The Importance of Preserving History

Marta's primary motivation for telling her story is to preserve, and therefore effectively derive meaning from, her own personal history and the history of Barren Shoal, which has been effectively erased from public record. Marta contends that if there is no public record of a place or a community ever existing, then future generations are free to either forget, or perhaps worse, entirely rewrite history. In the opening chapter, Marta likens Barren Shoal to "unwanted uranium," which the government "hope[s] that we will forget" (10) by not entering it into public record and obfuscating its existence. Perhaps because the conditions of Barren Shoal were so reprehensible in many ways, or perhaps because of how authoritative forces were eventually able to effectively disenfranchise its residents through closing down the factory and forcing eviction, Barren Shoal's history would be advantageous to forget, in order...