Truth in Nonfiction: The Imagined Past

Turns out there are differences between what the live and the dead remember. A problem with writing about someone else’s life after their death is that you can only “suppose” in that space between their lives and documented actions and what came next. You can only guess at what they were thinking and feeling, their motivations and inspirations unless they have recorded it all in a diary. And others’ memories—family, friends, and acquaintances—are shaped by their own experiences and as well-meaning as they may be may have only the vaguest notion of what was true for the person herself. My saint may be your sinner.

We only know another as they are with us and even then memory often fades or reshapes itself as years go by. These are some of the problems I’ve encountered as I’ve written about Annette Nancarrow (see my serialized biography here), which means that my pages are an amalgam of all that I’ve heard in interviews, read in papers and other documents, seen in photos, and what I personally have discovered about the era in which she lived. For some events I’ve written about, there were several versions, depending on who was telling the tale. Many of those who held a point of view have passed on and, often, there was no other record to confirm it.

Regardless of what we cannot know for sure without her here to guide us, I believe Annette’s story is an important one that contributes to a more textured vision of the artistic community in Mexico City during her lifetime, I have forged ahead to tell it. Annette stands partially as a symbol for other women artists who were active in Mexico during the thirties and forties, but who stood at the edge of the spotlight that shown so brightly on the men of the period. My posts are her story told through the lens of my own research and dreams of her life. There is no one truth. # # #