story: Benito Cereno
author: Herman Melville
year: 1856
where: work after reading Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past
note: People often cannot conceive of reality’s happenings, because the truth is unthinkable to them.
a line: “That moment, across the long-benighted mind of Captain Delano, a flash of revelation swept, illuminating, in unanticipated clearness, his host’s whole mysterious demeanor, with every enigmatic event of the day, as well as the entire past voyage of the San Dominick. He smote Babo’s hand down, but his own heart smote him harder.”
samantha Neugebauer 