The House Archives Built and Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities
Dorothy Berry
Now Available
The third printing of The House Archives Built is now available for purchase.
“A powerful, poignant, reflection on the past and future of Black archives.”
— Kirkus Reviews
About
this book
As cultural heritage institutions across the nation grapple with the realization that their collecting histories have captured an incomplete picture of history, curators and archivists like Dorothy Berry have been drawn into complicated conversations. The House Archives Built and Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities brings together years of those conversations from their origins in conference halls, webinars, and reading rooms to open them up to the public. The labor and theory that upholds archives has been obscured, but our understandings of history and ourselves rest on those invisible foundations. This book clarifies those foundations while offering new possibilities for imagining archival futures in and outside of institutional holdings.
Moses Berry, circa 1955, with his grandmother Mamie and brothers Gary and Charles, on the porch his great grandparents built in 1873.
Annah Sidigu, Editor
Chindo Nkenke-Smith of Amalaeju Design Studio, Book Design
Paperback: 89 pages
Publisher: We Here Press (October 16, 2025)
ISBN: 979-8-218-83148-6
Language: English
Product Dimensions: 6 x .25 x 8.375 inches
“In The House Archives Built, Dorothy Berry skillfully imbricates allegiance to professional archival protocols with improvisation, the communal with the personal. A seasoned archivist and musician, Berry experiments with bibliographic and bureaucratic forms, collages together a range of media formats, and harmonizes the voices of Black archivists and archival subjects to find thrilling new possibilities within archives’ institutional and domestic architectures.”
Shannon Mattern
Author of A City Is Not a Computer and Code and Clay, Data and Dirt
About
Dorothy Berry
Dorothy Berry is an archivist and writer whose work can be found in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Public Domain Review, and Lapham’s Quarterly. Her writing is informed by archival methodologies from a range of cultural heritage institutions, where she continues to implement creative methods to make archival collections related to Black life available more broadly.
Get in touch.
Want to engage with We Here Press or author Dorothy Berry? Let us know.
"In The House That Archives Built, Dorothy Berry identifies herself as a 'digital humanist'. In an era where we find ourselves stalked around the internet by rapacious algorithms bent on convincing us not to think for ourselves, a little ‘digital humanism’ is needed more than ever. Luckily for us, Berry’s perspicacity extends to the analog world, and her slim-yet-rich and evocatively illustrated volume offers a generous, all-encompassing inquiry into the politics, practice, and ethics of documentation, research, and memorialization. The House That Archives Built is a unique and thoughtful piece of work produced by a unique and thoughtful person, and I strongly recommend it.”
Ashley Clark
Author of The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films
What we listen to when we pack your orders
Can we here email you?
Sign up for We Here’s newsletter to hear about Press news and other orbits.
