Immemorial is a synthesis of reporting, memoir, and essay, reflecting on the design and function of memorials, in an attempt to reckon with the grief of climate catastrophe.
Immemorial is part of the Undelivered Lectures series from Transit Books.
LitStack is excited to offer this debut LitStack Review by Jess Reincke. Enjoy!
In This LitStack Review of Immemorial
Immemorial Shines A Light
Lauren Markham’s Immemorial offers light and validation through the environmental crisis and a time of darkness and isolation. Markham reanimates and reframes how we think about climate catastrophe and its attending grief, using the idea of memorials to push public imagination into generative realms.
Defining the Ineffable
How do you define an urge to memorialize something that is passing yet not entirely gone? What do you call a feeling towards a future that is still so uncertain and yet at times feels almost definite? How do you discuss a phenomenon so abstract that words themselves cannot describe it?
Lauren Markham masterfully poses these questions and many others in Immemorial, her book-length series of undelivered lectures. Throughout her pondering, she takes the reader’s hand, making sure we don’t get lost in a forest of abstraction, while still leaving room for us to arrive at our own conclusions. One way she achieves this is through sharing her quest to define her own feelings and experiences about the climate crisis.
One of the through lines in Immemorial is Markham’s need to define the feeling of a desire to memorialize a thing that still exists and yet is actively being destroyed, partially by the very people who feel desperate to save it. This is a journey that haunts Markham and reappears throughout the lectures in Immemorial. Seeing a writer at a loss for words (in this case, one specific word) feels strangely validating when discussing an issue that leaves a lot of us speechless and at times paralyzed.
Markham asks the questions a lot of us feel. For instance, “What good are words when immediate large-scale change is so desperately needed?” Markham’s work allows us to feel helpless without feeling lost or abandoned in the anxiety.
While she leaves space for the abstract, she also intentionally weaves in and grounds the reader with her concrete research and journalism. At the beginning of Immemorial, Markham points out that while “monument” and “memorial” are used interchangeably, the words have two significantly distinct definitions. Throughout the lectures, we seamlessly read through interviews, cited research, personal anecdotes, and analysis. With a balance of posing questions and giving answers, Markham brilliantly challenges her readers while giving us clarity. The unknown is explored and abstract yet defined through concrete and tangible evidence.
Why is This Here? Choice in Storytelling and Memory
Creation is composed of choices and intentions. Every memorial, monument, book, plaque, and speech includes information carefully chosen and curated by those who decided a thing was worth being remembered. And if some things are worth being remembered, then conversely there are also things that are worth being erased from the narrative. How do we choose what to omit and what to highlight?
Markham explores the complexity of choices in memorializing throughout her lecture series in Immemorial. She recalls a trip to Montgomery, Alabama where she accompanied some international Oakland high school students and educators. There, they came across a large and grandiose monument to the Confederacy. She describes the shock of the group as they examine something they’d known about theoretically, but hadn’t yet come face to face with. When a student asks, “Why is this here?” Markham reflects on the nature of the question. It wasn’t asked with judgement, but curiosity.
This question, “Why is this here?” is used to take us through examinations of memorialization. In every constructed honored memory there are several questions being answered: Who is being honored? Who provided funding? Who is this for? Why this memory? Why this location? With certain constructions, the answers to these questions and the ethical quandaries associated with them are a lot more obvious. But do the same complexities exist for catastrophes that impact all of us, like the climate crisis?
Markham takes us through her realization that yes, a lot of these complexities do still exist in these universal situations, especially since they aren’t as universal as we might initially believe. The scale at which we are affected by and responsible for the climate crisis differs based on many factors, a lot of which are rooted in privilege. So, as Markham points out, how can we all be represented in a climate crisis memorial?
Hope and Reality: Can They Coexist?
Is it naive to believe positive change is in the cards for Earth and its destructive inhabitants? Is it cynical and lazy to accept defeat and turn our backs on a planet that’s given us everything and desperately needs our help?
One of the most haunting images we’re given in Immemorial is Markham’s description of Ghost Forest, an installation created by Maya Lin (also the designer of the Vietnam War Memorial).
In passages like this, Markham’s transportive imagery brings us into the curated moments of personal narrative she shares. Sentences like, “The pallid skin of the trees brought to mind the way my grandmother looked, regal and strange, in her open casket before we closed the lid and buried her,” have stuck with me, long after devouring the final sentence in the series, and closing the book to be brought back to the brilliantly designed book cover by Anna Morrison which depicts bright pink, bare trees against a earthy green background.
This memorial reminds us of the irreversible damage the climate crisis has brought and will continue to bring. It’s also proof that there’s a desire for change. Similar to how Ghost Forest simultaneously holds up a mirror to the realities of the climate crisis and the hope for change, Markham in Immemorial explores the stress of living with climate anxiety and the guilt of individual complicity while providing the reader with space for hope that change is possible.
Future and Past
The discussion around the climate crisis is often filled with comparisons of the past, present, and future. In this context, the past and future are often pitted against each other, a picture of abundance against a barren dystopia. Markham challenges us to choose a less opposing perspective. How can we learn from the past without obsessing over it and neglecting our future? How can we move into a future with intention if we don’t allow the past to inform our choices?
Markham once again brings clarity to obscurity through choice and language. The past functions in the present through memory. Memory shapes the way we move through the world. What memories are we going to make in the future? Through thoughtful questioning, she encourages us to reframe the way we understand what has happened, what is happening, and what we can strive to make happen.
Markham beautifully uses her journey into motherhood to show us the memories she’s making for her future. She holds the anxieties of the past along with the excitement for her future and her daughter’s future. Leading by example Markham asks, how can we use our grief to fuel us to action instead of remaining paralyzed by what’s already happened?
~ Jess Reincke
About Lauren Markham
Lauren Markham is the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life and A Map of Future Ruins. Her work has appeared in VQR, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. She teaches writing at the University of San Francisco and in the Ashland University MFA in Writing Program.
You can connect with Lauren Markham on their website, and on Instagram.
Publisher: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 9798893389036
Pub Date: Feb 4, 2025
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About the Reviewer, Jess Reincke
Jess Reincke is a nonfiction writer living in San Francisco, California. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from USFCA. In addition to writing for LitStack, Jess is also a writer for the fashion and art magazine Only The Good Stuff.
Other LitStack Resources
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