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This book offers an empirically informed understanding of how cultural, autobiographical and absent memories of orphanhood interact and interconnect or come into being in the re-telling of a life story and construction of an identity. The volume investigates how care experienced identities are embedded within personal, social and cultural practices of remembering. The book stems from research carried out into the life (hi)stories of twelve undervalued 'historical witnesses' (Roberts, 2002) of orphanhood: women who grew up in Nazareth House children's home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Several themes are covered, including histories of care in Northern Ireland, narratives and memories, sociologies of home, and self and identity. The result is an impressive text that works to introduce readers to the complexity of memory for care experienced people and what this means for their life story and identity.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Starting from a place of familial memory.- Chapter 2. The Abused Orphan: Memory as legitimate and national heritage.- Chapter 3. A Methodology of Remembering: The self who was, the self who is and the self who narrates.- Chapter 4. Remembering a Home of Origin: Creating Places through memory.- Chapter 5. Remembering that feeling of Not Being at Home (in the world).- Chapter 6. The space between.- Chapter 7. Absent Memories: An Autobiographical and methodological dilemma?.- Chapter 8. Conclusion: Managing memory in the care system today.
About the author
Delyth Edwards is a lecturer in the Sociology of Childhood and Youth at Liverpool Hope University, UK.
Summary
This book offers an empirically informed understanding of how cultural, autobiographical and absent memories of orphanhood interact and interconnect or come into being in the re-telling of a life story and construction of an identity. The volume investigates how care experienced identities are embedded within personal, social and cultural practices of remembering. The book stems from research carried out into the life (hi)stories of twelve undervalued ‘historical witnesses’ (Roberts, 2002) of orphanhood: women who grew up in Nazareth House children’s home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Several themes are covered, including histories of care in Northern Ireland, narratives and memories, sociologies of home, and self and identity. The result is an impressive text that works to introduce readers to the complexity of memory for care experienced people and what this means for their life story and identity.
