by Stephanie Curry reflects on colonial American literature, on what gets preserved as valuable and what gets discarded
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat
American Archives – Stephanie Considers What We Keep and What We Destroy
Archives are political. What we preserve as valuable becomes history. What we discard becomes lost. Colonial American literature celebrated conquest. It excluded indigenous voices, slave narratives, women’s experience.
History is written by whoever preserves the documents. That’s not neutral. That’s power.
See Stephanie’s archival work for analysis of preservation and erasure.
I spend time rescuing discarded writings, trying to recover what archives dismissed as unimportant. It’s impossible work. Some things are too far lost.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
