Journeys

Abstract

Through biographies we read the fragments of people’s lives that have been structured into a narrative discourse, the written text the mediating force that turns ’narrative into logic’ (Ricoeur, 1984, p. 30) This article reflects upon the fragmented nature of memories through both the stories of the author and the written works from a selection of influential texts encountered by the author. The photographs in this article frame a series of disjointed images that are connected to me through narrated stories. How much of these stories do I truly remember and how much do I embellish? The storytellers, my grandparents, are dead yet the stories remain. They are the connections I have with my family history and they are the historical conceptions I frame my personal discourse within (Flood, 2003). When trying to make sense of our lives it is to the fragments of memory we turn to construct our stories. The author, through the telling of her stories and the recounting of significant events surrounding her family’s histories as told by her grandmother, provides an exemplar of how such fragments can add to the understanding of the self. She reveals that by encountering such fragments within a life story, we can begin to make sense of our lives.

Citation

Flood, A. (2007), "Journeys", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 32-52. https://doi.org/10.3316/QRJ0701032