AustLit

'Life writing can provide a chronicle of experiences, but for many women as they age, it also presents an opportunity to find meaning. My written story began in my mid-forties, in contrast to my mother who wrote her autobiography during her mid-seventies. In this essay, I explore how my mother’s inability to give voice to certain memories impacted on my own ability to write my life. Her efforts to stay on the surface drove me deeper. Our writing becomes a way of holding onto earlier versions of ourselves, however much these versions might contradict later perspectives. The process of life writing interacts with the experience of ageing in a way that can reinvigorate the writer, and the reader by association. We can achieve so much more on the page than our ageing bodies will allow in the physical world. This includes an overview of our lives and a way of making meaning out of the patterns we perceive with each passing year. Such patterns become more apparent with age. Secrets can reach the surface, particularly events such as incest, a central factor in my family story. Or they can remain hidden, as in my mother’s attempts to sanitise the past.'  (Publication abstract)

'My mother, now in her ninetieth year, told me yesterday that she had hurt her hand. she had been walking through the hallway to her bedroom when she accidentally knocked it against the doorknob. she must have hit it hard because the top layer of skin came off and it was bleeding. When she looked at it more closely she realised that not only had she knocked off the top layer of skin but also the wound was deep. she could see her tendons down to the bone. she took herself to the office in the home where she lives in the hope that a nurse would be on duty. ' (Introduction)

'In this moving, literate memoir, Dr Elisabeth Hanscombe retraces and reflects on her experiences as a witness to and victim of sexual abuse by her father

'In a vivid but always objective narrative, Elisabeth shows how this trauma affects the personality, personal relationships and working life of its victims, but her story is one of perseverance and ultimately transcendence, giving hope to those who have suffered abuse.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When I told the counsellor from the university, a tall thin man, who went by the name of Bryan Brown, that I was living with a gambler and that as a consequence my life was uncertain and I was not sure I could finish my studies, he raised his eyebrows. We sat in his small office in the Old Arts Building on the second floor of the university, an office tucked away in what felt to me like a broom cupboard. It was part of the student counselling service. The service was free to all students. I went because Delys Sargeant, who took us for Social Biology, had rung the week before to tell me I had failed my Social Biology exam.'(Introduction)

'I took a first look at the secrets of my body during a family camping trip to the Delatite, where we had pitched our tents at the edge of the river down by the willows. Against a pristine landscape, cows grazed on the other bank, the hard grass prickled underfoot and a mangy one-horned goat roamed wild. The goat gave off a pungent stink whenever it passed nearby. Otherwise, we were alone.' (Introduction)

'The difficulty of writing as an autobiographer and simultaneously as a literary critic is that one trips the other up. My autobiographical self says I must write. I must follow the images in my mind. I must try to recreate my past, as bet I can, and fill in the gaps from my imagination. My unconscious will lead the way.' (Author's introduction)