), and a spotlight on a new book that finds the untold stories—“real-life human dramas”—within historical records.
IN A TIME OF WAR
Coby Blom-de Groot was 15 years old when her parents brought home a baby to shelter during the German occupation of Holland in 1943. She kept a diary about the child, including photographs and anecdotes, for her parents to read when they could be reunited. “That precious diary confirmed for me that Ria…was deeply loved,” her sister Sonja said. Read the whole issue of Yad Vashem Jerulsalem magazine, in which this story appears.
MEANING-MAKING THROUGH STORY
We’re in the midst of a collective “lifequake,” and author Bruce Feiler has help for how to navigate the uncertainties that come with all this change (hint: there might be some storytelling involved). Why you should read Life Is in the Transitions.
Recommended First-Person Reads
MARRIAGE STORY
“He was in New York, and I was in Seattle, but we had credit cards. We’d deal with the consequences later. The first time we kissed was in the kitchen of my apartment, against the closed door of the dishwasher in mid-cycle. Everything whirred.” Read an excerpt from The Fixed Stars: A Memoir by Molly Wizenberg
POETIC LICENSE
“Dad hadn’t been surprised when I’d told him I was interested in reading through his letters; he assumed everyone would be.” Read a brief yet enticing excerpt from Gretchen Cherington’s memoir of growing up with poet laureate Richard Eberhart as her father.
In Pictures
“WHO IS THAT?”
Bill Shapiro has shelf upon shelf of found photos sorted into archival boxes. “I love these pictures,” he writes. “I also hate them. They remind me of time going by. They remind me of what I had and what’s gone.” Read more about the strange lure of other people’s photos.
DIGITAL PRESERVATION
As an early supporter of Permanent.org I have uploaded photographs to their archive and am following their journey as a nonprofit dedicated to creating “a new paradigm for secure cloud storage.” I believe their mission is worthwhile—low-cost, long-term digital storage for anyone “leveraging the same funding models used by museums, libraries, and universities for centuries.” Read about how they reached their phase 1 fundraising goal; get started with a free gigbyte of storage; or add space as you need it ($10 per gig).
...and a Few More Links
In the latest issue of Creative Nonfiction: Lee Gutkind on memoir now
Why we reach for nostalgia in times of crisis.
A family historian’s process for making ancestor books
Milwaukee–based personal historian Mary Voell announces virtual guided autobiography classes beginning in September.
Milan Kundera will donate his archive to his hometown library, in Brno, Czech Republic.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: July 28, 2020
Lots about memoir (writing and reading), free learning opportunities, the complexities of family history, and, of course, recommended first-person reads.
“I will always believe that storytelling matters, that glimpses of lives different than ours—whether they come through images or stories—have the potential to change us by opening the world to us and fostering compassion. We are so much better when we listen to each other.”
—Vikki Reich
With professional baseball’s opening day pushed back from March 26 to July 23, our national pastime is getting a late start this year due to Covid-19. This vintage photo celebrates the Negro National League Champions of 1935, the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Photograph courtesy Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
On Craft
THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF MEMOIR
“It was really rewarding when my 60-year-old Italian mother-in-law, who I adore, said she saw herself in parts of the book. We’re completely different, and yet, my narrative joined us.” Davon Loeb, author of the lyrical memoir The In-Betweens, addresses the idea of finding universality in individual stories and filling in the gaps of his memories without fictionalizing.
WHERE TO BEGIN?
It's important to focus your life story writing on themes that both hold real meaning for you and that you feel will resonate with your family. Last week I wrote about how to identify impactful themes for your memoir.
“THINK SPECIFIC, THINK SMALL”
“One of the most common concerns we hear from prospective clients is that first-person writing seems intimidating, maybe even overwhelming. And one of our most common responses is to break a project down into bite-size pieces,” Samantha Shubert of NYC–based Remarkable Life Memoirs advises.
Time-Sensitive Offerings
GRIEF IN THE SEASON OF COVID
The workshop series “Remembering Our Loved Ones During an Unprecedented Time” from author and grief expert Allison Gilbert continues tonight at 8pm ET with a session discussing ways to meaningfully organize your family photos; and on August 4 with a topic of clearing clutter while staying connected to heirlooms that hold stories.
LIKE HIDDEN CAPTIONS
Learn best practices for adding metadata to photos so your pictures are tagged with names, dates, and other identifying info that make it easier for you to find them when you need them (and so future generations will know who's in the pictures, too). This one-hour class is free for now ($49 value).
LIMITED FREE SHOWING
The Public Theater’s The Line, a documentary-style play, is available to watch free until August 4, 2020: Crafted from firsthand interviews with medical first responders during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Line stars Lorraine Toussaint, Alison Pill, John Ortiz and other actors who bring their stories to life. I highly recommend finding the time to view this original work by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen which has been called “immediate and urgent” and “stinging with truth.”
Lorraine Toussaint in The Line, available to view free on The Public Theater’s YouTube channel through August 4. Actors speak directly to the camera using words captured from interviews with real-life first responders to powerful effect.
Family History Finds
A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE DURING COVID
The ranks of amateur genealogists have grown during the coronavirus pandemic, and they’re boring their sheltered relatives, reports the Wall Street Journal. “Genealogy is boring. But everyone loves a good story and family history is filled with very good stories.” Personal historians suggest focusing on the scandals you unearth to drum up interest.
WRITE IT OUT
You never know how recording your own story will impact others, but you can always know that your story is important—it matters!” This short blog from RootsTech offers up ideas for journaling during hard times.
PHOTO MEMORIES
Seeing her precious family photo, damaged in Hurricane Harvey, now fully restored and framed, one woman declared that maybe “I can be restored back to new,” too. Watch students working with Adobe’s “The Future Is Yours” program return lost memories to their owners in the moving video below. (While this recording is two years old now, I am sharing (a) because it’s refreshingly inspiring to see pre-pandemic hugs and (b) because you can volunteer for the ongoing program to help others.)
First Person Stories that Resonate
BLACK AND WHITE
“When I told my father I was going to marry Jake he said, ‘If you marry that man you will never set foot in this house again.’” Mixed-race couples from four generations in Britain tell their stories.
HISTORY REMEMBERED
Only about two percent of the men and women who served in the American armed forces from 1941 to 1945 are still alive. This piece gathers stories from participants in some of World War II’s most iconic moments, including from the only surviving witness of the German surrender signing.
In the Telling
WHOSE AUTHENTICITY?
“What I know for sure is that in order to create new ways of being, Native peoples must reclaim and revalidate the truth in our stories,” Taylor Hensel writes in this piece on indigenous ways of being and the idea of narrative as power.
THE IMMEDIACY OF THE MOMENT
“The velocity of my mother’s death and my distance from it all feel like a death in brackets. There is no touch, no contact, no final conversations, no holding the hand of the dying.” Jennifer Spitzer on losing her mother to Covid-19 and reading Virginia Woolf.
UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER
“I was in Italy, having lunch with friends, and one of them brought out a volume of Borges stories—he happened to be reading them. I said, ‘Let me tell you about my travels with Borges through the highlands of Scotland,’” Jay Parini writes. His friend told him to write a book; Borges and Me: An Encounter comes out in August.
A POET TURNS HER HAND TO MEMOIR
“I took with me what I had cultivated all those years: mute avoidance of my past, silence and willed amnesia buried deep in me like a root.” Natasha Trethewey on the seven-year process of writing her mother's story in Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir.
...and a Few More Links
How to curate your family photo slideshows like a professional photo editor
Alex Trebek “has written a memoir of consummate caginess.”
Creative tributes in place of a traditional memorial service
Autobiographical writing prompt: the story of everyday things
We’re all field workers in the effort to document the (many) happenings of this year.
Local newspaper turns the spotlight on Massachusetts–based family history film company Second Avenue Video.
Maryland–based personal historian Pat McNees offers up an anti-racism reading list.
On learning to decipher her father’s past in Nazi Germany, and the nuances of family history
Short Takes
Life Story Links: July 14, 2020
This week's reading: Finding humanity and connection via story sharing; archiving your family papers; and a plethora of first-person narratives worth your time.
“Families are united more by mutual stories—of love and pain and adventure—than by biology. ‘Do you remember when …’ bonds people together far more than shared chromosomes…a family knows itself to be a family through its shared stories.”
—Daniel Taylor
Board games play a starring role in many of our Covid diaries. This vintage photo shows the Herbster youngsters in Elizabeth, New Jersey, circa 1941. Photograph courtesy United States Office for Emergency Management, courtesy Library of Congress.
Finding Humanity & Connection via Story Sharing
HERITAGE, NOT HATE
When his family gathered after a funeral to share stories, a young Andrew Taylor-Troutman made sure to stay within earshot. “Stories are some of the best prayers,” he writes in this column in which he argues for heritage, not hate: “As a white person, I have the ability to be selective about Southern history. I could focus only upon my personal history." Alas, he does not.
“CAN I ASK YOU A QUESTION, BUBBE?”
Last week I wrote about a free guide I created with my 10-year-old son at the beginning of the pandemic, reiterating that kids can—and should—connect with grandparents intentionally, even after a loosening on social distancing guidance allows them hugs (and the ability to take one another for granted likely sinks back in).
EMPOWERING KIDS
“One thing that we have learned from decades of research in The Family Narratives Lab at Emory University is that family stories provide a foundation for feeling emotionally safe and secure for children,” Robyn Fivush, Ph.D., writes in this piece on how family stories can help us cope during the Covid-19 crisis.
Behind-the-Scenes Glimpses
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Are you working from home, too? Join Samantha Shubert of New York–based Remarkable Life Memoirs as she strives to achieve work/life balance—complete with ghostwriting, Zoom meetings, and (of course) a lot of coffee.
SHOW & TALES
“It’s like Antiques Roadshow meets The Moth,” Martie McNabb says of her signature story sharing events, dubbed Show & Tales. See how she helps other legacy professionals, and how she continues to “be of service” during the pandemic with virtual live events.
FULL CIRCLE MOMENT
StoryCorps’ recent animated video short, “My Aunties” (watch it below) documents one man’s experience of the AIDS crisis. Peek behind the scenes as the illustrator shares a glimpse of how the subject’s story intersects with his own.
First Person Stories Worth Hearing
BEEF STROGANOFF
“I have a Carl Reiner story that I hold very dear to me. I figured I'd share it today, on the day of his passing, because I hope it will bring some other people some joy the way it does me,” Matthew Rosenberg wrote on Twitter. Read the full story thread here—if you’re anything like me, it’ll bring you some joy, too, just as Rosenberg intended.
A LIFE STOLEN
John Hardy was seven years old when he witnessed his uncle kill a prominent white plantation owner in self-defense in 1925 Louisiana. Decades later, as the last family member with firsthand knowledge, he was interviewed to memorialize his account. Read about this story of racial injustice and resilience here.
ODE TO THE DADS
Los Angeles–based oral historian Ellie Kahn collected a few of her favorite stories about fathers to celebrate Father’s Day for the Jewish Journal.
FAMILY MYTHOLOGY
“I will likely never know which parts of Africa my ancestors were taken from.... But some accident of history gave me a last name that's actually pretty uncommon—one that I could use to track down a small part of my family's history.” Read part one of Leah Donnella’s ancestry story here, then click below to listen in as she gets to the bottom of her grandfather’s mysterious origin story.
Passing on Family History
SILENCES DOWN THE LINE
“In 2000, the way people got bad news wasn’t so different than how they got it back in 1929 when my great-grandmother was confined to a hospital bed.” Rachel Beanland on some of her family’s secrets, and why hiding them isn’t necessarily a kindness.
YOUR FAMILY ARCHIVE
“It is hard to know what of your family’s ‘archives’ to digitize, what to hold onto, what to get rid of, or even how to get started doing any of these things,” Philadelphia–based personal historian Clémence Scouten writes in this “ultimate guide” to archiving your family collection.
...and a Few More Links
The Mandela effect: how groups of people can all remember the wrong thing
FamilyScrybe has released its second issue of articles by and for family history researchers.
A fun oral history of Truman Capote’s legendary Black and White Ball
The souvenirs of everyday life provide a head-start on your memoir.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: June 30, 2020
Lots about letters (the old-fashioned kind—handwritten & stamped), plus the future of family history, communicating with our elders, and mini first-person reads.
“To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves…We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love, and die.”
—Alice Walker
Vintage postcard of a beach scene of the past (social distancing was clearly not SOP of the day!). “Beach Scene Along Woodland Beach, Staten Island, N.Y.” Courtesy Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library.
Our Lives, Our Stories
WHAT TESTIMONY CARRIES
“There were these families around the world where my grandmother’s survival had essentially become folklore in their families, the way that her survival had become folklore in my life,” says Rachael Cerrotti, co-producer of the arresting podcast We Share the Same Sky, in this exploration of “The Power of Testimony in a Digital Age” from USC Shoah Foundation.
OUT OF THE CLOSET
Hey memories—come out, come out, wherever you are! Last week I wrote about how to use family photos, heirlooms, and the "stuff" of your past to elicit memories and chronicle the stories of your life.
GENEALOGICAL TREASURE TROVE
“A funeral is, among many highly emotional things, an opportunity to consecrate someone’s life as historical fact, and to commit that truth to the public record.” A new archive digitizes more than a century of Black American funeral programs, including lives lived from before the Civil War to today.
“INDEPENDENT LIVING”
“On March 15, the assisted living facility where my mother lives went into lockdown to attempt to prevent the spread of Covid-19,” writes personal historian Sarah White, who describes herself as a member of a cohort of daughters who are lifelines to the world for these elders. “For nearly everyone, that lifeline was severed that day in March. I am still allowed in: What I see is breaking my heart.”
THE FUTURE OF FAMILY HISTORY
From an article in the latest issue of the New York Researcher: “A fundamental shift from collecting names and dates to gathering stories over the past decade appears to be here to stay…” Indeed.
In Letters
THE AGE OF PROPER CORRESPONDENCE
“Each day when the mail carrier arrives, I find myself longing for a surprise letter—a big, juicy one,” Dwight Garner writes. “I do trade big, juicy emails with some people in my life, but receiving them isn’t quite the same as slitting open a letter, taking it to a big chair and settling in for the 20 minutes it takes to devour it.”
“I THOUGHT I KNEW THEM”
How much does anyone ever know about the experiences that shaped our parents? As Nancy Barnes rummages through letters her parents wrote to one another in the earliest years of their courtship, she ponders this. “My mother’s handwriting is bold and loopy, almost wild—quite unlike the neat orderly hand I knew all my life.”
AN ENCHANTING ENCOUNTER
“Sometimes I take out your letters & verses, dear friend, and...rejoice in the rare sparkles of light,” Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote to Emily Dickinson. This book excerpt captures their first face-to-face meeting after eight years of letter writing.
...and a Few More Links
Australian storytelling project helps participants re-imagine their past and invent new ways to see their stories.
Personal Historians NW group has recorded an estimated 500 “slices of life” among them.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: June 16, 2020
Our things hold stories, our stories hold meaning, and black stories matter as much as ever; plus pieces on how to plan a life story book & write a legacy letter.
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
—Zora Neale Hurston
Civil rights marchers carrying banner reading “We March with Selma” lead the way as 15,000 parade in Harlem, March 1965. Photograph by Stanley Wolfson for World Telegram & Sun, courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The Thing about Our Things
TREASURE IN THE ATTIC
Sheltering in place has given some families extra time to explore long forgotten spaces in their homes—as well as the proximate family history. “Every time we find something I get to hear so many stories. I haven’t been recording them, but I should.”
DISCOVERING HERITAGE THROUGH FAMILY PHOTOS
“My grandmother explained to me the stories behind each photo, from the people in it to what was going on in the world the day it was taken. I wasn’t sure what I was more impressed with: how sharp her memory was or how well she had managed to keep so many photos from the past organized.”
LISTEN IN
“Sharing the story of the ‘things’ in our lives can help us share the past with our family,” Maureen Taylor says in her introduction to a podcast episode with guest Martie McNabb, founder of Show and Tales. My favorite thing she talks about: the difference between storytelling and “story sharing.”
Expert Tips
THREE-STEP PLAN
It’s not a simple thing to undertake a life story project, but it needn’t be overly complicated, either. Last week I shared three steps to make your life story book project proceed as efficiently and smoothly as possible.
LIFE LESSONS
A legacy letter, also known as an ethical will, is “a way to soul-search what I want the rest of my footprint to look like. What do I stand for?”
Black Stories Matter
#SHAREBLACKSTORIES
“It wasn’t until the beginning of high school that my dad started opening up to me about his experience as a black man living in America,” Rylee shares on Instagram, which is proving to be a force for sharing Black stories right now.
BLACK MOTHERHOOD IN SLEEPLESS TIMES
“As he sleeps his mouth moves as if he is still nursing, still tethered to me. I look at his perfect face, watch his mouth dance, and try not to think this is the safest he will ever be,” Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili writes in this powerful piece on (so much more than) sleep-training her baby.
STORY SNIPPET
“Dad, why do you take me to protests so much?” Two minutes and thirty-nine seconds of love and respect and conversation between a father and son in Mississippi:
ONE VOICE
“The most damaging day came when my son, at 11 years of age, had his drone picked up by a gust of wind, and deposited into the fenced back yard of a neighbor down the street,” Heather Stewman writes in this personal story of encountering racism in everyday life.
WITNESSES TO HISTORY
”Black photographers have been documenting the nationwide protests in a way that amounts to telling ‘our own history in real time,’ said Brooklyn, N.Y.-based commercial photographer Mark Clennon, ‘because our parents, and grandparents never really had a chance to have their voices heard.’”
Photograph by Alexis Hunley of a parent and child sharing a tender moment during a protest against police brutality in Los Angeles on June 6. NPR shares a series of impactful photographs from eight black photographers along with commentary on their experiences. (Click photo or link above to read full story.)
HISTORICAL TRAUMA
“[An] individual’s parents or grandparents may have stories about how their own relatives survived the Jim Crow era, narratives that were marked by terror and fear of the white community.” Mirel Zaman explains inherited trauma.
Dose of Inspiration
“REMEMBER YOU ARE ALL PEOPLE AND ALL PEOPLE ARE YOU”
“Remember the sky that you were born under, / know each of the star’s stories…” A friend recently shared with me this 1983 poem, “Remember” by poet laureate Joy Harjo, and I want to share it with you—it feels oh-so-right for this season.
TOO MUCH MEMORY, OR NOT ENOUGH?
“At first, my desire to remember was formidable, but ultimately harmless… I had lost what I loved and with each detail I unearthed, I felt like I was regaining it,” Angela Rose Brussel writes in this meditation on grieving in the digital afterlife.
...and a Few More Links
Zadie Smith wrote an entire essay collection in lockdown.
Court records “provide amazing window into past”
Is Ball Four the greatest baseball memoir ever written?
Short Takes
Life Story Links: June 2, 2020
Unique memory preservation methods including illustrated maps, birthday tributes & travel scrapbooks; plus memoir writing now, and a vintage Mary Karr interview.
“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”
—Meghan O’Rourke
Returning to Camp after a day’s fishing, Maine. Photograph courtesy The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. (1898 - 1931).
All Ways of Remembering
TAKING CARE OF TRAVEL MEMORIES
“There’s no wrong way to scrapbook, and there needn’t be any rhyme or reason, aside from what resonates with you. Whether the order is chronological or geographical, the captions hyper-specific or non-existent, the finished product is unavoidably sentimental, a reflection of the way you lived while walking (or biking, or dog-sledding) out into the world.”
BIRTHDAY LOVE
When you want to cap off a milestone birthday party with a most meaningful gift, consider an heirloom birthday tribute book oozing with love and memories. Why tribute books are so popular right now.
A COLORFUL APPROACH
An illustrated map “can be a beautiful and highly personal reflection of a place you, friends and family know quite well. It can tell a story, a personal history, or be a unique lens through which one can experience a special place.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE BASEMENT
“Dad, I just want to say, thank you for helping get rid of this virus.” In this remote video, a son thanks his father, a doctor who has been isolating from his wife and four children to shield them from exposure to Covid-19:
Write It Out
WRITING YOUR HISTORY IN REAL TIME
“Sure, today’s youth may know that Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play in the MLB. But did they know that their grandfather got a black eye from a schoolyard fight when a classmate argued that ‘[African Americans] shouldn’t play baseball?’ That makes it real.” Virginia–based personal historian Karen Bender makes a case for keeping a Covid diary.
AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE
“This is a simply stunning interview of Mary Karr from 2009,” Tim Ferriss writes. “I’ve read it multiple times, highlighted nearly every page, and saved my scans to Evernote. That’s how much goodness I think it contains. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny.”
PATCHWORK
“I wrote most of the essays as individual pieces so then it was the work of figuring out how they spoke to one another. I wanted to be aware of overlaps and gaps in the memoir arc, the narrative and consciously choose how I addressed them.” Sejal Shah on giving shape to her essay collection.
...and a Few More Links
How will we remember the pandemic? Museums are already deciding.
Anthony Bailey, memoirist and biographer of artists, died at 87.
Escape to the past with stories of NYC of old—including, perhaps, your own.
Michigan–based video biographers think now, “in the time of coronavirus,” is the perfect time to preserve your stories.
Short Takes
Life Story Links: May 19, 2020
For life story preservationists both professional & aspirational: actionable tips, inspirational biographical reads, memoir workshops, and video recommendations.
“Questions are open doors. They move you away from the stagnation of certainty into the openness of wonder.”
—Laraine Herring
As the school year comes to a close, this year in our homes, I am missing the sounds and sight of kids running around the school yard—hence the choice of this week’s vintage photo: Girls on playground, Harriet Island, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1905. Photograph courtesy Detroit Publishing Co., Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Actionable Tips
FROM A DISTANCE
California-based personal historian Rachael Rifkin writes about how to interview family members while social distancing, via Family Tree magazine.
HONORING THE DECEASED
After helping many individuals gather memories and express their love for a family member who has passed away, I have gathered my top eight tips for creating your own tribute book in honor of a lost loved one.
‘EVENTUALLY’ IS HERE
“I’ve spent years collecting intimate interviews. Take it from me: A conversation about life’s big questions is the very definition of time well spent.” StoryCorps founder Dave Issay expresses what all us personal historians know: Now is (always) the time to ask your loved ones about their lives.
On Screens Now
THE ASIAN AMERICAN STORY
The PBS documentary series Asian Americans, which weaves the stories and images of real people…into the tapestry of history, “deserves attention for bringing under-appreciated history to life through the stories of Americans whose ancestral roots reach across the Pacific Ocean to the 48 countries of Asia,” says this review.
DIGITAL MUSEUM EXHIBIT
“Beyond Statistics: Living in a Pandemic” traces the stories of five former residents of The Tenement Museum’s buildings who lived with, and ultimately died from, contagious disease during three different eras. The digital exhibit uses visual storytelling, including an interactive timeline, to engage and add to the narratives.
REWIND
From PBS Independent Lens: “Made up of home video footage that reveals a long-kept secret, Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s Rewind is a brave and wrenching look at his childhood and his journey to reconcile his past. By probing the gap between image and reality, the film depicts both how little and how much a camera can capture.” Read a review here, and stream the documentary here. Trailer:
Writing Memoir & Life Stories
ARE YOU A DIY MEMOIRIST?
“You don’t need to have won the Nobel prize or invented sliced bread for your life to be worth recording,” writes Philadelpia–based personal historian Clemence Scouten. Here she helps you decide: Should you write your memoirs yourself or hire a service?
VIRTUAL MEMOIR WORKSHOPS, FROM A MASTER
Beth Kephart, award-winning memoirist and author of one of my favorite craft books, Handling the Truth, has announced that her Juncture Workshop Series will be going virtual. The monthly classes, which begin in June 2020, will offer “memoir writers and truth seekers original insights into craft and best-of literature, guided tours of the self, a chance to get percolating questions answered, and manuscript critiques.”
NO PLOTTING—FOR NOW
“The heart of your memoir—what it’s really about, and what will guide its shape—is best found by letting yourself suss out the emotional hot spots in memory and record the details before you define a story line,” Lisa Dale Norton writes in this piece about why it can be hampering to write a memoir outline too soon in your process.
First Person Reads & Short Biographical Writing
FROM HER PERSONAL REPERTOIRE
“When we have the ‘pandemic blues,’ it helps to reminisce about a tough time and how we got through,” writes Wisconsin–based personal historian Sarah White. A random comment on a trip long ago became her touchstone for resilience: “Cobblestones” tells the story of that moment.
THE TRANSFORMATION ARTIST
As part of their “Remarkable Lives” series of autobiographical posts, NYC’s Remarkable Life Memoirs turns the spotlight on a budding entrepreneur who tells her story of taking something disposable and transforming it into something beautiful, right in the middle of a pandemic hotspot.
RESILIENT ROOTS
“I remember my mother interviewing Nama for [her] history on her porch when I was about eight years old. I was mesmerized with Nama’s storytelling and the amazing life she had. But I never saw the depth of what she went through until recently.” Genealogist Janet Hovorka reads her great-grandmother’s personal history anew, with adult eyes.
“HISTORY FOUND YOU”
A graduation speech for the 2020 college grads who aren’t able to experience the milestone with all the pomp and circumstance it deserves, with reflections on the past, the present, and the bright future of this tested generation.
THE STONE COLLECTOR
Meet the stone collector of Iceland’s eastern coast: A. Kendra Greene gathers the history of a life. This lyrical read of an unexpected slice of life drew me in slowly, and made me want for more.
...and a Few More Links
Alcove: a virtual reality platform focused on family connection
How the thinnest paper in the world is used in historical conservation
What historians will see when they look back on the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020
Want to share a family immigration story with the Ellis Island Foundation?
“Diary of Our DNA”: How her mother’s photo albums evolved into a family history book
Chatbooks is giving a year of free photo books to babies born during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Moving photo portfolio: A day in the life of a Covid-19 I.C.U nurse
The “fabulous, forgotten life” of Vita Sackville-West
Short Takes