What We Inherit, What We Retell

How and why do the stories we inherit become part of the narratives we tell about ourselves? Drawing on myth, song, literature, and cultural memory, internationally acclaimed authors Sinan Antoon, Violaine Huisman, and Valeria Luiselli discuss intertextuality as a way of thinking through memory, exile, family, history, and identity in their respective novels, Of Loss and Lavender, The Monuments of Paris, and Beginning Middle End. How do myths and literature help us understand rupture and belonging? What happens when private memory meets collective history? And can cultural canons offer a way not only of remembering the past, but also of imagining a life beyond it? Moderated by Sanaë Lemoine (The Margot Affair).