I have had the great fortune of being taught and mentored by historians who have shared with me the wonder, insight, and complexities of the past. There is “us,” now, and there is “them,” then. There is also “us,” then and “them,” now. None of these categories are discrete and static; they are ever-shifting, constantly changing as we mine archives, reconstruct and deconstruct narratives, imagine lives, and give more and more attention to those at the margins and in the gaps. History is dynamic and so too should be our understanding. Dominant narratives are displaced every day.
I have considered not only larger histories this way but also my own. There are many gaps in my familial history, but census records, conversations, graveyard visits, letters, and photographs have slowly filled interstitial spaces and revealed to me more than I previously knew. Before my grandfather died, I knew this—he was born in the Deep South in the 1930s, the child of farmers, and reared under Jim Crow regimes. In his late teens, he moved to Augusta, Georgia to attend Paine College for a year before heading to the Midwestern city of Youngstown, Ohio to seek a job in a steel mill. Passed over by many foremen, he moved West to Los Angeles in the mid 1950s. The rest is more easily traceable. I am the granddaughter of migrants; this is central to my origin story. This is my origin story.
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On Becoming 