ABSTRACT
My intention here is to discuss how changes and continuities in the transmission of memory relate to gender. My interest in this question arose from interviewing three successive generations of men and women in Brazilian coffee plantation families. When they told me their life stories, invariably intermingling personal stories and family traditions, I observed particularly striking differences between the recollections of the men and women of the two older generations and those of the youngest generation. The array of contrasts reveals how gender influences the themes, structure, shape, and expressive styles that form life narratives, and how the changes in the transmission of memories between the generations are related to shifts in the different life experiences of men and women.
