Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape
Lauret Savoy
In this collection of essays, Savoy, professor of environmental studies and geology at Mt. Holyoke College, explores the complex terrains of memory and landscape, and the ways in which the fragmented stories of our national past, and her personal past, are inscribed, lost, or found in the present. Through a wide-ranging examination of the geographies and topographies of our continent over time, she explores the paths of her ancestors, which include free and enslaved Africans, European colonizers, and Indigenous peoples, and uncovers stories of place and human presence which had been displaced or silenced. As one epigraph in the book notes, “Every landscape is an accumulation…Life must be lived amidst that which was made before.”
MARISSA FRIEDMAN (she/her/hers)
Digital Project Archivist
The Bancroft Library
This book is part of the 2021 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!