Intergenerational Narratives Research Articles

First-Generation College Students’ Intergenerational Narratives of Redemption and Upward Mobility

SYNOPSIS Objective. This study explored the role of intergenerational narratives in the motivations and goals of first-generation college students. Design. Reflexive thematic analysis examined narrative responses to open-ended questions regarding their motivations and goals for college enrollment. Results. Analyses generated a central theme: breaking the family cycle of poverty to achieve upward mobility. This theme included three subthemes: attaining financial stability, obtaining a higher level of education than their family, and challenging oppressive university and societal systems for a better future. The participants often approached their intergenerational narratives in two distinct ways: “self-initiated” and “parent-initiated.” In parent-initiated narratives, participants centered their parents in their intergenerational stories. They stated that their parents’ stories inspired them to attend college, break the cycle of poverty, and avoid the hardships their parents experienced. Conversely, in self-initiated narratives, participants centered themselves in the intergenerational stories. They expressed their aspirations to break the family cycle of poverty and avoid the challenges they and their families faced while growing up. Conclusions. These findings underscore how first-generation college students’ intergenerational redemption narratives shape their motivations for pursuing higher education and life goals.

Immigrant Ghosts and Haunted Heritages in Rani Manicka’s The Rice Mother

ABSTRACT In Malaysia, even the ghosts are transnational. Rani Manicka’s 2002 debut novel The Rice Mother follows the intergenerational narratives of a diasporic Ceylonese family in Malaysia. As they reflect on the atrocities of the Second World War and Japanese Occupation – notably the abduction and presumed murder of the eldest daughter, Mohini, by Japanese soldiers – each family member shares their haunted relationship with Mohini’s ghost. While Avery Gordon and Kathleen Brogan have examined how hauntings can characterize social or ethnic loss, Mohini’s hauntings are unique to the Ceylonese diaspora in Malaysia. In addition to the family members encountering her ghost through dreams – significant connections to the spiritual world in Hindu mythology – Mohini’s character is inspired by the mohini pey, a legendary ghost from Southern India and Sri Lanka. However, the discrepancy between mohini the ghost and Mohini the character interrogates the malleability of memory across generations. How might hauntings – manifestations of the traumatic past – change as generations evolve and reaffiliate cultural memory over time? Drawing on Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, this paper examines the family’s evolving relationship with Mohini’s ghost and argues that the residual power of diasporic heritage inherited through storytelling provides a path for generational healing in a new homeland.

“Nobody Else Could Tell Those Stories”: Exploring Recollections of Grandparental Narratives in Early Adulthood

Existing research on grandparental narratives, or family stories told by grandparents, often centers accounts relayed by youth in adjacent-generation family structures where grandparents serve auxiliary roles; less is known about narratives shared by young adults from more diverse family structures—like grandfamilies (i.e., grandparents as primary parental figures)—which may have distinctive characteristics given differences in grandparent roles. Interviews with young adults (N = 12) with varying life satisfaction and grandparent-grandchild family structure (i.e., adjacent-generation or grandfamily) revealed distinct grandparental narrative characteristics (e.g., content, structure, storyteller) by family structure and identified their function as relationship reinforcement, memorialization, and connection to roots. While contributing new voices to the intergenerational narratives literature, this work suggests grandparental narratives could be used as tools by researchers and practitioners.

Intergenerational Narratives: A Pilot Elective Course Connecting Preclinical Medical Students and Community Members in Senior Living

Intergenerational Narratives: A Pilot Elective Course Connecting Preclinical Medical Students and Community Members in Senior Living

The power of ethnographic toolkit in understanding transnational culture

Intergenerational ethnographic research poses several practical, epistemological, and ethical challenges. This study seeks to address these complexities by encouraging researchers to construct personalised ethnographic toolkits that provide insights into uncovering the complex subjectivities of research populations through intergenerational narratives. Based on over two years of research among the Turkish community in London, the study reveals compelling examples of symbolic communication used by individuals of different generations, genders, and social roles. Using various data collection methods, including interviews, observation, drawing, and television viewing, the research illustrates how this ethnic community uses language, fashion, and religion to integrate into multicultural environments and manifest their belonging in transnational contexts. By incorporating methodological tools such as unplanned moments, reflexivity, and positionality, the study aims to understand the underpinnings of cultural identity by examining how different generations respond to social conditions shaped by migration.

Carbon Footprints of Active and Non-Active Transport Modes: Hierarchy and Intergenerational Narrative Analyses

This paper aimed to (1) develop a hierarchy for understanding the impacts of active and non-active transport modes on the environment and (2) analyse the adoption of active transportation between older and younger people. A narrative review with two parts was adopted to develop the hierarchy. In the first part, a framework was adopted to map active and non-active transport modes onto three operational boundaries of greenhouse gas emission to develop the hierarchy. In the second part, an intergenerational theoretical framework was developed to analyse the adoption of active transportation between older and younger people. The review suggests that the only active transport modes with no or negligible carbon footprint are walking, running, and swimming without a product that adds to atmospheric greenhouse gases. The evidence that younger people perform higher active transportation behaviour is inconsistent and is, therefore, inconclusive. This review suggests a need for manufacturers to prioritise the production of active vehicles (e.g., wheelchairs and scooters) that are biodegradable, recyclable, and small.

Intergenerational Storytelling as a Developmental Resource in LGBTQ+ Communities

ABSTRACT LGBTQ+ people continue to be threatened by systemic censorship and erasure in public spaces and discourses, making community-based resources for positive development crucial. In this study, we examined one such developmental resource—LGBTQ+ intergenerational storytelling about cultural-historical events. LGBTQ+ adults (N = 495) ranging in age from 17 to 80 years (M = 39.22, SD = 19.89) responded to an online survey about LGBTQ+ intergenerational storytelling and relationships. Results showed that although LGBTQ+ intergenerational storytelling was reported to occur infrequently, sharing stories across generations was considered important, and LGBTQ+ people desired even greater intergenerational connection. Intergenerational narratives reported by participants were primarily about cultural-historical events involving adversity and oppression (e.g. AIDS crisis), policy and legislation (e.g. marriage equality), and protest, resistance, and activism (e.g. Stonewall uprising). Stories were mostly told by older friends in private or social settings for the purpose of passing on LGBTQ+ history. Lessons learned through storytelling were diverse but tended to focus on appreciation and affirmation. Valuing intergenerational storytelling was associated with positive psychosocial identity. This study suggests that intergenerational storytelling may be an important developmental resource for LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized communities.

Intergenerational narratives and identity development: A qualitative exploration of Chinese college students

ABSTRACT Previous research suggests that intergenerational narratives impact young people’s sense of self. Little knowledge, however, has been accumulated regarding what and how Chinese youth experience identity development in intergenerational storytelling. This qualitative study presented 149 Chinese college students’ experiences of identity development who collected their grandparents’ life stories. Findings suggest that the student participants reproduced their interviewees’ grand narratives about Chinese history and social changes, and embraced values such as endurance, diligence, and family cohesion which are transmitted across generations. Some students were burdened when hearing about their grandparents’ traumatic past and experienced negative feelings such as anger and guilt, while most of them elaborated gratitude toward people in the previous generations, and expressed a willingness to pay back and contribute to society. Drawing on existing theories, a preliminary model was constructed to capture the dynamic of intergenerational narrative identity among Chinese college students. We discussed how these findings contribute to research on intergenerational narratives and college students’ development. Recommendations for future research and practices for educators and policymakers to enhance family welfare were provided.

Islandness as Narratives of Relation

This article uses literature on islands and islandness, coloniality, creole identity, indigenous ontology and settler studies to abstract a typology of islandness. The article frames islandness as a product of narratives of relations within and with islands that produce Autochthonous, Settler and Creole islandnesses. The article engages with islands as sites of relational spatialities, following Vannini and Taggart (2013). Those relational spatialities are understood to be produced by, and reproduced through, intergenerational narratives. Using Australia as an illustrative reference, the article identifies themes related to each type of islandness, not as universals but as examples of a type. The article concludes by proposing that the typology can be engaged in validating the variety of islandness narratives that emerge from the process of collective identification within island spaces.

Identity development of Assyrian/Syriac youth: Narratives of becoming a self

This study aims to analyze the narrative identities of a group of Assyrian/Syriac youth, in particular, to investigate the role of their intergenerational narratives on their narrative identities. Accordingly, interviews were conducted with eight male Assyrian/Syriac young people and the families of four of them who lived in Mardin, Turkey. The narratives of each participant were examined through a holistic approach, analyzing their lives in the context of their personal and intergenerational narratives throughout their lifelines. In the analysis, the turning points of individuals are depicted on the figures, and three lifeline figures were mapped. Findings indicated that although the participants lived under similar living conditions and grew up in the same area, they each narrated their identities differently. For example, one participant described his identity as victimic, communion and burden, while another participant described his identity as agentic, communion, and benefit, and yet another narrated his identity as agentic, agency, and benefit. The individual analysis that emerged in the narratives of all participants was discussed in the context of the literature on identity and narrative identity.

Not waves but ripples: re-worlding and counter-worlding of intergenerational feminism

This paper presents an empirical study derived from the WomenWeLove Project (http://ofwomenwelove.org/) and inspired by the storyworlding methodology. Exploring the central questions of how we became feminists and what enabled us to encounter each other in the Feminist Research Collective, we, the two authors, shared our stories with the women we love and contextualized them within their respective socio-cultural histories of the time. The following reading of the ripple stories focuses on rethinking the canonical narrative of feminist movements as three or more distinctive different waves. It suggests that a re-worlding effort could work with the metaphor of ripples instead of waves, start with microscopic personal and intergenerational narratives, and attend to the macro, cultural, and sociopolitical ramifications of the stories. Putting the ripple stories and the following essay together, the article critically explored storyworlding, feminist agency, consciousness-raising, and inter/intra-generationality in critical feminist studies.

Sustaining the old world, or imagining a new one? The transformative literacies of the climate strikes

AbstractIn this article, we consider the climate strikes in the context of intergenerational narratives that de/limit young people’s political subjectivities and imaginaries concerning climate change. Considering the strikes alongside other youth-led responses to the crisis, we reconsider the question of young people’s climate change ‘literacy’ and posit that young people’s literacies are characteristically transformative. Despite their broadly transformative nature, however, the climate change literacies of young people remain bound up in a complex, adult-centred discursive framework that limits young people in various ways, including positioning them as objects of care or otherwise objectivising their activism. We advocate interdisciplinary thinking in support of creative and transformative pedagogies arising from and informed by the climate strikes, arguing that young people’s political subjectivities are indivisible from their cultural imaginaries. We advocate a step change in the way educators respond to the educational dimensions of climate strikes, as well as the educational opportunities this movement provides. Vitally, we include young people themselves in the category of educators and consider the ways the climate strikes represent an educational opportunity in which young people share, support and collaborate as educators and learners.

How Fires End

Fear the curses of Sicilian saints. They will follow you across the ocean. This is a core belief of the Sicilian-American community at the center of Marco Rafalà’s novel, How Fires End. The legend of St. Sebastian is at the source of Rafalà’s story of grief and migration, devotion and betrayal, of what it means still to inhabit Sicily while living in America. Rafalà’s artfully constructed novel draws us into an immigrant community haunted by multiple losses, some recent, others distant in time, as well as geography, but not any less raw. Indeed, the losses that occurred in Sicily represent the matrix of all losses that follow.Legend has it that St. Sebastian found his way to Sicily in 1414, when a ship coming from the Adriatic sank near the island of Magnisi. No one died, and that miraculous event was attributed to the presence of the statue of St. Sebastian on the ship. The willful saint designated his home by making his statue too heavy to be carried by anyone except the people of the town of Melilli. This is the pretext for the plot of a novel where myth/religion, folklore, and history find a perfect balance as the terrain for the lives of three generations of Sicilians and Sicilian Americans.In How Fires End, the reverberations of history reach us through the microhistories of the unknown, the unrecognized, the marginal. While chronologically the plot begins to unravel in Sicily during World War II, with the invasion/liberation of the Allied Forces, and continues with post–World War II migration to the United States, the novel opens in 1980s Connecticut. A teenage boy struggles to find his identity as a second-generation Sicilian American while trying to make sense of his simultaneously tightly knit and excruciatingly divided community. The premature loss of his American mother who taught him to love the stars has not only left him motherless, but it has also made him somewhat fatherless as that loss has amplified and deepened his father's old wounds. The depiction of the relationship between father and son—their disconnection, their silent yearning for love, the solitary grief each nurtures—is brilliantly executed, with the precise strokes of a student of Sicilian masculinity in its multiple, nuanced manifestations across time and place.Few American novels have captured Sicilian male characters with the emotional complexity and authenticity of Rafalà’s stunning debut novel. And few boy characters have moved me as deeply as David, the protagonist and narrator of the first part. I so loved this small giant that the conclusion of the first part left me bereft. I was also baffled as to what the author would do with the rest of the novel—David had been central, not only as a character but as the novel's narrator. But Rafalà masterfully shifts our perspective—of narration, character, time, place, and story. At the same time, he deftly assembles the pieces of the puzzle that constitute his epic narrative in a manner that feels as inevitable as it is necessary to highlight the web of ties interlacing the characters and their stories, in Sicily and in the United States.Rafalà’s novel finds its place in a literary tradition of Italian American intergenerational narratives that includes Helen Barolini's Umbertina, Louise DeSalvo's Crazy in the Kitchen, Tina De Rosa's Paper Fish, Joanna Clapps Herman's The Anarchist Bastard, Kym Ragusa's The Skin between Us, Karen Tintori's Unto the Daughters, and Juliet Grames's The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna, among others. How Fires End testifies not only to the vitality of the genre but also to the persistence of the issues of cross-generational memory and trauma that feed the soul of Italian American writing.

Indelible apartheid: intergenerational post-colonial narratives of colonial-born coloured females about hair, race and identity in South Africa

ABSTRACT What do the narratives of five Cape Coloured women of three generations reveal about issues of race and identity in post-apartheid South Africa? This question is the essence of this study. Identity in apartheid South Africa was strictly and legislatively framed around race, defined by physical characteristics of skin colour and hair texture. Whiteness was the epitome with socio-economic privileges, which invariably created aspirations for this body or proximity to it among some Coloured South Africans in the pursuit of social-economic upliftment. But in a free, post-apartheid, and multi-racial South Africa, do the colonial constructions of identities still linger? Through a critical theoretical lens of postcolonial discourses about race and identity, this study explores intergenerational phenomenological expressions of five Coloured women between the ages of 48 and 104 born during South Africa’s colonial and apartheid eras. The aim was to explore if colonial narratives of hair still influence hair trends, self-presentation, race and identity. It seems racist ideologies of the past are generational, and still shape the perception of hair amongst this cohort of Coloured females.

Intergenerational narratives of citizenship among EU citizens in the UK after the Brexit referendum

ABSTRACT The share of British naturalization applications by EU citizens increased in the aftermath of the 2016 EU referendum. This article offers unique insights into the range of motivations informing decisions to become British or not among EU families from new and old EU member states. It contributes to scholarship on migrants’ lived experiences of naturalization by adopting a family-centred approach to explore intergenerational and intersectional dynamics in citizenship decision making. Naturalization involves personal and collective reckoning with a sense of loss of status and imagined future. We argue that rather than a “premium”, naturalization is framed by many EU citizens as a response to a perceived loss of status (defensive narrative) and threat (protective narrative). This process is mediated and negotiated within the household, and the narratives of naturalization are embedded in participants’ social positioning and shaped by their social statuses and senses of entitlement.

Intergenerational Narrative Learning to Bridge the Generation Gap in Humanistic Care Nursing Education.

Background: The development of nursing students’ ability to practice humanistic care is extremely important. Methods: This study explored students’ learning experience when providing humanistic care for older adults with chronic diseases while employing intergenerational narrative learning. An exploratory descriptive qualitative study design was adopted. Results: We analyzed evaluations from 35 students who completed the course, in which intergenerational narrative learning was employed. Evaluations contained open-ended questions that asked students to reflect upon their experiences and describe their perceptions, thoughts, and feelings after the course. Three main themes were revealed by thematic analysis: direct interaction supersedes knowledge in books, the framework for improving humanistic caring, and internalization of the importance of humanistic care in nursing. Conclusion: An awareness of patients’ perspectives inspired the students in their development toward a more profound caring attitude. The intergenerational narrative learning teaching strategy could foster professional and humanistic-centered care in nursing students.

Preface: Understanding Women’s Lives and Trauma Through Narrative Research and Analysis

Preface: Understanding Women’s Lives and Trauma Through Narrative Research and Analysis

A time to be silent and a time to speak: intergenerational family narrative and father loss before birth

ABSTRACT This qualitative study explored the intergenerational family narratives around loss and bereavement as perceived by 12 Israeli adults, whose fathers died before they were born. Using the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, the intergenerational narrative process was examined as it appeared in in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Three phases of this process were identified: (1) the first generation: establishing the rule of silence, (2) the second generation: obeying the rule of silence, and (3) the third generation: breaking the rule of silence. The discussion presents a nuanced examination of the functions of silence in family narration in the case of traumatic loss, its impact on children whose fathers died before they were born, and the notion of the timing and processing of intergenerational dialogues of loss between grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren. Practical implications include the importance of recognizing the need for a careful balance between silence and speech, both for the family as a unit and for its grieving members. Also, family therapists should consider incorporating three-generation therapy sessions in cases of parent loss in general, and father loss before birth in particular.

El Nacimiento del Pueblo Mestizo: Critical Discourse on Historical Trauma, Community Resilience and Healing.

Purpose. Historical trauma has been widely applied to American Indian/Alaska Native and other Indigenous populations and includes dimensions of language, sociocultural, and land losses and associated physical and mental disorders, as well as economic hardships. Insufficient evidence remains on the experiences of historical trauma due to waves of colonization for mixed-race Mexican people with indigenous ancestry (el pueblo mestizo). Research Question. Drawing from our critical lenses and epistemic advantages as indigenous feminist scholars, we ask, "How can historical trauma be understood through present-day discourse of two mestizo communities? What are public health practice and policy implications for healing historical trauma among mestizo populations?" Methodology and Approach. We analyzed the discourse from two community projects: focus groups and ethnographic field notes from a study in the U.S.-Mexico border region (2012-2014) and field notes and digital stories from a service-learning course in northern New Mexico (2016-2018). Findings. Our analysis describes the social and historical experiences of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Chicanas/os, and Nuevo Mexicano peoples in the southwestern border region of the United States. We found four salient themes as manifestations of "soul-wound": (1) violence/fear, (2) discrimination/shame, (3) loss, and (4) deep sorrow. Themes mitigating the trauma were community resiliency rooted in "querencia" (deep connection to land/home/people) and "conscientizacion" (critical consciousness). Conclusion. Historical trauma experienced by mestizo Latinx communities is rooted in local cultural and intergenerational narratives that link traumatic events in the historic past to contemporary local experiences. Future public health interventions should draw on culturally centered strength-based resilience approaches for healing trauma and advancing health equity.

Multimodal Expressions of Self: Telling Ghost Stories as Intersectional African American and Latinx American Scholars

Using autoethnography to critically analyze personal and cultural experiences, we use the notion of “home” metaphorically through (a) academia—of our traumatic experiences as African American and Latinx women seeking acceptance in academic institutions despite blatant inequities, discrimination, and racism; and (b) intergenerational family and ancestral narratives—of past/present experiences and stories of identities, homes, and borders. We craft transnational and intersectional autoethnographic narratives to illustrate how our perceptions of self as African American and Latinx American scholars have been shaped across research, politics, and digital spaces. We address perspectives of how our past and current institutional spaces created emotional and contested imbalances in our sense of self and in how we defend our work. In our representation of the quest for home with(in) academia, we employ the multimodal lenses of poetry, images, voices, and the theories of Gloria Anzaldúa and Audre Lorde to elicit how various expressions of storytelling extend our thinking about qualitative inquiry in today’s society in ways that help to challenge academic and institutional structures.