ABSTRACT
Through patriographies and matriographies—along with other memoirs—Lise Funderburg, James McBride, Scott Minerbrook, Barack Obama, and Natasha Trethewey consider their experiences as biracial African Americans growing up during the Civil Rights Era and the profound shifts of that time period. Their memoirs serve as memorials in which history is presented as palimpsest and the voices of others explicitly incorporated to provide testimony to experience. For the writers considered in this chapter, subjectivity is filtered through postmemory and place memory in order to underscore how parentage and geography connect with self-representation and recognition.
