Inhabiting Memory: Essays on Memory and Human Rights in the Americas
by Marjorie Agosín
9780916727529 || Cost: $17.95
Paperback , 220 pages
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George Santayana's famous 1905 proclamation that "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" can be seen as a predictive indictment of the 20th and 21st centuries. Poet and human rights activist Marjorie Agosín has spent her life making certain that we remember the atrocities of our recent past and honor those who fought against them. In Inhabiting Memory, she has gathered essays by scholars and writers—each an activist witness in his or her own way—that examine the relationship between traumatic historical events and the memories created by them, as well as the way memory is manipulated by the powerful to justify their own actions. Recognizing the impact such events have had upon both collective and individual memory, these essayists also recall hard times living through the McCarthy era and the AIDS epidemic, the effects of living in exile, and the bicultural reality of the U.S. border with Mexico. Contributors include Nancy Barra, Claudia Bernardi, Julio Cortázar, June Carolyn Erlick, Eduardo Galeano, Maria Rosa Lojo, Margaret Randall and Peter Winn.
Critical Praise for Inhabiting Memory: Essays on Memory and Human Rights in the Americas
- While we were sleeping through the second half of the 20th century, the U.S. military was colluding with far right Latin American dictators to torture and murder our neighbors. Inhabiting Memory stands against the lies and censorship of that false history with powerful, truth-telling essays that break our hearts and awaken a fresh awareness about the stories of so many innocent victims.
— Robert Bonazzi, author of Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me
- Inhabiting Memory is a mosaic of multidisciplinary essays on the complex interactions between oblivion as a form of trauma and memory as an opportunity for recovery. It situates the resilience of those once rendered voiceless at the heart of the struggle against sociopolitical amnesia. The result is a compelling remembrance of the historically stored, semi-forgotten or simply overlooked human experiences, as well as socio-cultural and historic atrocities in the Americas.
— Inela Selimovic, Wheelock College
- Inhabiting Memory compiles essential reflections about the understanding of memory, going beyond a mere discipline of objective reasoning and/or the explorations of fiction. Memory is portrayed here as bringing to life an endless process of reflection giving new meaning to the suffering of history's victims.
— Ricardo Brodsky, Director, Museum of Memory, Chile
- Mostly centered in the turbulent historical period that swept through Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, and weaving together various points of view and lines of meaning, these essays dwell on both intimate memories and socio-historical practices of memorializing.
— Hector Mario Cavallari, Mills College
About This Author
Read more about Marjorie Agosín HERE.
