memoir

• 
• 6/25/2023
  

  Martha Hodes Talks "My Hijacking" with HNN

  by Michan Connor

  In 1970, when she was 12, Martha Hodes was held hostage for nearly a week in a campaign of airline hijacking that captured world attention. She discusses trauma and erasure in the historical record, the roles of remembering and forgetting in shaping views of the past, and how she investigated herself as a historial actor. 

• 
• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  6/12/2023
  

  Martha Hodes Turns Historian's Training to Reach Memory Hidden by Trauma

  A memoirist of her own experience of terrorist hostage-taking reviews Martha Hodes's effort to apply the tools of historians to recover memory of being held in the Jordanian desert on a hijacked plane in 1970. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/1/2023
  

  Martha Hodes Reconstructs Her Memory of a 1970 Hijacking

  At age 12, the historian, with her older sister, was a passenger on a jet hijacked by Palestinian militants. After decades of minimizing the story, her efforts to approach her past as a historian highlight the gaps in documentary records, the contradictory ways memory can fill those gaps, and the varying degrees of distance historians keep from their subjects.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/13/2023
  

  Three Novels Rooted in Forgotten Black Histories

  Novels by Kai Thomas, Jamila Minnicks, and Nyani Nkrumah tell stories of Black life at the Canadian end of the Underground Railroad, an all-Black town in 1950s Alabama, and in post-Civil Rights Mississippi. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/11/2022
  

  Leonard Kriegel, 89: Writings Catalyzed Discussion of Disability

  Kriegel's writings about his experiences after contracting polio stripped away sentimentality and pity from the literary stereotype of the disabled in favor of a full and often conflicted picture of his own humanity as a disabled person. 

• 
• SOURCE: American Historical Review
  9/19/2022
  

  "As if I Wasn't There": Writing from a Child's Memory

  by Martha Hodes

  Writing her own memory of being held hostage by terrorists forced the author to put herself at the center of the story. 

• 
• 8/28/2022
  

  How I Helped a Private Man Share His Story of Escaping the Nazis

  by David Tabatsky

  For me, the son of a cantor and WWII veteran, who grew up seeing numbers tattooed on numerous arms, sharing Salomon Kool's story has reminded me of a collective mission to always remember.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  3/16/2022
  

  A Family History of the Futility of Preparing for Nuclear War

  On the lessons learned from working at the government's network of bomb shelters. 

• 
• 12/19/2021
  

  A Passport Tells a Story of a Bygone Time

  by Ron Steinman

  The author's passport, with its pages added to accommodate the visas accrued through decades of foreign journalism, reflects an era of travel that might never return from the twin threats of COVID and the decline of international trust in the United States. 

• 
• SOURCE: Forward
  11/30/2021
  

  Mel Brooks Delivers 500 Pages on His Favorite Subject – Himself

  "The stuff that hasn’t been public, or at least is tough to find, makes the book worthwhile."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/21/2021
  

  The Historian Annette Gordon-Reed Gets Personal in ‘On Juneteenth’

  "In 'On Juneteenth' Annette Gordon-Reed leads by example, revisiting her own experiences, questioning her own assumptions — and showing that historical understanding is a process, not an end point."

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  2/22/2021
  

  My Brother’s Keeper

  by Ada Ferrer

  Historian Ada Ferrer offers her own family history of separation and reunification around the Cuban revolution. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/9/2021
  

  We Were the Last of the Nice Negro Girls

  by Anna Deavere Smith

  The playwright and performance artist Anna Deavere Smith recalls her educational experiences at a small historically white college during the Civil Rights era, and the way the campus climate spurred her fellow Black students to develop a distinct identity. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  11/16/2020
  

  Jeffrey Goldberg Interviews Barack Obama on History and the State of Democracy

  "If we were going to have a right-wing populist in this country, I would have expected somebody a little more appealing.”

• 
• 7/26/2020
  

  One of the Chicago 7 Reflects on Dissident Politics Then and Now

  by Lee Weiner

  A veteran of dissident politics in the 1960s warns that while today's broad coalition of activists for a more just and democratic America are on the right track, they must learn from the mistakes of an older generation and find ways to keep united despite difference. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  6-9-14
  

  Rumor: Brown historian and Bill Clinton speechwriter Ted Widmer helped Hillary write her memoir

  Their exact contributions, however, aren’t spelled out.