Trapped In the Present Tense: Meditations on American Memory

"In a culture trapped in the present tense, how can we keep the past from disappearing? When we lose sight of the past, our ability to understand ourselves on both a national and personal level is inhibited. While exploring the darker constants in modernAmerican life - violence, militarization, rapid technological change, inability to be truly attentive - and the disorientation these elements induce, Colette Brooks examines how the past disappears in a culture that is so relentlessly present-tense and whether or not we have a personal responsibility to remember. As our past falls into oblivion, are we potentially losing the individual as well, dissolved into demographic data points? And what of the general threat of extinction (catastrophic or personal)? As Oblivion Approaches is a modest act of resistance against erasure, and an attempt at recuperation. Composing in interrelated sections that build on and circle back upon each other. Brooks encourages reflection, stirs memory, and addresses a crucial question: how did all this happen?"--
Through intimate and deeply researched retellings of individualized stories of violence, misfortune, chaos and persistence, this poetic and unique blend of history, memoir and visual essay reflects on how we can resist the erasure of our collective memory in the American century.
For readers of Rebecca Solnit and Jenny Odell, this poetic and inventive blend of history, memoir, and visual essay reflects on how we can resist the erasure of our collective memory in this American century.Our sense of our history requires us to recall the details of time, of experiences that help us find our place in the world together and encourage us in the search for our individual identities. When we lose sight of the past, our ability to see ourselves and to understand one another is diminished. In this book, Colette Brooks explores how some of the more forgotten aspects of recent American experiences explain our challenging and often puzzling present. Through intimate and meticulously researched retellings of individual stories of violence, misfortune, chaos, and persistence—from the first mass shooting in America from the tower at the University of Texas, the televised assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, life with nuclear bombs and the Doomsday Clock, obsessive diarists and round-the-clock surveillance, to pandemics and COVID-19—Brooks is able to reframe our country’s narratives with new insight to create a prismatic account of how efforts to reclaim the past can be redemptive, freeing us from the tyranny of the present moment.