Ambiguous Loss in Grief Memoirs: Meaning Making in Auster and Giralt Torrente Patriographies

This article considers grief memoirs as a medium to create meaning amid the ambiguous loss that occurs when someone close is gone without any apparent reason. This experience may be resolved through a life narrative that holds and accepts all the different versions of that complex relationship; the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAuto/biography studies Vol. 39; no. 1; pp. 37 - 53
Main Author Pinasco, Sandra
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 02.01.2024
Subjects
Ambiguous loss
grief memoir
meaning making
patriography
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Summary:This article considers grief memoirs as a medium to create meaning amid the ambiguous loss that occurs when someone close is gone without any apparent reason. This experience may be resolved through a life narrative that holds and accepts all the different versions of that complex relationship; the presence/absence ambiguity of the person lost may be clarified by creating a narrative that encompasses all possible explorations. The article approaches Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude (1982) and Marcos Giralt Torrente's Tiempo de vida (2010) as "patriographies"-grief memoirs that achieve a meaning-making process through the different strategies they propose to deal with their fathers' loss.
ISSN:0898-9575
2151-7290
DOI:10.1080/08989575.2024.2331266