ESSAY Forgetting to remember Time to be brave Clare Wright Learning to remember means…transforming individual memories and struggles into collective narratives and larger social movements. Henry A Giroux, The Violence of Organized Forgetting City Light Books, 2014 WHEN I WAS a little girl, I began poking and prodding the world with an infernal curiosity for historical detail: How old were you when you bought your first bra, Mum? What did you wear to your senior prom? Did your date give you a corsage? Why did you divorce dad? What was my birth like? Did you need drugs? Did you hold me right away? My mother had one answer to almost all of my questions: ‘I honestly don’t recall. You know what a bad memory I have.’ Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I beat my head against the brick wall of my mother’s amnesia. She told no stories from her past, and rubbed out my own personal history with the same mental eraser. After I emerged from my teenage rage, I simply stopped asking her questions. My mother lives blissfully in the moment and I have learned to love her for her accidental enlightenment. I am certain she was never being deliber- ately deceitful or tricky by sidestepping my questions. I once thought her