Outside the Box: Reading Material Grief Memoir as Grief Archive

Abstract

Personal archives are useful writing fodder, but grief memoirs that incorporate objects (“material grief memoirs”) also act as grief archives. In this essay, I posit that material grief memoirs are imaginative archives, which bring artifacts of loss into conversation. I acknowledge arguments against theoretical archives but ultimately assert the material grief memoir form’s generative potential. I examine three grief memoirs: The Museum of Words (2017) by Georgia Blain, Words for Lucy (2022) by Marion Halligan, and Small (2021) by Claire Lynch, to argue that reading grief memoir as grief archive facilitates deeper discussions on convergences of identity, loss, and materiality.