ABSTRACT
Illness – be it physical or mental – plays a prominent role in many women’s autobiographies, as it shapes their family life and often directly influences the act of writing. Similarly, Holocaust trauma impacts the daughter-writers’ relationships with their Jewish mothers. These questions are negotiated individually and uniquely, and this chapter outlines the mechanisms and poetics used to depict this motif. A panoply of autobiographical representations of illness allows us to treat their bond as a laboratory of family configurations.
