STARRED Book Review: The Peril of Remembering Nice Things

Reviewed by Samantha Hui

A powerful memoir reminding us to find the truth in our stories when both history and memory fail us 

History is rarely captured in its nuanced entirety; the full truth often lies in the shadows of the stories left untold. Jeffrey Wade Gibbs’s memoir shines a light on repressed memories and warped histories through an investigation guided by the heart. In tracing the shifting values and perspectives spanning generations, The Peril of Remembering Nice Things demonstrates that the truth is equal parts history and introspection. 

“Nothing too direct, nothing too obvious, but in the South, a white man’s suicide an a black man’s murder can have roots that coil together deep, deep beneath the earth.”

Twenty years after the death of his father, Jeffrey Wade Gibbs has returned to his conservative, rural hometown in Florida with the goal of investigating the cause of his father’s suicide. With just three days to ask his family members every question he has been ruminating over the decades, the answers he seeks are much more complex than he might have thought. The trauma that led Bob Gibbs to his suicide could be deeply related to the hatred that led to the lynching of John Henry Williams. In a culture shaped by race relations and historical pluralism, everyone is both implicated in and negatively affected by the tragedies of our history. 

“Isolated, reclusive, understanding the rules of the culture they had deliberately left and held in contempt by that same culture. This describes my father to a T.”

The author’s experiences in adulthood set the foundation for his investigation into his father’s suicide. Gibbs’s wife and her Kurdish family regularly experience bigotry in Turkey ranging from microaggressions to outright aggression. Gibbs likens the Kurdish experience to that of Black people in America; their history and experiences are being re-written right in front of them. To learn about his father’s death, Jeffrey must learn about his father’s life which was heavily framed by his own family’s racism. In search of the cause of evil, Gibbs begins to question if evil is passed through the genes.  

“This is the conflict I have always felt, that my mother felt that day, too, just seconds after laughing hysterically with her sister-in-law–love and revulsion, affection and horror, friendship and shame.”

Gibbs acts as an archaeologist of memory, stitching together historical events, biased convictions, and personal experience. When he asks multiple sources regarding the same event, he receives multiple different recounts. Even when he asks the same person about the same event, their story always changes, whether to save face or because their memory of the event has changed. 

The memoir tackles heavy and traumatic topics, but what makes this book such a refreshing read is that the author allows the readers and himself to sit with the confusion. The confusion of laughing with an aunt but immediately getting nervous because of a bigoted comment. The confusion of remembering the happy memories of fishing with one’s father, but hearing stories years later of his aggression. The confusion of whether evil is innate or learned. 

“The deeper I dig, the more I wonder how accurate any memory can be. Details are always shifting beneath me, changing mid-story like a dream sometimes does.”

Deeply introspective. Well researched. Beautifully written. Gibbs’s writing expertly captures the inner turmoil of the American experience without being overly moralistic or didactic. This memoir is an ode to the American South as well as an indictment. In reading this book, readers will come to understand that to truly love something is to also be critical of its failings. 

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