Research Guides: NYU Reads: Language, Memory & Storytelling

Language, Memory, & Storytelling

"I thought of how this might extend beyond the guides at Monticello, and to the visitors as well. What would motivate a Black family to come spend the day at a plantation if they were concerned about how the story of that land would be told, what kind of people would be standing alongside them as it was told, and who was telling it?" (p.40)

The book How the Word is Passed is all about language, memory, and storytelling. The author Clint Smith engages with memory and storytelling as a primary thread throughout his research and narrative. The book's title itself is about how stories are shared (i.e. how is the word passed?). He poses important and critical questions - how are stories about slavery in the United States told? Who tells these these stories? How are these stories told (i.e. through what media)? Whose stories are told? What about the untold/unwritten stories? In reflecting on storytelling, the author also engages with questions about language. For example, he states that "there were many occasions throughout the book, especially when I was in an environment in which there were no other Black people present, when I wondered how a tour or conversation might have been different if I was not Black. Would the tour have been exactly the same if everyone on it was white? Would different language have been used? Different framing? What things may have been included or excluded as a result of my presence?" (p. 292). These are relevant critical questions as they relate to language ideologies. Language matters. For example, there is an important distinction to be made between enslaved people versus slaves. The former acknowledges that human beings went through a violent and unjust process that was imposed onto them (i.e. the act of one group enslaving another group in a context of power and domination). The latter term removes this important context and also risks removing the humanity of those who were enslaved. Language is everywhere, from the way we think, how we think with different people, how we reckon with past injustice, how we aim to counter the legacy of slavery, and how we co-imagine a more just world. As such, the following section has resources on language, storytelling, and stories informed by the unjust context and reality of slavery, and also stories of individual and collective determination and resilience.

NYU Library on Language

Archival Collections Management: Inclusive and Reparative Work & Statement on Harmful Language
This page discusses NYU Library's inclusive and reparative work in the context of archives. It also discusses its approach to harmful language.

Articles

Build Your Archive
Where Black Women Artists build their archives in real time.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. will guide Oxford University Press Over New African American English Dictionary
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and American Research at Harvard University, will provide editorial direction to Oxford University Press as it devises a dictionary that will exclusively be dedicated to “African-American Vernacular English,” according to the Washington Times.
The Impact of Language Ideologies in Schools
This article discusses language ideologies, including raciolinguistic ideologies in american schools. Their discussion includes the reality of Standard American English typically being valued over speaking what are considered to be nonstandard varieties, such as African American Vernacular English.
Storying Survival: An Approach to Radical Healing for the Black Community
Anti-Black racism (ABR) contributes to racial trauma and to the disproportionate negative mental, physical, and social outcomes faced by Black populations (Hargons et al., 2017; Wun, 2016a). The previous literature demonstrates that storytelling and other narrative interventions are often used to promote collective healing among Black people (Banks-Wallace, 2002; Moors, 2019). Storying survival (i.e., the utilization of stories to promote liberation from racial trauma) is one such narrative intervention (Mosley et al., 2021); however, little is known about the processes by which Black people utilize storying survival to promote radical healing. Using an intersectional framework and thematic analysis from a phenomenological perspective (Braun & Clarke, 2006), the present study analyzed interviews from 12 racial justice activists in order to understand how these activists engage in storying survival to foster Black survival and healing. Results show that storying survival includes five interconnected components: storying influences, mechanisms of storying survival, content of storying survival, context of storying survival, and impact of storying survival. Each of these categories and subcategories are detailed herein and are supported with quotations. The findings and related discussion explore the concept of storying survival and its contributions to critical consciousness, radical hope, strength and resistance, cultural self-knowledge, and collectivism among participants and their communities. This study therefore provides important and practical information about how Black people and the counseling psychologists who aim to serve them can utilize storying survival to resist and heal from ABR.
Where Do You Anchor Your Beliefs? An Invitation to Interrogate Dominant Ideologies of Language and Languaging in Speech-Language Pathology
Purpose: Ideologies are like rocks onto which individuals and institutions anchor their thoughts about what it means to be an “ideal language user” and what “standardized languaging” is. These deeply ingrained beliefs, influenced by colonial legacies and sociopolitical contexts, invisibly enforce a hierarchical order between people and their access to rights and privilege within societies. They inferiorize, marginalize, racialize, and nullify students and their families. The purposes of this tutorial are to reflect upon common dominant ideologies about language and languaging that are present in definitions, practices, and materials used in school-based settings by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and to offer an invitation to interrupt the practices that are birthed from upholding these beliefs and are dehumanizing to children and families living at the intersections of marginalization. To illustrate how these beliefs about language are enacted in the field of speech-language pathology, a selection of materials and approaches are presented and related to their ideological roots while implementing a critical stance. Conclusions: Ideologies uphold idealized versions of “normality” and constructions of “deviance.” Left unexamined, these beliefs remain encoded in traditionally considered scientific categories, policies, approaches, and materials. Critical reflexivity and action are key in the process of up-anchoring and shifting perspectives for ourselves and our institutions. The hope is that, through this tutorial, SLPs can increase their critical consciousness while envisioning how to interrupt oppressive dominant ideologies and, therefore, conceive of a future path that advocates for liberated languaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Zakiya Collier
Zakiya is an Afro-Carolinian archivist and memory worker exploring the role of cooperative thought and improvisation in the preservation and sustainability of im/material cultural memory—particularly in African-diasporan, queer, and community-based organizations and cultural heritage institutions. She is passionate about uncovering ancestral memory-keeping traditions and developing archival practices that account for the material conditions of Black life.

Books

Ain't I a Woman? by Sojourner Truth
ISBN: 9780241472361
Publication Date: 2021-06-08
A former slave and one of the most powerful orators of her time, Sojourner Truth fought for the equal rights of black women throughout her life. This selection of her impassioned speeches is accompanied by the words of other inspiring African-American female campaigners from the nineteenth century. GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes : Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America by Kyle T. Mays
ISBN: 9781438469478
Publication Date: 2018
Expressive culture has always been an important part of the social, political, and economic lives of Indigenous people. More recently, Indigenous people have blended expressive cultures with hip hop culture, creating new sounds, aesthetics, movements, and ways of being Indigenous. Kyle Mays argues that Indigenous people use hip hop culture to assert their sovereignty and challenge settler colonialism. From rapping about land and water rights from Flint to Standing Rock, to remixing "traditional" beading with hip hop aesthetics, Indigenous people are using hip hop to challenge their ongoing dispossession, disrupt racist stereotypes and images of Indigenous people, contest white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, and reconstruct ideas of a progressive masculinity. In addition, Mays carefully traces the idea of authenticity; that is, the common notion that, by engaging in a Black culture, Indigenous people are losing their "traditions." Indigenous hip hop artists navigate the muddy waters of the "politics of authenticity" by creating art that is not bound by narrow conceptions of what it means to be Indigenous; instead, they flip the notion of tradition and create alternative visions of what being Indigenous means today, and what that might look like going forward.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
ISBN: 9783836571517
Publication Date: 2019-02-28
First published in 1963, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time stabbed at the heart of America's so-called "Negro problem." As remarkable for its masterful prose as for its frank and personal account of the black experience in the United States, it is considered one of the most passionate and influential explorations of 1960s race relations, weaving thematic threads of love, faith, and family into a candid assault on the hypocrisy of the "land of the free." Now, James Baldwin's rich, raw, and ever relevant prose is reprinted with more than 100 photographs from Steve Schapiro, who traveled the American South with Baldwin for Life magazine. The encounter thrust Schapiro into the thick of the movement, allowing for vital, often iconic, images both of civil rights leaders-including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Jerome Smith-and such landmark events as the March on Washington and the Selma march. Rounding out the edition are Schapiro's stories from the field, an original introduction by civil rights legend and U.S. Congressman John Lewis, captions by journalist Marcia Davis, and an essay by Gloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart, who was with her brother James in Sierra Leone when he started to work on the story. The result is a remarkable visual and textual record of one of the most important and enduring struggles of the American experience.
Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race by H. Samy Alim, John R. Rickford, Arnetha F. Ball
ISBN: 9780190625702
Publication Date: 2016
This book engages with conversations and reflections on the relationship between, and co-constructions of race and language.
The source of self-regard : selected essays, speeches, and meditations by Toni Morrison
ISBN: 0525521119
Publication Date: 2019
Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection-a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades. The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison's inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "black matter(s)," and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself.

Video: Documentaries & Movies

42
History was made in 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the professional baseball race barrier to become the first African American MLB player of the modern era. 42 tells the life story of Robinson and his history-making signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers under the guidance of team executive Branch Rickey.
A Ballerina's Tale
conic ballerina Misty Copeland made history when she became the first African-American woman to be named principal dancer of the legendary American Ballet Theater. Get the incredible, behind-the-scenes story of how she overcame a tumultuous upbringing and near career-ending injuries to become one of the most revered dancers of her generation. More than just a ballet success story, Copeland's journey is a hugely inspirational, universal tale of perseverance.
Bessie
Singer Bessie Smith (1894-1937) rises from humble roots in Tennessee to become "The Empress of the Blues" and one of the most successful recording artists of the 1920s.
Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts
This illuminating documentary explores the life of a unique American artist, a man with a remarkable and unlikely biography. Bill Traylor was born into slavery in 1853 on a cotton plantation in rural Alabama. After the Civil War, Traylor continued to farm the land as a sharecropper until the late 1920s. Aging and alone, he moved to Montgomery and worked odd jobs in the thriving segregated black neighborhood. A decade later, in his late 80s, Traylor became homeless and started to draw and paint, both memories from plantation days and scenes of a radically changing urban culture.
Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins
Les Blank reveals the inspiration of great Texas bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins, and features a generous helping of classic blues, including the songs, Mr. Charlie and Your Rollin’ Mill is Burnin’ Down. Includes performances at an outdoor barbeque, a black rodeo, and a visit to his boyhood town of Centerville, Texas. This powerful portrait is among Blank’s special masterworks.
The Butler
Inspired by a true story about Cecil Gaines, a devoted husband, father, and White House butler who served eight Presidential administrations during the turbulent politics and civil rights battles of twentieth century America.
The Great Debaters
Melvin B. Tolson is a professor at Wiley College in Texas. Wiley is a small African-American college. In 1935, Tolson inspired students to form the school's first debate team. Tolson turns a group of underdog students into a historically elite debate team which goes on to challenge Harvard in the national championship. Inspired by a true story.
The Hard Ride
An intimate look at black cowboys as they gather for a rodeo and dance on the 40 acre Circle 6 Ranch in Raywood, Texas. A dirt road leads onto the ranch, where all of the structures, including a frame house, rodeo arena, and barn, are hand-wrought. A.J. Walker, his wife Pam, and his son, Anthony, are preparing for the monthly rodeo. This rodeo, which draws from the surrounding communities, is very much a family operation. Black cowboys drive their horsetrailers onto the ranch.
Harriet
Based on the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic American freedom fighter, the movie tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history.
Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom
Go beyond the legend and meet the woman who repeatedly risked her life and freedom to liberate others from slavery. One of the greatest freedom fighters in U.S. history, Tubman was an Underground Railroad conductor, a Civil War scout, nurse and spy.
Hidden Figures
Explores the previously uncelebrated but pivotal contributions of NASA's African American women mathematicians to America's space program, describing how Jim Crow laws segregated them despite their groundbreaking successes.
Hoop Dreams
Two ordinary inner-city Chicago kids dare to reach for the impossible—professional basketball glory—in this epic chronicle of hope and faith. Filmed over a five-year period, HOOP DREAMS, by Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert, follows young Arthur Agee and William Gates and their families as the boys navigate the complex, competitive world of scholastic athletics while dealing with the intense pressures of their home lives and neighborhoods. This revelatory film continues to educate and inspire viewers, and it is widely considered one of the great works of American nonfiction cinema.
James Hemings: Ghost in America's Kitchen
The life, contributions, and erasure of America’s culinary founding father are explored by food historians, celebrated chefs, experts on race and the African American diaspora. Through their words and the persistence of a curious chef, Ashbell McElveen, the life of America’s missing icon comes into focus. Mac & Cheese, French fries, whipped cream, and many other foodie favorites disseminated from a slave kitchen in Charlottesville from the hands of America’s first master chef, James Hemings
Judas and the Black Messiah
Offered a plea deal by the FBI, William O'Neal infiltrates the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party to gather intelligence on Chairman Fred Hampton
Marshall
About a young Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, as he battles through one of his career defining cases.
Ornette: Made in America
Returning in 1983 to his home in Fort Worth, Texas, documentary footage and dramatic scenes recall legendary performer and composer Ornette Coleman's rise from oppressed youth to cultural pioneer. Raised in segregated Texas before traveling the world from Morocco to New York, his subsequent emergence as a world-class earned Ornette praise from the lines of icon William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Buckminster Fuller, Don Cherry, Yoko Ono, Charlie Haden, Robert Palmer and more – all contributors to this film. Featuring some of the first music-video-style footage of its time, director Shirley Clarke and producer Kathelin Hoffman employed innovative techniques to capture the extraordinary vision of the man behind the music. ORNETTE: MADE IN AMERICA is essential for anyone hoping to understand the history of jazz and the fertile creative exchange that highlighted the 60’s and 70’s in America.
Selma
The marches from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery to secure voting rights for black Americans are depicted in this docudrama set during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and which focuses on the actions of Martin Luther King Jr.
South
Akerman writes, "How does the southern silence become so heavy and so menacing so suddenly? How do the trees and the whole natural environment evoke so intensely death, blood, and the weight of history? How does the present call up the past? And how hoes this past, with a mere gesture or a simple regard, haunt and torment you as you wander along an empty cotton field, or a dusty country road?"
Till
Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till Mobley's relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie's poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother's ability to change the world.