ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the autobiographical acts of Ernest Marke and Maurice Levinson. In both individuals’ autobiographical voices no emphatic or direct statements concerning the Mother Country and the Promised Land arise. In this way, Marke’s autobiographical acts provide very different conceptions of the Mother Country than that often seen in more recent autobiographies by African and African-Caribbean people. This chapter analyses the workings and reasons behind some of these silences and will show that they can correspond to the emotional silences within the general schemata of his autobiographical voice. Although the language of, and direct reference to, the Mother Country and the Promised Land are not explicitly evident within the works of both Marke and Levinson, these terms are nevertheless important when communicating some of their experiences and memories. Additionally, it is important to analyse a text that does not necessarily conform to pre-existing assumptions surrounding the language and terminology that an African, African-Caribbean, or Jewish migrant might use when recalling their migratory experience. It is for this reason that Ernest Marke and Maurice Levinson are important when assessing these myths, as they represent interesting and unique voices, in terms of the processes of production and the reasons they initiated their autobiographies (as part of their life experience and not influenced by the growth in popularity of life history).
