Who gets to write history? I like to refer to myself as an accidental historian. I didn’t choose to become one but rather became one out of necessity. History was not something I considered as a career because, quite simply, I did not see anyone that looked like me writing about history.
I was brought up being told histories about my ancestors by people who did not look like me – mostly white, middle-aged men. I didn’t question this, even though the history we produce reflects the ideas, values and identity of the historian. The histories that I write largely deal with narratives that have been erased or silenced. But it became apparent very quickly that the tools I had been equipped with by history are insufficient when applied to marginalised histories, and that different lenses are required to minimise the reproduction of erasures and silences.
