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Writing family history in 2005

By: NJK

Over the decades family historians have almost always had a bad press within the ranks of history more generally. And there has been much to criticise at times. Although family historians become accomplished and expert researchers very quickly writing their family history is another matter. Their difficulty with writing history has been partly due to the format chosen – what I would call the pedigree approach – and due also to inexperience and lack of support from other historians. I am well aware that family history writing has had far too many dedicated mothers, wonderful grandmothers and hardworking fathers and grandfathers peopling its pages. Casually and cavalierly we write about vicious and sullen prostitutes, devoted wives, dear and pious daughters. Perhaps these adjectives will turn out to be valid descriptions of the characters in the family history but just as possibly not.

There is no doubt we will find murderers, lunatics, criminals, convicts, madwomen and the odd bankrupt husband in our long ancestral past: if we are lucky! Such characters will be well recorded because they were different, dangerous or caught by the judicial system. But, the majority of women and men in history are more likely to be ordinary; we find our ancestors raising families, working and helping on the family farm, too busy in fact to create much in the way of records or overblown adjectives for us to use.
However, it is also true to say that the writing of family history is undergoing a sea change.

Genealogy, like other forms of history, has not been able to avoid the economic, social and technological events and concomitant shifts in historical thinking, of recent decades. Family historians also sit at their writing desks struggling with questions about how they can be non-sexist, non-racist and responsive to changing religion, culture and lifestyles other than their own. This is not to suggest that all who write family history are concerned about change. Nonetheless family historians have not escaped a rethinking of questions about what it is to write family history today. They no longer deserve the harsh criticism of their fellow historians and would benefit greatly with more recognition and support for the diverse contribution they make to Australian history.
I have listened to many family stories. I have listened to family historians tell stories of grief, joy, pain, disappointment, despair, hope, happiness and regret. Certainly I have found nostalgia, sentiment and overly romantic versions of their past. But perhaps we need at least some nostalgia and sentiment to transport us to the landscape, the music, the myths, the sounds, the stories and the difficult spaces of our childhood. Writing family history is a journey for most of us into an unknown past. It is true that nostalgia can uncritically frame many family accounts. Memories are chameleons. Even siblings sharing the same childhood grow up with different recollections of it. I wonder though what would family history look like if we removed nostalgia and sentiment? What would happen to our writing of family history if we excised the passionate feelings we have about it? We are reminded of the close connection between nostalgia and remembering when we talk to older relatives. And it seems we are not the only writers of family history now! And we are not the only writers of it steeped in passion, nostalgia, sentiment and producing blurred uncertain versions of the truth.

Today everyone seems to be writing about family history but it is called something else; it is called narrative non-fiction, memoir, autobiography, biography and the words “true story” or “a true history” appear on all manner of publications that are not true at all. And yes we know the arguments about truth and history. But recent writing has had a real postmodern bent - based on real events and then turned into fiction, or part-fiction often with very compelling and plausible, but untrue, dialogue. There is nothing wrong with all of this of course, a good story will always be read and enjoyed. One has to admire the range of stories now written but I am a little uneasy about the manipulation evident in presenting such works as some kind of historical reality. I wonder about a gullible readership who are too lazy to read any original history. I am concerned about the loss of history courses at university, the rise of the television program that presents a history of complex events and human relationships in a bare half-hour.

Over the last ten years I have facilitated family writing groups first within the Queensland Family History Society and more recently in the Northern Rivers and Sydney. The ten women who met at Crawford House in Alstonville with me shared their research and writing in many different genres including memoir, biography, fiction, poetry and of course family history. They were as willing, as any other writer, to explore all of these creative spaces for their writing. Over the two years we met (I am now in Sydney but those women still continue to meet and write their stories) we shared stories about childhood, diaries, Christmas memories, wedding photographs and wove stories from a treasured family artifact.

We laughed and cried our way through family stories about cooking, birth, death, disappointment, music, dance, lost love and mothers who sang or scolded or just plain got on with life. It has been our stories of our mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers however that have enthralled us, touched us and which have constantly recurred in the telling and re-telling of our family histories.

In August 2005 this group launched a self published book titled Remembering Mothers at the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival. Almost all of the women in the group were new to writing and very new to publishing. But they are not new to being mothers, daughters, aunts or friends to other women. Two of the women in the group are aged 80 plus. Their writing journey has been a pleasure to observe and be part of. Writing a longer more expository article about their mother/s was a challenging task for all of the women in the group. The range of stories they finally wrote is astounding.

The book Remembering Mothers is a historical and personal record of how these women and their ancestral mothers experienced childhood, lived within their families, were married, gave birth, grew old, suffered disappointment, faced illness and forgetting. The stories are sad, funny, hopeful, bleak, joyful, surprising, and yes, occasionally romantic. Perhaps family history is now everyone’s history. Rather than being a romantic, narrow, local set of stories about the family that publishers have long ignored perhaps family history has come of age. Or, at least, it is now more possible to meet other history, other writing and be considered a legitimate partner in the long journey of writing history, and writing about families and their lives.

Article Source: http://www.familyhistoryarticles.com

Noeline Kyle, Lybbie Semple, Jan Mulcahy, eds Remembering Mothers: An Inspiring Anthology of Short Stories, Letters and Poetry, The Northern Rivers Family History Writers' Group, Alstonville, NSW, Australia, 2005. Softcover. 166 pages, illustrated. Available from: Northern Rivers Family History Writers' Group, c-/ Crawford House, Alstonville, NSW, 2477, for A$22.50 + A$2.50, ISBN 0646 44968 0

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