Appropriate for consideration by the Museums and Memory Working Group.
"We are all born into stories that began long before we arrived,
and we become self within their borders." Marie Tondreau
I grew up in the shadow of a story recounted often and to anyone by my mother. She told of her arranged marriage in January 1939, and how just a few weeks later, she left Poland to begin a new life in America. The outbreak of the Second World War halted the emigration of her husband, and twenty years would pass before the couple reunited. In 1961, I was born to this pair-an only child appearing late in their lives.
Despite my mother's frequent recounting of the tale, questions remained: Why did she wait so long for her partner-essentially a stranger-to join her? What traumas did each bring to the marriage from their two decades apart? And why did it take twenty full years for my father to emigrate from Poland, post-war?
With both parents no longer living, researching the economic, political, social, and cultural factors that likely influenced their choices yields clues. Employing Annette Kuhn's methodology of memory work, family photos from before, during, and after the period of estrangement ("the twenty") prompt reflective narrative. Combined, this methodology and context inspire new interpretations of the past. The reflections examine a family chronology weaving migration, war, totalitarian regimes, and the union and ultimate reunion-following two decades apart-of a Polish couple in an arranged marriage. Presented as an exhibition, "In the Shadow of the Twenty" conveys my story and allows a "rewritten" self to emerge-beyond my parents' traumatic story.
