ABSTRACT
Personal narratives, including oral histories, memoirs, letters, and diaries, provide access to intimate pasts otherwise difficult to grasp. For scholars interested in family memories or migration, diaries offer a more direct and rawer glimpse to the author’s past than memoirs and oral histories, which are written retrospectively, or letters, which are addressed to a specific reader or readers. This chapter examines Pauli’s diary as one version of my father’s life story. The stories he tells (orally, conversationally) about his life represent another version of Pauli’s life story. Although the diary is a chronological and detailed account of his journey to Australia, the events and experiences he has chosen to write about express something about him, just like the stories he entertains people with. Though this chapter focuses on a particular individual, my father, and his unique experiences, it also tells a more or less typical story of a young working-class (Finnish) man with little formal education migrating to Australia. The diary can be used as a historical source to examine experiences of migration or gender, class or ethnicity, or to explore the author’s subjective views on these or as a reference point to his current life story.
