We Must Not Think of Ourselves

by Lauren Grodstein

“It is up to us to write our own history,” he said. “Deny the Germans the last word.”

I was writing everything down, obviously—but it did strike me that perhaps writing it all down was not the most important thing we could do for ourselves. The most important thing we could do for ourselves was survive. Not just in words, but in actual bodies. And to that end, the archive was of no use at all. In fact, the archive suddenly seemed to me a sort of capitulation, an acceptance of the truth that we would not be here and so our written words would have to say what we ourselves could not.

For many years, as my life plodded along full of ordinary joys I was too stupid to notice, I complained about the ordinary things: