Thoughts After Hurka

As we've gotten further into the semester, and read more and more, I've started to consider my history. A history that, of course, traces back to an ancestry of which I know very little. In the first few months of my life, my mother filled out a "Family History" book for me to have later in life. (It's still sitting back at my parents' house in NY.) Each page is for a different family member, and she would fill in the blanks (name, birth date, death date, occupation, education, children, etc.). These simple facts, I've realized, are all I know of anyone older than my grandparents. And even now, without the book, I can't seem to remember much aside a couple of names. My parents were not first or even second-generation Americans. I'm not even sure who is. And so reading Hurka and Balakian in particular, who some of you have called "secondhand witnesses," has me wondering what kind of history I'm leaving uncovered. I also had the misfortune of losing my maternal grandparents at the age of two, and my paternal grandparents when I was in high school, well before I could have ever thought to talk to them about our family history, let alone consider what it would mean to write/document it. 

What I enjoyed in Hurka's book was to be able to see his research in action--conversations with his father in the hospital in Vermont, for example, and his trip to visit Mira. Balakian included this, too. And I also have been thinking of a book I read last semester called One Drop by Bliss Broyard, in which she seeks to find out the history of race in her family once she discovers her father's Creole history, which he had kept secret for much of his life. A long book, Broyard takes us on her journey of research and discovery, too. 

What all of this also makes me consider, though, is the notion of atrocities and survival that has seemed to hang over all of these twentieth-century memoirs. I wonder, if I were to look back, would either of those be present in my family history? This is related to Michaela's post, I think, in the questions of what is "memoir worthy," and what prompted Hurka, in this case, to feel that urgency to write this memoir. How did he know this was important? Or is it always important? History, it seems, is always important, especially in the way it informs the present. 

However, I'm also thinking of the other books we've read this semester that were firsthand accounts of history. Some written not long after the particular event or set of circumstances. And in that case, how can we know that we should write about our own present rather than telling the story of a family history and working to preserve that past. I'm not sure there is an answer to the question of which to write or focus on, and perhaps the solution or compromise is to understand that even if writing in a present context, history is still important.