Not seeking to please: self-narratives of two Malay female memoirists

Women\u27s self-narratives, in the form of autobiographies and memoirs, are not common in Malaysia. As Hilary Tham (1996, preface), a former Malaysian who made America her home, once said of her own memoirwriting that "the idea of writing my memoirs goes against the grain of my upbringing. Though I had breached the taboo with my poems, prose feels like a greater violation." The conservative view that genre of this kind should present "factual" events of the past, allowing the public a view within the private space, is likened to a violation of family history. Writing about the self/selves is an active process of recollecting and recording, and that what it reveals deserves to be remembered, not forgotten. This paper describes the memoirs of two women whose works collectively relocate female desire and creativity, resignifying sources for the formation of identity and values. I shall explore the implications of poetic patterns evident in these texts: strategies of self-inscription, explorations of memory, caught moments of "experienced truth". Rather than providing a closure to these women\u27s existence, their narratives offer readers rich new possibilities for the ways Malaysian women may want to live their lives. (Copied from article)