Historical memory and healing

In the panel presentation that my group gave on Kindred, the author Sarah Schiff proposed the idea that historical fiction can be used as a tool for healing communities within our country by creating common historical memories. I found this idea interesting--the idea that a book could have so much power that it could help mend relationships between racial and gender divides.

I'm skeptical of this idea mainly because these issues obviously are deeply rooted in society and there are so many different angles to the problem and fiction isn't the only thing that can solve the problems, but I think Schiff does have a good point. Books like Kindred make the historical ideas something much more personal to the reader--something a regular historical textbook probably can't do. Obviously, some fictional liberties had to be taken to write such a novel, but perhaps this fiction can tell us more about 1800s slave plantations than a textbook can. By having a character that we can emotionally relate to, the issues of slavery and race are no longer distant things you read about in a historical textbook.  The characters of history seem more human. And this then forces us to take history more seriously when we think of these historical characters as people, instead of merely as facts and data we read about in a textbook. 

Schiff argued that this way of telling history then allowed the readers--regardless of gender and race--to rebuild a historical memory that is more accurate than ones from textbooks. According to her, historical fiction, in a way, tells more truths than facts by conveying ideas etc. This common historical memory would then pave the way for more civil conversations and a common understanding of traumatic issues from the past, and it would help people accept their history and move on together instead of staying divided over small factual details and hard feelings. Quite optimistic, but altogether not a bad idea. 

Check out the rest of the article here.