Description
Vieda Skultans left Latvia as a refugee at the age of six months. In 1990, she returned for the first time. This text is both a personal account of a homecoming and an anthropology of a people trying to come to terms with its past and to face an uncertain future. Based on more than 100 interviews carried out in the wake of Latvian independence, it gives voice to stories of dispossession and exile and of ambiguous returns. At the same time it unpicks the process of memory itself, showing how personal memory is shaped by the traditional narratives of national history and culture.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1 A FAMILY HISTORY 2 A CHRONICLE OF RESEARCH 3 ORDER IN NARRATIVE EXPERIENCE 4 READING LETTERS 5 DESTINY AND THE SHAPING OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 6 THE EXPROPRIATION OF BIOGRAPHY 7 THE LIVED AND THE REMEMBERED FOREST 8 DAMAGED LIVES, DAMAGED HEALTH 9 MEANINGS LOST AND GAINED 10 HABITABLE IDENTITIES
