ABSTRACT
There has been an overall growing interest in the ways intergenerational memory narratives shape people’s lives. Personal, inherited, and collectively constructed remembrances not only function as content in the narratives people tell about their lives, but they structure these narratives to argue for the storytellers’ positions. As part of autobiographical storytelling, intergenerational memory narratives present a view of the self that is in various ways influenced by the protagonist of the intergenerational memory narrative constructed as the “other.” Narrators compensate for the lost information in inherited memories by using specific narrative techniques that highlight their responsibility as well as vulnerability as rememberers while underscoring their assimilated American identities. The study has revealed two critically important reasons for wanting to tell the intergenerational memory-based stories: first, the obligation to remember and second, the fear of losing the fragile connection to a past that belongs to generations who have taken the primary narratives with them.
