The archive is a place for authors to say they were ‘here,’ alive in a certain time in history and creators of work that reflected that exact time and their lived experiences in it. During their life time an author may not be able to publish all or any of their works, who they were, what they thought, disappears a few years after their deaths and cannot be retrieved in the future unless properly archived and saved. Unfortunately, not all works are destined for the archive, many do not get added to archival collections, or if they do, they time to process them is long and waiting. Because of this some authors, particularly African American authors as mentioned by Jean-Christophe Cloutier in, The Lifecycles of Twentieth Century African American Literary Papers, have made their own archives, ones to preserve their works and ideas similar to how any institutional archive might.

Their archives would keeps safe their works and thoughts, sometimes even providing the “train of thought” or work process to develop them by preserving documents besides a finished product. An authors archive even went beyond what an institutional archive would display, they would, “becomes a site where an author’s hidden identities, affiliations, and political ambivalences and fantasies,” could be kept, even if they would typically be determined, “difficult, messy, shameful, or inchoate for public presentation.” (Cloutier, 9-10). When creating their works these authors knew that their books could be published, but had to prepare for the possibility that they would not be archived and preserved as valuable. However instead of accepting that possibility and future those authors followed a “desperately human desire” to “fill that unfillable space” (19), by carving out and ensuring and time proof location and place for their words.

I have thought at times of making my own archive like this as well, collecting and organizing all my saved essays and assignments in folders and boxes for safe keeping. My archive would not be made with the expectation that it would ever end up in a collective archive, but with the hope that if a family member within a coming generation were to ever receive it that I, my work, would be remembered and re-read.