Cancer stories: Extracts

These extracted stories provide a taste of Claire's writing during her illness. There are plans to publish the collected writings edited by Barbara Einhorn and Christine Zmroczek.     

revolutionary marriage: on the politics of sexual stories in Naxalbari

Marriage practices, the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and the politics of sexuality are relatively under-researched themes in the study of Bengali communism. Historical scholarship on the revolutionary politics of the extreme left Naxalbari andolan of the late 1960s–1970s, the object of this piece of study, is no exception. The article engages with women and men's narratives on the practice of ‘revolutionary’ marriage in the movement through the prism of contemporary popular memory studies and narrative analysis. Drawing on field interviews with middle-class male and female activists, the article draws attention to the contestatory nature of marriage in the collective memory of the movement. Narrative contestations over marriage in the Naxalite movement underscore, I argue, a tension between a utopian ideal of transgressive interpersonal relations and dominant middle-class codes of sexual morality. At the same time, individual attempts to ‘compose’ (in storytelling) socially recognizable and acceptable subject positions are grounded upon the silencing and abjection of more risky memories. Given the discrepancies and contradictions within the narrative repertoire from which individuals construct their identities, these ‘marriage stories’ are a tremendous resource for investigating the politics of love, sexuality and subject-formation in middle-class Bengali society.     

Forgotten histories: three stories of black girls from Barnardo's Victorian archive

The history of black women in Britain, particularly before the arrival of the Empire Windrush, is underresearched, and the histories we do have are largely ignored. In this article, biographies of young black women in Victorian London are revealed through the photographic and written archive of Barnardo's. These documents allow a history of black women to be examined in the context of their own time. They add complexion to our current understanding of the Black Atlantic, and the relationships and histories that impact upon our identities today, as well as being a tool with which to interrogate British history.     

Lone motherhood past and present: The life stories of Finnish lone mothers

The aim of this study is to examine how Finnish lone mothers of two age cohorts construct their lone motherhood and also to show how the meanings ascribed to social phenomena are socially and historically embedded. Finland presents an interesting case for studying the links between the social and the individual because the country has experienced rapid social shifts since World War II. It is shown how specific social contexts to some degree set the parameters for how social phenomena are understood and interpreted, as shown by the differences in how two cohorts of life-story writers construct lone motherhood.     

The experience of breast development and girls' stories about the purchase of a bra

Girls' experiences of secondary sexual characteristic development were explored via direct interview and protective techniques. In a pilot study (Study 1), 30 White middle to upper middle class 6th–8th-grade girls were interviewed about how they felt about breast and pubic hair growth, their comfort discussing these events, and their information acquisition. Breast growth was perceived as more important than hair growth, in part because the former is perceived as a more public event. Few girls reported intensely negative feelings to either change. Since responses to the direct questions were limited, 80 White 6th–9th graders were asked to tell a story (using a semi structured interview technique) about a picture of an adolescent girl, adult female, and adult male in which the adult female was taking a bra out of a shopping bag (Study 2). Affect, attitudes, and character alliances were coded. More girls attributed negative feelings to the father than to the mother character. Almost all girls describe the adolescent in the story as embarrassed. The daughter and father characters were described as uncomfortable more often than the mother character (50% vs. 10%). Positive maternal affect in the stories was associated with more advanced pubertal status, positive body images, more positive emotional tone, and lower anxiety scores. Affect ascribed to the father and daughter characters was less likely to be associated with girls' psychological functioning. Results are discussed in term sof the possible role of puberty upon parent-child relationships and communication.We wish to thank the W. T. Grant Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for their generous support of our research. This article was written while the first author was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation; the support of the foundation is appreciated.Received Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.Received M.D. from Columbia University.     

A course of one's own: The rhetorical self in educational life stories by women

Education has been the main channel through which Finnish women have attempted to achieve the status of ''the individual''. But what has the story of women's individualization been like? Can women seek individual status specifically as women? This article examines how women use biographical work in their educational life stories to relate to their own gender. The women used various constructions the self as vehicles for processing their views of themselves, as they sought dignity and recognition as individuals. Different selves served to locate the protagonist in different ways within an ''ideology of the individual'' . The life stories about the attainment of adulthood and independence suggest that, despite their formal equality, Finnish women do not necessarily enjoy clear social standing as individuals.     

(Re)creating gender hierarchies within northern landscapes: a study of stories about nature and gender

This article examines how gender hierarchies are (re)created within the context of northern landscapes. We analyse data from fieldwork and interviews with middle-class female Russians having settled in a small town in northernmost Norway, most of them as marriage migrants. Inspired by the phenomenology of the body, feminist phenomenology and gender theory, the analysis shows how the participants talk about nature as ‘recreation’ and ‘poetry’, but also as a venue that is vital for (re)shaping their gendered identities. In particular, the Russian women talk about their strong, skilful outdoors Norwegian husbands as ‘experts’ in nature, and about themselves as ‘novices’. This ‘expert–novice’ relationship creates a hierarchical distinction between the Norwegian man and the Russian woman, but also attributes additional value to the equality-oriented, but in several cases neither highly educated nor highly paid, Norwegian husband. Through this ‘re-masculinisation’ of their Norwegian partners, the Russian women create a complementary, but subordinate space for themselves. The analysis reveals that our participants situate themselves in contrast to the Norwegian equality ideal while creating a room of their own where they can form a separate and unique Russian femininity. This illustrates how constructions of gender are interwoven in translocal ‘minoritising’ and ‘majoritising’ processes.