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Abstract

The following autoethnography explores the author’s discoveries as she sorts through boxes of family photos, documents, and artifacts. The author confronts her initial resistance to taking on the work of the previous generations. As the process unfolds, the author discovers insights related to her current identity as the stories, full of memories and holes, emerge more clearly. The author’s insights are informed by feminist concerns of lost writing and lost stories, by family secrets and untold stories, and by how her own life emerges with more clarity as she illuminates the family stories. In the process, the author ponders memory and forgetting, discerns what to keep and what to burn, and in so doing, finds a dialogue with her ancestors.

Keywords

artifacts lost writing gender roles identity memory

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References

Conway, J. ( 1998) When memory speaks: Exploring the art of Autobiography . New York: Vintage.

Fine, E. ( 1988). The absent memory: The act of writing in post-holocaust French literature. In B. Lang (Ed., ) Writing and the holocaust (pp. 41-57), New York: Holmes and Meier.

Goodall, H.L. ( 2005). Narrative inheritance: A nuclear family with toxic secrets . Qualitative Inquiry, 11, 492-513.

McNay, M. (2009) Absent memory, family secrets, narrative inheritance. Qualitative Inquiry, 15, 1178-1188.

Poulos, C. ( 2009). Accidental ethnography: An inquiry into family secrecy . Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press .

Sermijn, J. , Devlieger, P. , & Loots, G. ( 2008). The narrative construction of the self: Selfhood as a Rhizomatic theory. Qualitative Inquiry, 14 , 632-650.

It’s All Come Down to Me: Meaning Making With Family Artifacts

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