Besides the narrator's evolving memory and re-evaluation of the past events that permanently challenges the self-narrative, the life writing is subject to both external censorship and self-censorship. The self-narratives related to trauma are to various degrees the results of the author's self-censorship: omission, subtle changes and interpretations. What is at stake is the justification of the personal decisions, actions or the lack of them, even gaining agency - especially when the protagonist or/and the narrator had none - and a reliable self-presentation. The Romanian women's life writings related to the communist prison experiences were commonly read through the trauma lenses, mainly revealing the endured abuses and the women's physical survival. Their great resistance, powerful religious belief and their traumatic experiences dominated the memory discourse. However, how do women position themselves when narrating their prison experiences? What is exactly self-censored and what is revealed in their narratives? And how is the self-expression constructed and re-negotiated in relation to the external events during the autobiographical discourse? Based on these framework questions, I am further exploring the relation between trauma, resilience, agency, self-censorship and paradigms of remembering the past. Are the experiences of violence, starvation and humiliation described as self-altering or traumatic and are they long-lasting effects discussed in life-changing terms? And can the strong authorial control over the recounted events or the conscious decision to highlight or to suppress parts of the self-narrative be connected with resilience and self-healing? I am arguing that the first readings and research of the prison literature were deeply influenced by the collective trauma paradigm and that they responded to the collective need to directly indicate the perpetrators of the past abuses, to sketch the portrait of the communist regime crimes and to show consideration to the regime's victims. My research aims to demonstrate that a different generation of researchers and the temporal distance from the communist past bring about new readings of the women's life writing, revealing the complexity of the relation between trauma, resilience, agency, memory and self-healing.
