"I am writing this only because they can't." - Pg. 26
This very brief passage (some might even call it a line or sentance) seemed worthy of note to me because it reminded me of our discussion of writing preserving lives and memories beyond what actual life or actual memory can do.
Writing, although it can purge our memories of so much that we lose things, also preserves them indefinitely. You can save a life by writing about it, which is perhaps exactly what Danticat was trying to do in this work.
We assume that this sentence means that the two men she's primarily writing about have passed away (although maybe not... maybe they are just not capable of writing this story), so we guess that Danticat's recording of this story is an effort to keep the story (or stories, as may be more accurate) from being forgotten, a way to keep her family from being forgotten.
This reminds me of Nabokov's woe at having given away his memories to fiction, and it reminds us me of Douglass' effort to make others aware of the atrocities of his life and the lives of slaves in general. Does anyone write an autobiography and not try to preserve something? I doubt it. Perhaps we also write autobiographies in order to forget or leave out certain things. After the author dies, that negative incident that was left out will forever cease to exist. So life-writing is an act of preserving while it is also, simultaneously, an act of eliminating.
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Abby, I like what you touched on. While I think autobiography is for preserving ones existence, almost as proof that the writer was alive, and as a means of contributing something to the world that wasn't there before, I also think it's a great freedom and opportunity to "rewrite history," if you will. While it may be venturing into fiction territory, the great thing about writing is the chance to write out a moment just as you might have HOPED it happened, as opposed to how it actually happened, or while still remaining a non-fictional account, simply ommitting memories as if they never happened at all. Is it lying if you just "forgot to mention it?"
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