I think that often in the United States we're very blind to the ways that history lives in the present.
Interpretation
This quote highlights how historical events and legacies continue to influence contemporary society and perceptions.
Jesmyn Ward emphasizes the importance of recognizing the impact of history on the present day. In the quote, she points out that people often overlook how the past shapes their current realities, possibly leading to a lack of awareness about ongoing social issues and cultural dynamics that have roots in historical events.
In practice
In a lecture about social justice, this quote could highlight the need to understand historical contexts.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
Vietnam was the defining event for my generation. It spilled over into all facets of American life - into music, into the pulpits, in churches of our country. It spilled over into the city streets, police forces. And even if you were born late in the generation, Vietnam was still part of your childhood.
Stern accuracy in inquiring, bold imagination in describing, these are the cogs on which history soars or flutters and wobbles.
Ukraine and Israel have long-standing historical ties. Our nations have together experienced all the tragedies in recent history - the Holodomor and the Holocaust, the Second World War, and the totalitarian Soviet regime.
What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the future of Christian civilisation.
History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.
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