Imagination and Ancestral Memory in the Halsey Family Archive

Usage Statement 

This exhibit features images, interviews, and memory work related to the Halsey family. As you enter this space, we ask that you proceed with care and mindfulness. 

- The Halsey Family

In the summer of 2024, I, Jessica Halsey, asked all of my family members to bring any photographs they had of our family’s matriarch, Annie Pearl Halsey, to our family reunion. I was suddenly in possession of several tote bags of photo albums and envelopes of developed film. My father, Dewayne Halsey, gave me a drawer that used to be a part of my Big Momma’s dresser, full of baskets that held some of her belongings.

This exhibit, "Imagination and Ancestral Memory in the Halsey Family Archive" is chapter two of my MA thesis titled, "Imagination and Ancestral Memory in Memorial Drive and the Halsey Family Archive" which can be accessed here (link forthcoming).

In Chapter 1, I read Natasha Trethewey’s Memorial Drive as an archive shaped by Sadiya Hartman's concept of critical fabulation. Defined in her articles "Venus in Two Acts" and "Intimate History, Radical Narrative," this archival methodology allows for both the recovering and reimagination of the past. When encountering absences, silences, and gaps within the archival record, Hartman utilizes imagination to fill in what’s missing and to tell the stories of people who have been left out or forgotten by history.

Trethewey’s engagement with archival materials such as photographs, journal entries, and official documents provide the basis for critical fabulation, in which Trethewey reimagines history and the inner life of her mother. Building on my reading of Trethewey’s memoir, this chapter extends the concept of critical fabulation to the creation of “The Halsey Family Archive,” a digital archive that I use to explore how imaginative archival methods can shape memory work in both literary and digital contexts. In doing so, I consider the intersections between personal narratives, archival curations, and the digital humanities. I inquire, how might critical fabulation function as an effective methodological approach in digital archiving, particularly in the context of Black familial histories?

By employing Hartman's critical fabulation, this archival exhibit seeks not to establish a complete factual history of Annie Pearl Halsey but instead utilize archival materials as foundations for imagination and narrative. Where archival materials, such as photographs and interviews, contain historical gaps and silences, imagination aids in filling these absences. Among these archival materials, you will experience multiple memories and overlapping points of view. My (Jessica Halsey) imaginative voice is represented through italics.