Babybook is one of five chapbooks in the collection titled Membering published by Antenna Paper Machine in New Orleans in 2022. Membering brings together documents, conversations and images of my search to understand a psychological inheritance that includes the enslavement of hundreds of people. I began to navigate this work through a web of family documents stored in a plastic box under the television in my family home. The box included my father’s baby book, letters from his father, as well as a deed for a 14 year-old girl named Elizabeth. The book combines text from those found documents with photographs of the area in Louisiana where my family still lives.
The gallery shows the cover and double page spreads of the book.