Writing Against, Alongside and Beyond Memory: Lifewriting as Reflexive, Poststructuralist Feminist Research PracticeMarilyn Metta is the cowinner of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry 2011 Qualitative Book Award. Memory, embedded in our scripts of the past, inscribed in our bodies and reflected in the collective memory of every family, group and community, occupies one of the most controversial and contested sites over what constitutes legitimate knowledge-making. Using a reflexive feminist research methodology, the author is involved with memory-work in creating three life narratives written in different narrative styles: her mother's and father's biographies and her own autobiography/autoethnography. By exploring the intersections of race, gender, ethnicity and culture in the social and cultural constructions of identities in lifewriting, this book maps the underlying politics of storytelling and storymaking, and investigates the political, social, pedagogical and therapeutic implications of writing personal life narratives for feminist scholarship, research and practice. As a Chinese-Australian woman engaging in reflexive, creative and imaginative lifewriting, the author hopes to create new spaces and add new voices to the small but emerging Asian Australian scholarly literature. |
Contents
Introduction | 11 |
An Ambivalent Conception | 17 |
CHAPTER II | 73 |
CHAPTER III | 165 |
Ways of knowing | 178 |
Ways of doing research II | 208 |
CHAPTER IV | 222 |
Reflections on Writing and Negotiating the Triple Braid | 229 |
Fathers the absent but implicit in womens lifewriting | 251 |
Silences | 257 |
CHAPTER V | 271 |
| 297 | |
Common terms and phrases
allows alongside Alor Star ambivalence Amy Tan argues Asian Australian autobiographical writings become biography body challenge child Chinese Chinese Australian Chinese Malaysian Cixous complex create creative critical cultural daughter Denzin discourses domestic violence eldest emerged engage ethnic minority explore father feel feminine gender girl Hokkien dialect hybrid identity imagination intersectionality journey Kempetai Khoo knowledge knowledge-making Kuan Yin language lifewriting research Malay Malaysia marginalised memory metaphor mind mother multiple narrative therapy narratives negotiate pain papa papa's past Peranakan political position poststructuralist powerful process of writing race reflect reflexive feminist reflexive practice reflexive research reflexive space relationship remember research methodology ringgit scholarly sense shift silence Singapore social space speak spiritual story struggle thinking tion told Trinh triple braid voice woman women women's lifewriting women's studies women's writings Wong writing my mother's writing my parents writing process