Trace: Memory, history, race, and the American landscape.

Image credit: goodreads.com

“Trace” by Lauret Savoy is a story of tracing back one’s origins, ancestry, relation to the land, and the significance of being a citizen in a nation. As a text, it stood out because of the extensive accounts of the loss of indigenous spaces and their influence on what we have now. Tracing the actual relation to many areas, Savoy found that “More than half of the United States’ names originated, in some form, from Indigenous languages” (76). A vast amount of it is masked, by the European, Anglo-American-sounding tongues and not many are aware, and I appreciated the call to notice such influence indigenous elements still have, despite the agenda to erase it. As well as the internal strife and journey Savoy went through to discover herself as an individual, especially towards the land that she inhabits.

- Emmanuela Ibiejugba