This is why the suitcases are so important—even a few scant objects can vividly summon forth a forgotten life. Crispin’s photographs reveal many such lives in miniature:
A green trunk that belonged to Frank C. holds his military uniform as well as a studio portrait of a handsome Black man with high cheekbones wearing the same uniform. There are war ration books. Letters from the War Department sent to an address on Bainbridge Street, in Brooklyn. A handwritten note on lined paper bearing the date of Frank C.’s military discharge. A deposit book for an account at the Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn.
Rodrigo L.’s trunk is full of books: The Last Days of Pompeii, Don Quixote, a three-volume collection of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. A handwritten manuscript authored by Rodrigo L. called “The Days of the Students.” The typed constitution and bylaws of the Filipino Working Men’s Club in Cheyenne, Wyoming. A book in Tagalog. Leaves, flowers, and dragonflies pressed between the pages of some of the books.
The trunk of Madeline C. unfolds into a wardrobe with drawers and a rack for hangers. Inside, a library call slip from 1929 for a book by Sigmund Freud. Principles of Psychology, volumes one and two, by William James. An address book filled with spiky cursive writing. Snapshots of Madeline C., elegantly dressed, her hair cropped stylishly short, in New York City, California, Canada, and Europe. A picture in which she wears a fur stole in front of a mansion, a large dog at her knee. Snapshots of the seashore taken from aboard a boat, many of the photographs labeled in French.
Benjamin M.’s suitcase holds only a toothpick.
History is preserved selectively and is subject to the same discriminatory biases that pervade culture at large. The homes of presidents become museums. The lives of illustrious scientists are documented in biographies. The papers of intellectuals and artists are sheltered in university archives. People who are culturally devalued or oppressed, meanwhile, are often excluded, in part or in whole, according to biased notions of their worth—a selective calculus determined by those who document lives for posterity. “Sometimes stories are destroyed,” Carmen Maria Machado writes in her memoir In the Dream House, “and sometimes they are never uttered in the first place.”
