By Hannah Giorgis, Image: Getty/The Atlantic, The Atlantic, February 25, 2022
Zora Neale Hurston once observed that America’s most prominent historical narratives prioritize “all these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold.” Much of American life is built on the knowledge and labor of Black people, especially those who were once enslaved. But the origins of, for example, the country’s cuisine or its music are commonly underreported, under-credited, or intentionally obfuscated—whether via the repetition of falsehoods or by keeping books that plainly document America’s past away from children.
I’ve often wondered how we might all actively seek out information about the people and stories that have already been scrubbed from official records. That’s been one of the joys of reading (and contributing to) The Atlantic’s “Inheritance” project. Alongside it, a number of recent books, including one that compiles Hurston’s essays, have taken up the tremendous task of reframing our understanding such that buried figures speak, too. Writers at The Atlantic, such as Adam Harris, Adam Serwer, and Clint Smith, all published nonfiction last year that joins this body of work challenging deeply entrenched national mythologies.
These ventures can require far more research material than existing—or easily accessible—archives can provide. Surfacing certain parts of Black history is a fundamentally investigative pursuit. Taken together, these books present alternative readings of familiar-seeming subjects. They offer not just information, but also new ways of evaluating old truths. What follows is a small compilation of recent literature that endeavors to shift the focus onto those who tend to be absent from the stories many of us have heard.
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