ABSTRACT
Memory is important to autobiography and biography. In both, the writer recalls the habits, relationships and cultural setting of a life. Looking back over our own life may give rise to uncomfortable memories. Memory might be fallible, but it is based on life experience, elements that seem undeniably true. The memory of Bankswood seems to have been created by the photographs of that location seen by Mantel at a later age. Using objects can offer numerous avenues for our life writing, whether writing memoir or biography. McWatt often returns to key dramatised scenes like the one in the classroom, using them as structural scaffolding. McWatt explores how these features appear to relate to ethnicity and to her own identity.
