Happy Forgetting podcast explores personal experiences behind harrowing American history

Generally speaking, our brains are wired to avoid revisiting troubling memories, both personal and societal. It’s a survival mechanism — but when it comes to things like racism, genocide and oppression, it can also inhibit cultural progress.

This complex dilemma was referred to by the French philosopher Paul Ricouer as “happy forgetting,” which is now the title of an audio documentary that aims to explore this delicate relationship between past and future.

The documentary is hosted and produced by Arizona journalist Ruxandra Guidi. Each episode is built around the experience of someone with a personal connection to some of the most harrowing moments in American history — from the systematic murder of Osage tribal members in Oklahoma to Chicago’s turbulent history of racial injustice.

Guidi spoke to The Show about the origins of the project, which grew out of her experience as a teenager immigrating to the U.S. from Venezuela.

Full conversation

RUXANDRA GUIDI: So I moved to the U.S. in 1990 as a 14-year-old, and through my whole high school career, I never remember hearing about racial justice, about race, about slavery, about indigenous genocide. These are major, you know, episodes in American history that somehow keep repeating themselves. And yet, I never heard a mention of these things at my public high school in New Jersey.

But I also think, you know, I don't think this — I know this — America, as a society, never went through a process of truth and reconciliation. There's a lot of unsolved conversations, unsolved issues, episodes in history. And, as someone who arrived here at such an impressionable age, that really made an impact on me and really drew me towards wanting to report on justice issues.

But at this point in my career, you know, 20-plus years in, I realize these are the reasons why we don't talk about these things, and I want to get more into that. And so that's what I did with Happy Forgetting.

SAM DINGMAN: OK, OK. Since you came here when you were 14, I would imagine you have some memories of your schooling in Venezuela. Was there a difference in terms of the way that history was talked about when you were going to school there?

GUIDI: You know, it was very similar. I mean, in Venezuela and much of Latin America, history as we know it, right with capital H starts with the colonial period, starts with conquest, really. And, you know, when I went to school, at this point — I'm talking elementary school, middle school in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela — these were the narratives also. So in many ways it was not all that different.

The thing that was different in Venezuela in those years was that we really believed we were a post-racial society in the sense that we have people of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds living in this city that have the same opportunities for work, for housing, or at least that was the narrative. That's what we all discussed. And it wasn't really questioned.

So I think, you know, what we experienced here in America, you know, in the last four or five years, although it's been going for longer, but this desire to really look deeper into the past, to question the record, to revise history or to think more about who's telling the story, is something that is happening elsewhere as well. But in my childhood, you know, in the '80s, and in Venezuela, we didn't really question these things either.

Roberto (Bear) Guerra

DINGMAN: Yeah. Well, so going back to this idea that we choose the frame through which we look at history, or we have the opportunity to do that, perhaps I should say. One of the things that is really engaging about the essayists that you feature in each of these episodes is that to my ear, at least, we have this experience of hearing them first become aware of the limitations of the frame that they had maybe previously relied upon — for in their understanding of history —  and then choosing a new frame.

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DINGMAN: How did you find these speakers? What were you looking for in that process?

GUIDI: I have to be honest, that this project first started with me thinking that I would tell all the stories. The more I started to talk to people, we really wanted to explore. When we talk about racial history, whom do we celebrate? Whose stories do we bury? Which stories do we tell over and over again?

I wanted to explore this idea of hopelessness as an enemy of justice. And in our instinct to sometimes abandon where we're from or where we came from, and what it takes to work towards racial justice today. What would it take to achieve a broader societal transformation when it comes to racial justice?

And so the more I started realizing, OK, these are the big, big questions that little old me wants to take on in this podcast. Like, who am I to tell all these stories? And at that point, it became clear to me that I really wanted to invite others to tell those stories and to challenge me on how to tell those stories.

I went straight to the people whose work I'd heard before. You know, I am an audio person. I come from public radio. I've been doing this for almost 25 years. So I've had the luxury of meeting a lot of really talented storytellers from around the country.

DINGMAN: Right.

GUIDI: And some whom I haven't met, but I've heard. And I decided I really need to chat with them and ask them what they would like to explore, how they would like to do it. And so that is why we ended up with an anthology, and why each story is radically different from the next. Some of them are more like audio documentaries, you know, which scenes and sense of place and characters and others are really very personal, and many of them are essays.

DINGMAN: Well, as a last question for you, Ruxandra. I wonder, you know, you came into this project from a place it sounds like, of this surprise early in your life about the lack of a certain kind of framing, the lack of a certain kind of awareness in the way that history was delivered to you. I know that you have now completed at least one season of Happy Forgetting. And there are these six episodes, and it's a real emotional journey moving through the series. Was there anything about engaging with historical memory in this different way that surprised you?

GUIDI: Oh, gosh. So much. I mean, I would say the biggest thing is that things don't happen in isolation. Leadership, when it comes to people working towards justice, don’t work in isolation. We have a tendency to think — you know, in America, at least — we think, let's say, for example, about Rosa Parks, you know, and the bus boycott. And we single out Rosa Parks, we don't think about the movements that gave birth to someone like Rosa Parks, to all the people before her who did not get the credit in the story, who mobilized in ways and who were attacked and very much face a lot of repression for doing the same things that Rosa Parks did.

So, I think the biggest lesson for me, and I hope this is something that comes across in the podcast, is that nobody acts in isolation. But giving myself and others the freedom to kind of tell these stories in a more honest way to have them be more personal, to have them question and probe. And yeah, probe this historical record, really gave me this like newfound confidence in the work that we do and in the ways that we can shape public opinion.

DINGMAN: Well, Ruxandra Guidi is a Tucson-based reporter, journalist and is the host and producer of the podcast series Happy Forgetting. Thank you so much for this conversation. 

GUIDI: Thank you, Sam. It was a pleasure.