Family and Artistic Relations in Polish Women’s Autobiographical Literature

Aleksandra Grzemska is Assistant Professor in Polish Literature at the University of Szczecin (Poland). Her research focuses on life writing and contemporary Polish women’s literature and art. She is an editor at the academic journal Autobiografia. Literatura. Kultura. Media [Autobiography. Literature. Culture. Media] and a critic for various academic and non-academic literary magazines.Tul’si (Tuesday) Bhambry received her PhD in Polish literature at University College London in 2013 and has since been working as a literary and academic translator from Polish and German. She won the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize in 2015. Among her book-length translations in the humanities are Ryszard Nycz’s The Language of Polish Modernism (Peter Lang, 2017) and Lena Magnone’s Freud’s Emissaries (sdvig, 2023).

• INTRODUCTION: Being in Charge of AutobiographyBlended stories and family archivesPhantoms of genealogyThe framework of duty and obligationCHAPTER 1: Glorification and Reckoning Daughterhood as an emotional conceptAncestors and inheritorsEgocentric or altruistic?Uprooted from everyday life CHAPTER 2: Artistic Practices in the Autobiographical Field Aesthetic, ethical and performative potentialConfrontations and alliancesThe logic of the transcryptum and the power of self-fragilization“Yellow was my mother’s code”“Mom used to say that onions save lives” CHAPTER 3: Blood Ties, Blood Bonds Entangled in relationshipsLiterary genograms“[Mother] acquired the habit of erecting defensive walls wherever she could”“I’ve taken your story, Mama, your apocalypse”“[Mother] talked, she talked only to be talking”(Bio)heredity of (in)experienceCHAPTER 4: Mothers, Daughters and Their ShameShame, guilt and empathyShame in the family and politicsShame, disgust and the bodyCHAPTER 5: Topologies of Illness Excerpts from the medical recordLaboratory of private configurationsThe family as a malady EPILOGUE: Aesthetics of Autobiographical Hybrids Writing up the familyFamily (auto)pathographies