A Brief History of Central America

The history of Central America directly impacts current events, and exploring the social, political, and economic reasons why Guatemalans and other Central Americans emigrate to the United States deepens our connections to family stories and legacies. This chapter offers a brief overview of the region....

Family Histories, Family Stories and Family Secrets: Late Discoveries of Being Adopted

This paper reviews what we know about the experiences of adopted people who discover in later-life that they are adopted. It begins by discussing how and why various facets of the adoption experience have come to the fore over the 20th and 21st century time span of contemporary adoption. The paper concludes with the fact that research on the late discovery of adoption is in its infancy. It also points to parallels that will exist for people who have been conceived by anonymous donation and raises additional areas for possible research.

Silences and Secrets of Family, Community and the State

In this article, we suggest that silence is often more about remembering than forgetting. We consider ways in which silences can occupy and dominate state discourse, community knowledge, family stories and individual narratives. Drawing on research material from Poland and the Czech Republic in the late socialist and post-socialist periods, we look at ways similar patterns of narrative fusion take place in various contexts in which both the public and the private domains are often shadowed by things veiled in secrecy and hidden from the general gaze. We argue that personal family and kin accounts of private things which for some reason cannot be spoken become entangled with, and to some extent communicated through, broader and more public historical narratives, and vice versa, and show how partial accounts are thus transmitted from generation to generation even while remaining largely unspoken. In developing our argument, we focus on the idea of walls of silence and on the process of drawingboundaries between people and the state, between generations (grandparents, parents and children) and between insiders and outsiders of communities. Suggesting that silence may be loud or quiet, we look at registers of silence and the ways in which they operate at the different levels of state, community and household. We ask what it means to hold certain kinds of knowledge, or to be excluded from these. At times, and for some people, knowledge may be a source of power or social or economic capital; for others, or in other contexts, being excluded from or rejecting knowledge, and thus not being privy to the subtexts of silence, may be a source or freedom and potential or possibility.

Tātai Tara, Genealogical Storying: A Foundation of Decolonisation in Oceania

<p>This thesis reads Patricia Grace's Baby No-eyes, and Albert Wendt's The Adventures of Vela and The Mango's Kiss to highlight the essential nature of tātai tara (genealogical storying) in the decolonisation of Oceanian identity. Central to the thesis is a personal mythology, a kind of memoir that recounts some of the author's foundational stories in the form of prose and poetry. The first core chapter deals with a discussion of post-colonial 'skins', the things that we believe are part of ourselves that essentially come from being socialised in a colonial culture. The chapter “Skeletons”, explores the family secrets that give rise to shame that is intergenerational. Finally, Flesh and Blood demonstrates the powerful nature of reclaiming family stories as a way of re-education and healing. Ultimately, the thesis aims at an understanding of tātai tara, a process that happens whether we are aware of it or not, and how the individual is a creator of his or her own identity through the level of engagement with the stories.</p>

Tātai Tara, Genealogical Storying: A Foundation of Decolonisation in Oceania

<p>This thesis reads Patricia Grace's Baby No-eyes, and Albert Wendt's The Adventures of Vela and The Mango's Kiss to highlight the essential nature of tātai tara (genealogical storying) in the decolonisation of Oceanian identity. Central to the thesis is a personal mythology, a kind of memoir that recounts some of the author's foundational stories in the form of prose and poetry. The first core chapter deals with a discussion of post-colonial 'skins', the things that we believe are part of ourselves that essentially come from being socialised in a colonial culture. The chapter “Skeletons”, explores the family secrets that give rise to shame that is intergenerational. Finally, Flesh and Blood demonstrates the powerful nature of reclaiming family stories as a way of re-education and healing. Ultimately, the thesis aims at an understanding of tātai tara, a process that happens whether we are aware of it or not, and how the individual is a creator of his or her own identity through the level of engagement with the stories.</p>

«WORK ON MYTH»: THE FAMILY LEVEL

Оценивается применимость взаимосвязанного (ситуационного) подхода к мифу в отношении интерпретации нарративов о семейной памяти. Повседневная мифология семейной памяти понимается как особое пространство актуализации социальной мифологии, включающее преломление автобиографической памяти, семейного опыта в сферах повседневности. Отмечается, что в случае с семейными историями «работа над мифом» охватывает все виды бытия мифа - от индивидуального до социетального. Для характеристики совокупности постоянно воспроизводящихся в семейных рассказах и практиках мифологизированных представлений предлагается использовать термин «семейный мифоландшафт», конфигурация которого специфична для каждой семьи, но содержит устойчивые компоненты. The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Lipetsk Branch, Lipetsk The article assesses the applicability of the interrelational approach to myth in the perspective of interpretation of narratives nourished by family memory. Everyday mythology of family memory is understood as a special space of actualization of social mythology, which includes the refraction of autobiographical memory, family experience in the spheres of everyday life. It is noted that in the case of family stories, «work on myth» covers all types of myth existence - from individual to societal. To characterize the totality of mythologized representations that are constantly reproduced in family stories and practices, it is proposed to use the term «family mythscape», the configuration of which is specific for each family, but contains stable components.