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Stephanie Saldaña is an American writer and journalist who has spent a few years dwelling in and documenting the Center-East for a few years. In her new ebook, What We Keep in mind Will Be Saved (Broadleaf Books, 2023), she tells the story of six migrants who left their properties after the civil struggle in Syria, and of the issues they took with them. In a deeply human story, she displays on reminiscence, cultural preservation and what’s really saved when nothing else survives.
Voxeurop: The ebook has been out for a couple of 12 months. How do you’re feeling about it?
Stephanie Saldaña: It was a ebook that took such a very long time to write down. It was an actual labour of affection to comply with these tales and to get to know these folks. And I, in fact, had plenty of nervousness about doing justice to their tales. In that sense, it was a reduction to have it out on this planet, besides, I’ve all the time felt very protecting of it. It got here out on September 12 after which October 7 occurred, and the world seemed elsewhere. I simply hope it is a story that individuals will return to in time. I feel that now greater than ever, folks want to concentrate on the worlds which can be destroyed in struggle and of the people who find themselves entrusted with carrying their histories. In a way, I really feel that the ebook is extra related now than it is ever been, even when it may not appear that manner.
This ebook is about confronting and surviving trauma. The folks in your ebook have the instruments to do this, they’ve a lot to supply and to show folks.
I feel they’re rememberers, the folks I write about. Folks typically ask me how I discovered them. It is simpler than you assume: each neighborhood, each household has its rememberer, and they’re going to lead you to them. And these folks keep in mind, and by remembering they maintain one thing collectively in a neighborhood or in a household. And I feel this ebook is absolutely folks sharing how they do this.
You open up the story by describing them as “hidden historians”. We see historical past as a story advised by lecturers or journalists. However your strategy to inform historical past via the tales of the folks, the hello…
