I Guess What You Say is True. Issue 3 (3rd July 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Driscoll, Oliver
• Is Part Of: Life writing. Volume 14:Issue 3(2017)
• Page Start: 387
• Page End: 400
• Publication Date: 2017-07-03
• Subjects: Bosnia -- Aleksandar Hemon -- testimony -- representation; Biography as a literary form -- Periodicals; Autobiography -- Periodicals; 809.93592
• DOI: 10.1080/14484528.2017.1328270
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1448-4528

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This work of non-fiction struggles with the technical and ethical difficulties of representing the former Yugoslavia, an area that has experienced deep trauma and that is at a remove from the author's experience. The author-narrator confronts the challenges of representing others' trauma in an oblique way: focusing on his own life in Melbourne and his responses to Yugoslavia's past; critiquing narrative forms and particular literary works that represent the trauma, namely those of the Bosnian-American writers Aleksandar Hemon and Semezdin Mehmedinović; and acknowledging the vexed framework of the creative-writing PhD for which the reflection was produced.