Memory and Imagination: Truth in Autobiography

Abstract

What is the nature of the compulsion to life writing? How does the elongated project of writing a life change as it shifts moments and locales, and why do others respond so directly as readers of stories that are so specific and particular? Janina Bauman is known in English-speaking cultures for two books, Winter in the Morning (1986) and A Dream of Belonging (1988). The first covers her girlhood in the Warsaw ghetto, and escape; the second, more fictionalized, deals with the period leading up to exile from Poland after 1968. Janina Bauman spent 20 years of her life working in Polish film. This article reflects on the process of coming to autobiography, and making sense of the writing process and the reception process. © 2002, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.