A Literary Analysis of Memory Books

This study analyses, based on field research and textual analysis, memory book projects in Uganda as a folk-literary form. The memory book is a formatted workbook written by a parent, often a widowed mother living with HIV, for their child, about their family history, the parent’s life experiences, and their early memories of the child. This study first discusses the collective writing of memory books and how writers help each other in group writing sessions. It then analyses two memory books written by a 66-year old HIV-positive widowed farmer. It discusses her orality-imbued written narrative of history and daily life, and examines her representation of HIV. Instead of confronting her pain with a pen, like many literate writers, she contains the pain by embedding the passages on HIV within her broader life story. Thus, she surmounts and survives HIV and lives harmoniously amid her community, her family, and their history.