ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how Australian writers draw on family histories to reckon with the nation’s past. It argues that the family history narrative is a vital mode of postcolonial reckoning. The intimate weave of the personal within the national foregrounds the relationship between the pursuit of self knowledge, and the collective processes of regeneration and recognition that follow colonial violence and migration from ancestral lands. The book also examines tell complex, interlinked, and candid Indigenous Australian, Chinese Australian, Greek Australian, and Anglo-Celtic Australian stories. It investigates how the recounting of these histories in the present, and the emotional forces of secrecy, stigma, and shame that make their telling difficult, have shaped and continue to define Australian life. The book analyses the texts that offer a multifaceted account of Australia’s development as a nation from the perspective of the family.
