Pub Date : 2022-09-18DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2120149
Michelle Hamadache
ABSTRACT Before my mother-in-law Fatima comes to visit us from Algiers, a monumental cleaning of our already relatively tidy home occurs. The cleaning begins weeks before her arrival, and the day before her flight lands is one of anxiety and arguments as each member of the family blames another for their failures of cleanliness and order. Fatima keeps house with a ferocity that is matched only by her stamina, and she expects us to do the same. It might sound as though Fatima is cleaning house the way women have cleaned houses for generations before her, but this is not the case. Fatima is Kabyle Algerian and a first generation born in Algiers centreville. Her own mother learned to keep house from a French colon, while Algeria was still a colony of France (1830–1962). Fatima is nearing eighty, so my desire to record her relationship with la ménage is a way of documenting a life that might otherwise seem less than extraordinary. Biography, historical research and memoir combine in this essay where I interrogate intimate domestic spaces and their intersections with historical and political events, forming a feminist inquiry into the way women negotiate power in colonial and patriarchal societies, challenging myths of passivity and subjugation and complicating ideas about gendered domestic spaces.
{"title":"On Learning to Love Your Mother-in-law: Remembering La Ménage in Colonial and Postcolonial Algeria","authors":"Michelle Hamadache","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2120149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2120149","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Before my mother-in-law Fatima comes to visit us from Algiers, a monumental cleaning of our already relatively tidy home occurs. The cleaning begins weeks before her arrival, and the day before her flight lands is one of anxiety and arguments as each member of the family blames another for their failures of cleanliness and order. Fatima keeps house with a ferocity that is matched only by her stamina, and she expects us to do the same. It might sound as though Fatima is cleaning house the way women have cleaned houses for generations before her, but this is not the case. Fatima is Kabyle Algerian and a first generation born in Algiers centreville. Her own mother learned to keep house from a French colon, while Algeria was still a colony of France (1830–1962). Fatima is nearing eighty, so my desire to record her relationship with la ménage is a way of documenting a life that might otherwise seem less than extraordinary. Biography, historical research and memoir combine in this essay where I interrogate intimate domestic spaces and their intersections with historical and political events, forming a feminist inquiry into the way women negotiate power in colonial and patriarchal societies, challenging myths of passivity and subjugation and complicating ideas about gendered domestic spaces.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"20 1","pages":"107 - 124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44128839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-18DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2120593
Yu Tao, Benjamin Smith, Petra Mosmann, K. Poon, B. Walker
ABSTRACT This article reflects on a joint journey during which three academics, a community historian, and a family historian collaborated in searching for Moon Chow, who is widely narrated as the first documented Chinese immigrant to Western Australia. This experience demonstrates how researchers from various traditions and backgrounds can work together productively despite different initial motivations and agendas. This article presents various Moon Chow stories and narratives that family historians, community historians, academic historians, public entities, and commercial entities have put forward. Rather than judging the soundness and merits of these stories, this article highlights how working with family and community historians results in researchers developing a richer understanding of Moon Chow, telling his story sincerely and sympathetically and preventing the poor scholarship of replacing one oversimplified narrative with another. This article also reveals that family historians may choose to deal with different parts of their family history in different ways to reach different objectives. As a result, their positions, motivations, and identities can be highly fluid, not confined to scholarly paradigms.
{"title":"Searching for Moon Chow: A Joint Journey","authors":"Yu Tao, Benjamin Smith, Petra Mosmann, K. Poon, B. Walker","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2120593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2120593","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article reflects on a joint journey during which three academics, a community historian, and a family historian collaborated in searching for Moon Chow, who is widely narrated as the first documented Chinese immigrant to Western Australia. This experience demonstrates how researchers from various traditions and backgrounds can work together productively despite different initial motivations and agendas. This article presents various Moon Chow stories and narratives that family historians, community historians, academic historians, public entities, and commercial entities have put forward. Rather than judging the soundness and merits of these stories, this article highlights how working with family and community historians results in researchers developing a richer understanding of Moon Chow, telling his story sincerely and sympathetically and preventing the poor scholarship of replacing one oversimplified narrative with another. This article also reveals that family historians may choose to deal with different parts of their family history in different ways to reach different objectives. As a result, their positions, motivations, and identities can be highly fluid, not confined to scholarly paradigms.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"20 1","pages":"217 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47380325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-18DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2120133
J. Kirkness
ABSTRACT The history of the deaf has been regarded as ‘A history of misunderstandings’ [de Saint-Loup, A. 1996. “A History of Misunderstandings: The History of the Deaf.” Diogenes 44 (175): 1–25]. Literary writing about deaf lives is so rare that scholars discuss the ‘invisibility’ of deafness in the cultural imaginary (McDonald, D. 2011. “HEARSAY: How Stories About Deafness and Deaf People are Told.” PhD diss., Griffith University). In response to this dearth of literature, this paper considers the unique potential of creative nonfiction writing to offer new epistemological understandings of ‘the hearing line’—‘the invisible boundary between the deaf and the hearing’ (Krentz, C. 2007. “Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth Century Literature.” USA: University of North Carolina Press, 2). I discuss the process of writing a memoir, titled ‘A Sense of You’, which explores my relationship with my Deaf grandparents. By engaging with family history and stories, this work provides a window to interactions across the hearing line. I argue for the value of literary representations that disrupt existing understandings of both deafness and hearing, utilising family history and creative nonfictionto animate lived experience. Through engagement with Deaf Studies philosophy, this paper troubles medical understandings of deafness.
摘要聋人的历史被认为是“误解的历史”[de Saint Loup，A.1996。《误解的历史：聋人的历史》，第欧根尼44（175）：1-25]。关于聋人生活的文学作品非常罕见，以至于学者们讨论了聋人在文化想象中的“隐形”（McDonald，D.2011）。“听力：关于耳聋和聋人的故事是如何讲述的。”博士diss。，格里菲斯大学）。针对文献的匮乏，本文考虑了创造性非虚构写作的独特潜力，以提供对“听觉线”——“聋人和听力之间的无形边界”的新的认识论理解（Krentz，C.2007）。《写作失聪：19世纪文学中的听力线》，美国：北卡罗来纳大学出版社，2）。我讨论了写回忆录的过程，书名为《你的感觉》，探讨了我与聋人祖父母的关系。通过参与家族历史和故事，这部作品为跨听力线的互动提供了一个窗口。我主张文学表征的价值，它破坏了对耳聋和听力的现有理解，利用家族历史和创造性的非虚构作品来生动地体验生活。本文通过对聋人研究哲学的介入，对医学界对耳聋的理解提出了质疑。
{"title":"Writing the Hearing Line: Telling Family Stories of Deafness","authors":"J. Kirkness","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2120133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2120133","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The history of the deaf has been regarded as ‘A history of misunderstandings’ [de Saint-Loup, A. 1996. “A History of Misunderstandings: The History of the Deaf.” Diogenes 44 (175): 1–25]. Literary writing about deaf lives is so rare that scholars discuss the ‘invisibility’ of deafness in the cultural imaginary (McDonald, D. 2011. “HEARSAY: How Stories About Deafness and Deaf People are Told.” PhD diss., Griffith University). In response to this dearth of literature, this paper considers the unique potential of creative nonfiction writing to offer new epistemological understandings of ‘the hearing line’—‘the invisible boundary between the deaf and the hearing’ (Krentz, C. 2007. “Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth Century Literature.” USA: University of North Carolina Press, 2). I discuss the process of writing a memoir, titled ‘A Sense of You’, which explores my relationship with my Deaf grandparents. By engaging with family history and stories, this work provides a window to interactions across the hearing line. I argue for the value of literary representations that disrupt existing understandings of both deafness and hearing, utilising family history and creative nonfictionto animate lived experience. Through engagement with Deaf Studies philosophy, this paper troubles medical understandings of deafness.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"20 1","pages":"25 - 44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47805219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-18DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2120102
Karen Agutter
ABSTRACT Between 1947 and 1953 Australia accepted over 172,000 refugees from post-war Europe. Many of these displaced persons are now deceased and have left little record outside of their official presence in the archive. Although their life stories may live on within families, and occasionally in often unpublished memoirs, as individuals they are apt to disappear from the historian’s gaze. As an academic historian I increasingly find myself using family history methods to inform my broader historical research, reconstructing life stories of refugees and migrants, to fill the gaps and silences that exist once the archival record ends. Using examples from my research I will examine how family history methods help to provide a deeper understanding of the longer-term experiences of this migration and the policies which governed it. Furthermore, the use of family history websites for academic research is becoming increasingly popular and yet the legal and ethical constraints, to date, have received very little scholarly attention. This paper will also consider these, both from the point of view of the academic researcher, and from a personal perspective given that even those with public online family trees may not welcome our intrusion into what is ultimately, a very private space.
{"title":"Treading Warily into the Lives of Others","authors":"Karen Agutter","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2120102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2120102","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Between 1947 and 1953 Australia accepted over 172,000 refugees from post-war Europe. Many of these displaced persons are now deceased and have left little record outside of their official presence in the archive. Although their life stories may live on within families, and occasionally in often unpublished memoirs, as individuals they are apt to disappear from the historian’s gaze. As an academic historian I increasingly find myself using family history methods to inform my broader historical research, reconstructing life stories of refugees and migrants, to fill the gaps and silences that exist once the archival record ends. Using examples from my research I will examine how family history methods help to provide a deeper understanding of the longer-term experiences of this migration and the policies which governed it. Furthermore, the use of family history websites for academic research is becoming increasingly popular and yet the legal and ethical constraints, to date, have received very little scholarly attention. This paper will also consider these, both from the point of view of the academic researcher, and from a personal perspective given that even those with public online family trees may not welcome our intrusion into what is ultimately, a very private space.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"5 1","pages":"45 - 60"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59840051","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-18DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2119655
Jane Messer
ABSTRACT This article focuses on two lesser-known characteristics of German Jewish life during the Third Reich: the high rate of suicide amongst Jews and the extraordinary impediments to their migration. Beginning with memoir-narrative which centres on my Jewish father’s revelation that my grandmother and great-grandmother had committed suicide, the paper then outlines the reasons for and characteristics of suicide in Nazi Germany, and the phenomenon’s connection to the difficulties most Jews faced in attempting to leave Germany. I demonstrate the ways in which I have been able to reshape the family narratives told to me through historical and genealogical research, returning the given knowledge back. Researching these family and national tragedies have brought about new knowledge and transformative understandings.
{"title":"Suicide in Nazi Germany: Transformative Family History","authors":"Jane Messer","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2119655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2119655","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article focuses on two lesser-known characteristics of German Jewish life during the Third Reich: the high rate of suicide amongst Jews and the extraordinary impediments to their migration. Beginning with memoir-narrative which centres on my Jewish father’s revelation that my grandmother and great-grandmother had committed suicide, the paper then outlines the reasons for and characteristics of suicide in Nazi Germany, and the phenomenon’s connection to the difficulties most Jews faced in attempting to leave Germany. I demonstrate the ways in which I have been able to reshape the family narratives told to me through historical and genealogical research, returning the given knowledge back. Researching these family and national tragedies have brought about new knowledge and transformative understandings.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"20 1","pages":"79 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49189058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-15DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2120847
Tess Scholfield-Peters
ABSTRACT The Holocaust and its representation are the subject of acute historical, academic and artistic study. The dominant channels of representation tend to perpetuate popularised narratives and fictionalise in ways that are often irresponsible and unethical, designed to captivate audiences at the expense of accuracy and respect for the trauma of victims. It is crucial that non-witnesses who seek to write about the Holocaust period interrogate the ethics of, and intentions for, their practice. In this paper I analyse my own experience as a third-generation writer—the grandchild of a survivor—and two case study texts: An Exclusive Love (2010) by Johanna Adorján, and A Certain Light (2018) by Cynthia Banham, to illustrate how writers at a three-generation remove from the Holocaust engage with their grandparents’ Holocaust story ethically. In these works of memoir, empathy and memory are problematised in relation to the Holocaust’s lingering presence in family narrative. Imaginative projection—derived from deep research, memory, and empathic response—functions in these memoirs as a bridging device between past and present. Such key characteristics as transparent and reflexive narrative voice, documented research process, and informed, imaginative projection are, I argue, exemplary of an ethical approach to family Holocaust history.
{"title":"Interrogating the Ethics and Intentions of Family Life Writing Relating to the Holocaust","authors":"Tess Scholfield-Peters","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2120847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2120847","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Holocaust and its representation are the subject of acute historical, academic and artistic study. The dominant channels of representation tend to perpetuate popularised narratives and fictionalise in ways that are often irresponsible and unethical, designed to captivate audiences at the expense of accuracy and respect for the trauma of victims. It is crucial that non-witnesses who seek to write about the Holocaust period interrogate the ethics of, and intentions for, their practice. In this paper I analyse my own experience as a third-generation writer—the grandchild of a survivor—and two case study texts: An Exclusive Love (2010) by Johanna Adorján, and A Certain Light (2018) by Cynthia Banham, to illustrate how writers at a three-generation remove from the Holocaust engage with their grandparents’ Holocaust story ethically. In these works of memoir, empathy and memory are problematised in relation to the Holocaust’s lingering presence in family narrative. Imaginative projection—derived from deep research, memory, and empathic response—functions in these memoirs as a bridging device between past and present. Such key characteristics as transparent and reflexive narrative voice, documented research process, and informed, imaginative projection are, I argue, exemplary of an ethical approach to family Holocaust history.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"20 1","pages":"61 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47002945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-13DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2116762
Maria das Graças Salgado
ABSTRACT This article analyses the discourse of individuals who go through the same experience within the context of self-imposed exile. The subjects involved are the American writers Evelyn Scott (née Elsie Dunn, 1893–1963) and Cyril Kay-Scott (né Frederick Kreighton Wellman, 1874–1960). They scandalised their Southern society when, in 1913, they fled Louisiana and eloped to London and then Brazil with little money and no passports. Their experiences were extraordinary. After years of a semi-nomadic existence eking out a living in different parts of Brazil, the Scotts ended up in the country’s arid north-eastern backlands confronting isolation, poverty and near starvation. This work investigates the couple’s perception of the years they shared in the tropics. Carrying with them elite New Orleans values, how did they respond to the hardships of early twentieth-century Brazil? How did gender and emotion affect their daily lives and discourses about the same events? What specific events of their experiences were shared? Given that in different periods they wrote autobiographies about their lives in Brazil, the analysis is based on Evelyn Scott’s Escapade ([1923] 1995) and Cyril Kay-Scott’s Life is too short (1943). Results indicate that their survival in Brazil was unequally challenging, leading them to produce dissonant discourses.
{"title":"Dissonant Discourses: Evelyn Scott and Cyril Kay-Scott’s Experiences in Brazil (1914–1919)","authors":"Maria das Graças Salgado","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2116762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2116762","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article analyses the discourse of individuals who go through the same experience within the context of self-imposed exile. The subjects involved are the American writers Evelyn Scott (née Elsie Dunn, 1893–1963) and Cyril Kay-Scott (né Frederick Kreighton Wellman, 1874–1960). They scandalised their Southern society when, in 1913, they fled Louisiana and eloped to London and then Brazil with little money and no passports. Their experiences were extraordinary. After years of a semi-nomadic existence eking out a living in different parts of Brazil, the Scotts ended up in the country’s arid north-eastern backlands confronting isolation, poverty and near starvation. This work investigates the couple’s perception of the years they shared in the tropics. Carrying with them elite New Orleans values, how did they respond to the hardships of early twentieth-century Brazil? How did gender and emotion affect their daily lives and discourses about the same events? What specific events of their experiences were shared? Given that in different periods they wrote autobiographies about their lives in Brazil, the analysis is based on Evelyn Scott’s Escapade ([1923] 1995) and Cyril Kay-Scott’s Life is too short (1943). Results indicate that their survival in Brazil was unequally challenging, leading them to produce dissonant discourses.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"20 1","pages":"491 - 508"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42553215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-13DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2120172
Fiona McKergow
ABSTRACT Family historians can provide a crucial foundation for the analysis of historical objects held in museums. They contributed in significant ways to an object-based study I conducted on colonial textile culture in mid-nineteenth century Aotearoa New Zealand. Here, I use the example of a straw bonnet worn in 1863 by a first-generation bride from an English migrant family to the settlement of Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington. It was handed down several generations before being donated to a regional museum in the 1970s. Who made it, how it was worn, and why it was kept, were by that time unknown fragments of family knowledge. Despite this, my analysis of the straw bonnet as a colonial object was enriched by family historians who were able to put a private, distributed family archive in conversation with related records held in the public domain. Fascinating manuscript material, self-published family histories, additional clothing and textile items, and priceless collections of glass plate negatives were brought to my attention. Through this case study, I suggest that the work of family historians is hidden in plain sight within academic and museological research practices.
{"title":"The Objects of Family History: Eliza Bennett's Straw Wedding Bonnet","authors":"Fiona McKergow","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2120172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2120172","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Family historians can provide a crucial foundation for the analysis of historical objects held in museums. They contributed in significant ways to an object-based study I conducted on colonial textile culture in mid-nineteenth century Aotearoa New Zealand. Here, I use the example of a straw bonnet worn in 1863 by a first-generation bride from an English migrant family to the settlement of Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington. It was handed down several generations before being donated to a regional museum in the 1970s. Who made it, how it was worn, and why it was kept, were by that time unknown fragments of family knowledge. Despite this, my analysis of the straw bonnet as a colonial object was enriched by family historians who were able to put a private, distributed family archive in conversation with related records held in the public domain. Fascinating manuscript material, self-published family histories, additional clothing and textile items, and priceless collections of glass plate negatives were brought to my attention. Through this case study, I suggest that the work of family historians is hidden in plain sight within academic and museological research practices.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"20 1","pages":"125 - 143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44025763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-13DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2120630
A. Piper, Samadhi Driscoll
ABSTRACT This article uses a collaboration between an academic historian and a family historian as a case study for the importance of acknowledging the role of authorial subjectivity within biographical life writing. In particular, it considers the different lenses – from feminist to familial – that can be used to view the rags-to-riches tale of Sydney fortune-teller Mary Scales (1863–1928). By foregrounding our own positionality towards the subject matter our hope is not to avoid subjectivity, but rather expose its influence in shaping our readings of the historical sources through which Mary’s life can be (partially) known.
{"title":"Pulling out the Most Colourful Threads: Revealing and Weaving Positionality into Collaborative Life Writing","authors":"A. Piper, Samadhi Driscoll","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2120630","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2120630","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article uses a collaboration between an academic historian and a family historian as a case study for the importance of acknowledging the role of authorial subjectivity within biographical life writing. In particular, it considers the different lenses – from feminist to familial – that can be used to view the rags-to-riches tale of Sydney fortune-teller Mary Scales (1863–1928). By foregrounding our own positionality towards the subject matter our hope is not to avoid subjectivity, but rather expose its influence in shaping our readings of the historical sources through which Mary’s life can be (partially) known.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"20 1","pages":"183 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46980582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-12DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2022.2120143
Alison Baxter
ABSTRACT This article explores my experience of undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing using as a starting point my own family history, with its inevitable gaps and unreliable memories. It outlines my reasons for adopting a hybrid structure that includes both fiction and nonfiction and situates the book that I subsequently published in the context of recent writing about the lives of so-called ordinary people by historians, biographers and autobiographers. I reflect on the feedback that I received on my work-in-progress from both historians and the writing community and suggest that their apparently contradictory recommendations to be either more emotional or more factual had the same underlying aim, to transform my writing into a recognisable genre that was not ‘just’ family history. The article describes briefly how self-publishing has democratised the publishing process and allowed me to remain true to my vision for my book. The recognition I have received as a writer about history leads me to hope that, similarly, collaboration between family historians and the academy can democratise the ways in which historical knowledge is acquired and disseminated.
{"title":"Writing the Lives of Ordinary People—Opportunities and Challenges","authors":"Alison Baxter","doi":"10.1080/14484528.2022.2120143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2022.2120143","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores my experience of undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing using as a starting point my own family history, with its inevitable gaps and unreliable memories. It outlines my reasons for adopting a hybrid structure that includes both fiction and nonfiction and situates the book that I subsequently published in the context of recent writing about the lives of so-called ordinary people by historians, biographers and autobiographers. I reflect on the feedback that I received on my work-in-progress from both historians and the writing community and suggest that their apparently contradictory recommendations to be either more emotional or more factual had the same underlying aim, to transform my writing into a recognisable genre that was not ‘just’ family history. The article describes briefly how self-publishing has democratised the publishing process and allowed me to remain true to my vision for my book. The recognition I have received as a writer about history leads me to hope that, similarly, collaboration between family historians and the academy can democratise the ways in which historical knowledge is acquired and disseminated.","PeriodicalId":43797,"journal":{"name":"Life Writing","volume":"20 1","pages":"145 - 161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46809515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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