Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma, and Memory

Conclusion: Writing Childhood in the Twenty-First Century

170  Conclusion writing childhood in the twenty-first century This is an important time to be working on autobiographies of childhood. At the turn of the millennium, a number of autobiographies have emerged to challenge and consolidate dominant ways of thinking about childhood in the twentieth century. In Australia, Stolen Generations testimonies have produced a revolution in the way many Australians think about their own childhoods during the post–World War II period of assimilation. In the United States and United Kingdom, narratives of childhood poverty and abuse have caused readers to reflect on class and gender inequalities in the so-called postwar golden age. These autobiographies have produced a new interest in and attention to the figure of the child in contemporary culture. When autobiographers write about their childhoods, they are invariably influenced by a variety of forces that enable and limit their storytelling. Autobiographies of childhood are produced, circulated, and received within cultural contexts that place particular expectations on these texts. I have identi fied a number of contexts for interpreting autobiographies of childhood at the millennium turn, most particularly the institutional contexts and cultural milieu from which these texts emerge. Reading autobiographies of childhood within these contexts has allowed for a discussion of these autobiographies within a range of paradigms: as memory practice, as discourse on childhood, as literature, and/or as an overtly political “call to action.” The movement toward particular forms of autobiographical writing about childhood has significant implications for autobiographical writing in general. The autobiographies in this study have emerged in a variety of forms, with particular trends emerging strongly: autobiographies of childhood as nostalgic explorations of social, family, and personal histories; a space to explore the development of the writer; a genre for considering the symbolic the twenty-first century 171 role of the child figure in adult consciousness. But the most significant development within autobiographies of childhood written in the 1990s and 2000s has been the rise (and rise) of traumatic autobiographies of childhood—most commonly written by first-time writers. Several of these autobiographies use conversational language as a vehicle for their narratives, thus challenging established literary forms, or are defiantly didactic in addressing readers in a call to action. Traumatic narratives are often overtly fragmented and multivocal and often declare memory loss. These life narratives commonly test the boundaries of autobiography and cultural memory. As a consequence, their authors may be celebrated for their courage or, conversely, embroiled in controversies over authenticity. I have explored the tension that exists between autobiographies of childhood written in the nostalgic and traumatic memory modes. Nostalgic and traumatic texts about childhood stem from, and engage with, contemporary cultural flash points or moments of social crises affecting childhood. The representation of childhood within autobiographies demonstrates autobiography ’s capacity as both an instrument of cultural memory and a weapon of counter-memory. Autobiographies of childhood are involved in a cyclical process of consolidating dominant histories and myths of childhood even as they present challenges to these dominant modes. Autobiographies of childhood are an important site for the negotiation and expression of childhood identities. In presenting a plurality of childhood experiences, accomplishments, traumas, and relationships, the autobiographies discussed in this study broaden the possibilities for narrating childhood for future autobiographers, largely through asserting and claiming new identities for childhoods lived between the 1920s and 1980s. But as with all public declarations of self and identity, the autobiography of childhood is a limited form that invariably idealizes certain identities and not others. Readers have come to expect certain identity performances from autobiographies of childhood. As Michael Lambek and Paul Antze argue, “Reinscribing personal stories into these public discourses often obscures their richness and moral complexity” (xxiv). In the act of writing a traumatic autobiography of childhood, an author confirms recovery from abuse. The presence of an author’s biographical summary, typically on the front sleeve or back page of the autobiography, functions as a statement affirming the author’s survival and subsequent accomplishments. As I suggested, the recovered, resilient, and forgiving author is vehemently celebrated within book reception to the extent that almost no other identities are available. Despite the emergence of new voices within traumatic autobiography, limits have nevertheless been set upon these texts. These limits have paradoxically 172 contesting childhood silenced certain voices more than others (perhaps in much the same way as the voices within these...