Autobiographies and the writing of women’s history: the example of Hiwot Teffera’s Tower in the Sky

Abstract

As archives, autobiographies allow analysis of the reciprocal relations between individuals, broader social groups, social structures, and contexts. For decades they have served as valuable sources for feminist historians. They uncover voices often silenced or distorted in institutional archives and historical works. Moreover, autobiographies make it possible to study how gendered structures work and how power relations are experienced and possibly manipulated by women. The several autobiographies recently published by former activists of the Ethiopian revolution are essential sources for historians’ understanding of the mechanisms of participation in the revolutionary movement. Drawing on selected themes from Hiwot Teffera’s famous work, Tower in the Sky, this article questions the intensity of the student generation of the 1970s’ revolutionary commitment and the gendered dimensions of activism. To do so, it focuses on social relations such as love and the ways of belonging to a group, on the rational and emotional drivers of engagement, and on the gendered division of activist work. Lastly, it defends the relevance of autobiography as a multilayered archive that is particularly suitable for the analysis of intricate processes.