I just read the essay "Rebellious History" by one of the historians I most respect, Annette Gordon-Reed, appearing in the October 22, 2020, issue of the New York Review. She reviews Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman, just published by Norton. This passage in the review resonates with me:
"Most people understand that it is impossible to reproduce the reality of a time passed, no matter how many documents exist about a person or an event. The general aim, however—the expectation—is that the historian will try as hard as he or she can to come as close as possible to reconstructing that reality."
