Making Peace with the Stories You Fail to Get

Event Type

Presentation

Location

Recital Hall

Start Date

6-3-2020 1:45 PM

End Date

6-3-2020 3:15 PM

Description

Sumpter never took the opportunity to interview her grandparents, being too young to imagine that she would later want to hear the stories they could share about their lives from as far back as the late 1800s. Sumpter once actually held a slave pass from 1837 naming a great-relative who had permission to leave Oaks Plantation on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, for an errand in downtown Beaufort. That pass vanished after various family members laid claim to items Sumpter had discovered while searching family homes. If only she had never told anyone about those documents and family photos, or even about some oral histories she had recorded from family elders. Now having made peace about the oral histories that she failed to collect, Sumpter has created a way to write stories that incorporate the recordings she did succeed in preserving.

Comments

Theme: Family Stories, Historical Fiction, Archives; Moderator: Scott Bacon, Coastal Carolina University

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Mar 6th, 1:45 PM Mar 6th, 3:15 PM

Making Peace with the Stories You Fail to Get

Recital Hall

Sumpter never took the opportunity to interview her grandparents, being too young to imagine that she would later want to hear the stories they could share about their lives from as far back as the late 1800s. Sumpter once actually held a slave pass from 1837 naming a great-relative who had permission to leave Oaks Plantation on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, for an errand in downtown Beaufort. That pass vanished after various family members laid claim to items Sumpter had discovered while searching family homes. If only she had never told anyone about those documents and family photos, or even about some oral histories she had recorded from family elders. Now having made peace about the oral histories that she failed to collect, Sumpter has created a way to write stories that incorporate the recordings she did succeed in preserving.