Missing Persons: or, My Grandmother's Secrets

How far would you go for the missing? Blending private and public history, cultural analysis, family memoir, and autobiography, Clair Wills explores profound questions about memory, loss, motherhood, and emigration. She traces a history of sexual secrecy through four generations of unplanned pregnancies in her own family, stretching from the 1890s to the 1980s and from the West of Ireland to Massachusetts, London, and the English countryside, dramatizing the power of secret-keeping as a form of care, but also as a form of violence and exclusion. At the heart of her search is a cousin who went missing from her own family, born in a mother-and-baby home in the 1950s, and brought up in an institution. Wills asks not only what happened, but why? Why did families consent to the institutional care and control of unmarried mothers and their children? Why did the system make sense to ordinary families, and how can we make sense of it now? What questions should we be asking about guilt, blame, and responsibility? In order to uncover how people thought about illicit sex, illegitimacy, and institutions, Wills follows the tracks laid down in family stories and anecdotes. She interprets the gaps as places where the past was both preserved and disavowed. We are all born into families, regardless of whether we are allowed to belong to them. In Missing Persons, Wills asks us to undertake a radical reshaping of our idea of the family. We are all part of the historical archive―the remembering and forgetting is in us, whether we like it or not.
ASIN: 0374611866
VSKU: GBV.0374611866.A
Condition: Acceptable
Author/Artist:Wills, Clair
Binding: Hardcover
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Condition Notes: This book is in acceptable condition and may have highlighting and or writing throughout. The actual cover image may not match the stock photo, dust jacket may be damaged or missing. Book may show internal and or external wear on spine or cover and may be slightly skewed or have creased pages. This is a used book so codes may be invalid or accompanying media may be missing. May be an Ex library book with stickers and stamps.