Speak Memory, Speak

Speak, Memory, Speak’ is primarily concerned with Azaria J.C. Mbatha’s life prior to his emigration to Sweden in 1965. We call the stories at this stage ‘construed or idiosyncratic personal histories’. Mbatha looks back to his childhood and asks about identities, such as the reason for giving people names (e.g. ‘why was I called Azaria?’) and how is the naming constructed in African society and around the world? It is about shifting involvements within private interest and public action. ‘Life Writing’ is a wide-ranging word for different kinds of writing which take life as their subject, such as biographical, novelistic or historical works. It considers the lives of objects and institutions as well as the lives of individuals, families and groups in the society.. ‘Speak, Memory, Speak’ is primarily concerned with Azaria J.C. Mbatha’s life prior to his emigration to Sweden in 1965. This also explains the structure of the book, and for an autobiography its structure is quite complex as it processing narratizing space, favourite literary Genres: ‘Life Narrative’? As in life narrative, graffiti is one of the examples in this process of narrativizing space, time, and self, and tells fascinating stories of both appearing and disappearing identities hidden in the fractures and gaps of everyday life. In the instance of the auto topographies, where authors write their stories in family works of art such as pictures, the authors are involved in a procedure of pretentious assistance over their household stories. Writers can thus materialize their own stories from personal memory and cultural history, for this is the only way for them to create significance for their stories. The famous films of 1960s were “Ben Hur” and “Khartoum”. These films were the first which Azaria’s watched on the screen, and they were newly produced. The public interest was huge. We define the ‘speak memory speak’ stories at this stage as ‘construed or idiosyncratic personal histories’. ‘Oral history’ is defined as ‘the methodical gathering of living peoples’ evidence about their own involvement in family relations and public life’. It is about shifting involvements within private interest and public action. Why does society oscillate between intense interests in public issues and almost total concentration on private goals? This question drives stimulating social, political, and economic analysis dealing with how and why frustrations of private concerns lead to public involvement and public participation that eventually lead back to those private concerns. Several of the stories share folkloric links with Zulu culture in both fiction and non-fiction. ‘Life Writing’ is a wide-ranging word for different kinds of writing which take life as their subject, such as biographical, novelistic or historical works. ‘Life Narrative’ is a contracted term for writing that contains a writer’s autobiographical elements, such as memory, knowledge, experience, identity, personification and intervention. It includes everything from the wide-ranging life to the day-in-the-life; from the fictional to the factional. It holds the lives of objects and institutions as well as the lives of individuals, families and groups in the society. Read more