Mee Street Memories

Frankie Lennon’s book, The Mee Street Chronicles, opens with a chapter entitled Memory: Mee Street and Beyond. In this Chapter the author tells a brief story which she remembers about growing up in Knoxville.  She conveys the importance of remembering these memories with the use of a quote from a Native American writer, Paula Gunn Allen, who once said “The root of oppression is the loss of memory”.

What is oppression? Oppression according to the dictionary is to burden with cruel or unjust impositions or restraints; subject to a burdensome or harsh exercise of authority or power. To me oppression is simply any use of authority, laws, or physical forces, which may prevent another person from being free or equal. Paula Allen Gunn’s quote exclaims that the cause of oppression is forgetting ones past.

How does forgetting ones past have anything to do with oppression? In my opinion, memory loss is a type of oppression. A person who cannot remember what injustices have been done to them in the past, cannot find a way to change from being oppressed in the future. A person cannot excel if they have not realized that they are being oppressed.

In this first chapter, Frankie Lennon said, “People need to remember things. Because memories tell a story. Memories mark who you are”.  Lennon uses this quote along with Gunn’s quote to get her point across in this chapter. The point that a person or an entire people can lose there identity very easily by forgetting where they came from or by forgetting the long road and hardships their ancestors have traveled in hopes that their next generation will be better off. The point that forgetting is oppression.