The memory Police is a novel about a novelist who lives on an island that things often disappear from. These things are often random like perfume, roses, and photos but are also main staples in people’s lives that “disappear” and then are forgotten. This book shows how people often deal with the sudden loss of once important things.
I found this story interesting because we are brought into this world where something magically “disappears” and then people all go out and destroy what is left of that item. When the birds disappeared off the island everyone went out and released all of their birds without a second thought or a protest. I think the most sinister thing that was made to disappear was the photos. Photos are people’s memories and are often one of the few physical items that we have of our love ones so when these were destroyed that further messes with their sense of memory.
Because we never know who is deciding what disappears or how they do it; this book makes me think of the systematic stripping of people’s cultures and their lives. When Africans were being brought over through the slave trade they were stripped of their native names like in Roots when Kunta was tortured into taking is master’s name, Toby. They were also stripped of their religion, their languages, and removed from their families. They were not allowed to have anything that reminded them of where the came from and forced to take on new ways of thinking and living. Further down the line, what remained of their culture was completely forgotten. This is similar to what happened in Memory Police, one by one important pieces of them and their bodies disappear until they are completely gone. This makes it seem like this was a slow but deliberate genocide.