Writing Against, Alongside and Beyond Memory

Contents: An Ambivalent Conception - The Umbilical of Life: The Triple Braid - The Ambivalent Act of Doing Research: Reflexive and Feminist Research Methodologies - After Birth: Reflections on Writing and Negotiating the Triple Braid - Conclusion: Bringing Together.

Marilyn Metta is a feminist academic in the School of Social Sciences and Asian Languages at Curtin University of Technology and the School of Psychology and Social Sciences at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. She is a practising psychotherapist at the West Leederville Counselling Centre in Perth.

«Metta's research is thorough - the theoretical chapter is a solid introduction to the key issues of feminist lifewriting today as well as to questions that are germane to current practice, such as relational narratives and the ethics of autobiographical engagement. [...] The book's value lies in its comprehensive feminist methodological approach to the possibilities of lifewriting as research and practice.» (Rocio G. Davis, Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work)
«As an auto ethnographic researcher, I find that sometimes only a well written example will do. This is such a work. Metta has written a text that is both an intriguing insight into her life as she experienced it and a theoretical explanation of the process of writing about it. This makes her research accessible to a new audience interested in the process of writing and researching a single life that may previously have only considered the case study format.» (Sandy Hutchinson Nunns, The Independent Practitioner)
«This is a significant book for several reasons. First, it contributes to the discourse about life writing as a transformative praxis; second, it engages critically and creatively with the literary and scholarly field of Asian Australian writing; and third, it adds to the major feminist poststructuralist project of rewriting subjectivity.» (Christina Houen, Biography 34, 2011/3)