The Mae House Archives: 001

Three writers at home and at their desks (plus what I am currently listening to at mine and a 7-minute future-listen)

In 2021 I started The Mae House archives as a way to root the design process of the nearly 200-year-old house. It has three rooms, three bathrooms, and much (if not most) of the furniture within it is vintage. Although I have a design eye that very much leans on my history in style, I needed something to lean that on. Developing an archive of homes held by BIPOC provided learnings to the process that I was able to fold into my writing in Stand In My Window. Unbeknownst to me, it also provided ground the years immediately following the worst of the pandemic. The archives became an opportunity for me to think and to radically imagine.

What I have come to realize since I became a steward of the house is that so very often, seeing can be a pathway to believing. Of course, this includes, doing.

Lately, the #TheMaeHouseStories on instagram has slowed, because they don’t continue to capture the process in a way in which I originally set out. Additionally, I am no longer in the midst of a renovation. Nor, am I in a season of deep book writing. In an ideal world, I’d like my external output to align with my internal flow. I am thinking of keeping many things aligned with the seasons of the year, like our Rest As Residencies and like my Storytelling workshops during the onset of the pandemic.

There are times (many), where I need to remember that this existed before me, and it will surely exist after me. This, meaning this thing of homemaking. We are all doing it within the seasons of our lives and this shared history. It was old forgotten stories of Seneca Village and cyclical re-endangering of our current housing in New York City. These archives provide peace in a season (several) of unrest. The world is always ending, I try to remember. They provide fortitude to continue.

As I look back and expand on these archives beyond the squares of instagram so that they may live as a paid subscription offering now on this letter too, I hope you will find the place of this in this slice of the world along with me.

Here’s a look at three well-known Black writers at their desks…