The myth of birth: autobiography and family memory

This chapter analyses a specific aspect of autobiography, the story of one's birth, to illuminate a general feature on autobiographic research: the interplay of three levels of relationship, that are always involved in shaping the telling of stories, and their understanding. These are the micro, the meso and the macro-level. At the micro-level, in the here-and-now of narration, the individual and its audience participate in the co-construction of the story. The meso-level encompasses how someone's birth has been constructed as a shared story by people who belong to the same 'us' (the family). The macro-level entails the larger context: dominant narrations and practices. It is discussed how, in education, proximal relationships, communities, and contexts are remarkably involved in both stabilizing and changing personal myths.