Overview

Family and Artistic Relations in Polish Women’s Autobiographical Literature examines women’s autobiographical works published in Poland after the year 2000 in a broader cultural context. This volume focuses on the writers’ representation of their relationships with their mothers – many of them traumatized survivors of historical cataclysms, many of them professional artists, many of them struggling to reconcile their creative work with their role as wife and mother. Grzemska sheds light not only on the literary strategies used by the memoirists, but she also helps us understand women’s struggles for an independent voice, for new models of commemoration, for healing. This book will interest readers in literary and cultural studies, as well as anyone who wishes to better understand Poland’s cultural transformations in the post-Communist era.

Full Product Details

Author:   Aleksandra Grzemska ,  Tul’si (Tuesday) Bhambry
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.290kg
ISBN:  

9781032388236

ISBN 10:   1032388234
Pages:   150
Publication Date:   28 November 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Being in Charge of Autobiography Blended stories and family archives Phantoms of genealogy The framework of duty and obligation CHAPTER 1: Glorification and Reckoning Daughterhood as an emotional concept Ancestors and inheritors Egocentric or altruistic? Uprooted from everyday life CHAPTER 2: Artistic Practices in the Autobiographical Field Aesthetic, ethical and performative potential Confrontations and alliances The logic of the transcryptum and the power of self-fragilization “Yellow was my mother’s code” “Mom used to say that onions save lives” CHAPTER 3: Blood Ties, Blood Bonds Entangled in relationships Literary genograms “[Mother] acquired the habit of erecting defensive walls wherever she could” “I’ve taken your story, Mama, your apocalypse” “[Mother] talked, she talked only to be talking” (Bio)heredity of (in)experience CHAPTER 4: Mothers, Daughters and Their Shame Shame, guilt and empathy Shame in the family and politics Shame, disgust and the body CHAPTER 5: Topologies of Illness Excerpts from the medical record Laboratory of private configurations The family as a malady EPILOGUE: Aesthetics of Autobiographical Hybrids Writing up the family Family (auto)pathographies

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Author Information

Aleksandra Grzemska is Assistant Professor in Polish Literature at the University of Szczecin (Poland). Her research focuses on life writing and contemporary Polish women’s literature and art. She is an editor at the academic journal Autobiografia. Literatura. Kultura. Media [Autobiography. Literature. Culture. Media] and a critic for various academic and non-academic literary magazines. Tul’si (Tuesday) Bhambry received her PhD in Polish literature at University College London in 2013 and has since been working as a literary and academic translator from Polish and German. She won the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize in 2015. Among her book-length translations in the humanities are Ryszard Nycz’s The Language of Polish Modernism (Peter Lang, 2017) and Lena Magnone’s Freud’s Emissaries (sdvig, 2023).

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