Family Stories Research Articles

Listening to the stories of others in South Africa: a sacrificial listening approach in education

ABSTRACT Pedagogical approaches that prioritize active empathetic listening have been shown to profoundly enrich the learning experience, cultivating a deep-seated mutual respect and understanding of diverse perspectives within the framework of democratic education. This study explores the potential impact of the concept of sacrificial listening providing the context of a particular educational program in South African secondary education, which is designed to enhance mutual cultural understanding and empathy amongst students and their families from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Employing a narrative analysis of interpersonal interactions and family stories, the study elucidates that such a listening approach may significantly nurture empathy, understanding, and inclusive learning environments. It illuminates the transformative capacity of embedding human narratives and active emotional sacrificial listening of others into educational practices, underscoring the imperative for meticulous implementation and support to adeptly maneuver through the complexities of sensitive, intercultural discourse.

Transformative Learning Among Organ Procurement Organization Donor Family Volunteers.

Introduction: Some family members who previously made the decision to donate a family member's organs support the organ procurement organization (OPO) through volunteer work. Volunteers were asked to describe their family's organ donation story to educate the general and medical communities about organ donation. This study explored the transformative learning experienced by volunteers during and following the organ donation consent process and throughout their volunteer work. Methods/Approach: A narrative inquiry research methodology and transformative learning theoretical framework was used and 6 volunteers were recruited to participate. Two semistructured virtual interviews were conducted. Interviews were transcribed, radically reduced, and subjected to holistic-content and holistic-form narrative analysis. Findings: Participants experienced strong emotional responses during and after the loss of their family member, characterized as a period of disorientation, which lasted for an extended period preventing transformative learning. After the OPO contacted participants regarding the opportunity to volunteer, participants experienced a period of self-examination when they reengaged with the topic of organ donation. Critical reflection occurred through the act of storytelling about their family's organ donation story during their volunteer work. Storytelling to the community facilitated making meaning of their loss and transformations. Conclusion: Volunteering for an OPO played an important role by initiating self-examination and critical reflection of their prior assumptions. Through storytelling, participants reflected on their roles and made meaning of their organ donation experiences. The act of inviting donor families to reengage with the topic of organ donation through volunteer work fostered positive permanent meaningful transformations.

Still Bad Indians

This essay on Deborah A. Miranda’s Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, is a meditation on the significance of California Indian women’s stories of survival and resistance. I take inspiration from a few sections of Bad Indians in order to tell other California Indian stories. I respond to questions Miranda poses in her text with speculative narratives of history, stories about bears and salmon, and an old family story that leaves me with no easy way to feel. I argue that stories reassert California Indians’ presence on our homelands in spite of the ceaseless efforts of the state to remove us.

Berries of the Lost Garden: Narrating the Life and Legacy of an Iconic Architect

ABSTRACT Writing about the life and legacy of extraordinary individuals often involves navigating many layers of meaning. Growing up next door to Vartan Hovanissian, an iconic architect whose influence extended well beyond his time, profoundly shaped my childhood. My renewed fascination with his life was sparked by discovering a 1918 visual document, which rekindled my curiosity about his enduring impact. This essay intertwines personal memories with newly uncovered historical details to trace Vartan’s journey from a modest educator to a celebrated architect honoured by two monarchs. Through heartfelt family stories, warm connections with his daughter, and intriguing archival insights, I explore how Vartan’s architectural contributions transformed his era and left a lasting imprint on those around him. This narrative blends personal reflection with historical exploration, revealing the remarkable yet often overlooked aspects of his life.

The development of a dyadic family life review intervention for the Asian diaspora: A practice article.

Intergenerational family conflict is a commonly identified issue in the Asian diaspora; however, there are limited interventions designed to address this concern. Given this gap in the literature, the authors present a practice article outlining the conceptualization, development, and delivery of a dyadic life review intervention called (Re)Cultivating Family Stories (RFS). RFS is a clinician-facilitated family intervention designed to promote connection and foster successive communication through the joint activity of developing a family story. Life review is a structured approach for reminiscing and evaluating one's life experiences and includes dyadic variants. RFS builds on dyadic life review by facilitating collaborative dialogs between a parent and adult offspring, incorporating culturally responsive elements, and focusing on developing family stories. This article provides an overview of the intervention and its theoretical foundations, along with formative feedback from a field test. Considerations for future implementation and research directions are described.

TRADITIONS AND INNOVATIONS IN THE REPRESENTATION OF THE "LITTLE MAN" IN R. SENCHIN'S FAMILY SAGA "THE YELTYSHEVS"

In R.Senchin's family story "The Yeltyshevs," the portrayal of the "little man" is presented in a novel manner, representing one of the most enduring and ideologically profound themes in 19th-century Russian literature. A meticulous examination of the saga's text, augmented by an analysis of literary scholars' and critics' conclusions, reveals that the "little man" is increasingly not merely a victim of circumstances, but rather an individual attempting to conform to societal norms, ultimately becoming a source of difficulties for both others and his family. In contemporary fiction of new realism, the "little man" transcends the role of a mere societal archetype of suffering, evolving into a protagonist accountable for both family and others. R.Senchin examines the moment at which anindividual relinquishes such obligation.

Emotion, memory and storytelling: postmemorial emotion work in Vietnamese American graphic narratives

The article demonstrates how graphic narratives become a medium for managing inherited emotions in Vietnamese American second-generation works, GB Tran’s Vietnamerica and Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do. Highlighting the intergenerational transmission of emotions in Vietnamese American families through parental stories about the Vietnam War, the article argues that the authors’ attempts to represent these family stories transform graphic literature into a medium for postmemorial emotion work. While drawing theoretical insights from the sociology of emotions, the study employs textual analysis to thematically close read Vietnamerica and The Best We Could Do to understand the graphic strategies that aid emotion work. The graphic recreation of stories, which are narrativised versions of their inherited trauma memories, can offer potential trauma resolution and autobiographical clarity while fostering communal bonding. The analysis finds that in the works, emotion work is facilitated by various literary strategies, such as affective genealogies, affective geographies, affective pasts, and postmemorial re-embodiment. In a broader sense, the study concludes that graphic narrative strategies can aid in postmemorial emotion work for second-generation refugees grappling with inherited trauma, incoherent autobiographical knowledge, and detachment from the community or family.

Intergenerational Transmission of Wisdom Through Family Narratives: A Qualitative Analysis of Emerging Adults' Perspective

Family narratives are a medium for the intergenerational transmission of life wisdom, which may influence recipient’s beliefs system and behaviors. Despite a growing body of knowledge on wisdom, emerging adults remain insufficiently researched as to what wisdom from their perspective was conveyed to them through stories. The aim was to identify what wisdom emerging adults perceive in the narratives told them by their parents about themselves. The study was conducted in Poland. Convenience sampling was used. 42 emerging adults (33 female, 8 male, 1 non-binary) ranging from 19 to 22 years participated in the study. Participants were asked to write stories about their parents, separately, about mother and father when they were young. These were supposed to be stories both containing wisdom and told them by their parents. Then they were asked to describe what wisdom was contained in the recalled story and what they learned from it. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Twelve participants were not able to recall a story about one of their parents. They completed one part of the written task and explained the reasons for not knowing the story about the other. These responses were included in the analysis. The thematic analysis identifies the following main themes: transmission of life lessons, transmission of values, family myths, forms of wisdom transmitting. The wisdom read by emerging adults from the recalled stories took the form of advice, encouragement, warning and reprimand. They were usually expressed indirectly. It required effort to read the hidden message and give it meaning. The study showed the importance of family stories in the upbringing process and preparation for adulthood. In the face of the following changes in lifestyles and family communication, the results may be used to support and educate families in deepening intra-family relationships.

Childhood Memory of Adult History. Holocaust Trauma and Migration in Z. Oryszyn’s novel «Saving Atlantis»

Zyta Oryszyn’s (b. 1940) novel «Saving Atlantis» (2012), like almost all of her work, is born of a sense of guilt – a desire to «cover with words» the pain caused by childhood memories of the trauma of participation (unwitting complicity in the expulsion of Germans from the Regainde Lands), the trauma of witnessing (the Holocaust) and the trauma of inheritance (family memory of forced migration). Children’s consciousness, adapting to adult reality, accommodates the experience of power and powerlessness, of invader, victim and witness. From this position, the novel explores – in all its fragmentation – the autobiographical memory of the former German space functioning in the paradigm of violence, a space traumatising and generating a sense of unrootedness. The dramatic stories of several families, told from different perspectives, intersect and intertwine, forming a sorrowful labyrinth of fear, resentment, orphanhood, humiliation, and insurmountable alienness.

The GETAID: 40 years of a family story in IBD.

The Groupe d'Etude sur les Affections Inflammatoires Digestives (GETAID) was founded in Paris in 1983 by Professor R Modigliani and colleagues. From the beginning, the aim of this international (France, Belgium and Switzerland), multicentre, French-speaking group was to address clinical questions raised by patients or physicians in their daily practice or the inflammatory bowel diseases community, by focusing on clinical research on treatments through randomised controlled trials, prospective cohorts and cross-sectional studies, quantifying the severity of various facets of the disease when necessary for these studies. This approach very innovative has contributed to the advancement of knowledge in inflammatory bowel diseases by publishing more than 120 original articles in peer-reviewed journals throughout the GETAID 40-year history, most of them in top publications in gastroenterology and hepatology journals. In this paper, we will see what GETAID's contribution has been over the last four decades, review reasons for success and forthcoming challenges.

Critical Windows: Perspectives of Parents of Children and Youth with Special Educational Needs Regarding Social Wellbeing During COVID19

ABSTRACT In the spring of 2020, schools across the globe closed as a public health measure to address the growing COVID-19 pandemic. For children and youth with special educational needs (SEN) who rely on specific additional supports and services, and who were more likely than their peers to experience a lack of school success even before COVID-19, gaps in academic and social development are likely to be magnified. The current study explored the perspectives of 36 Canadian parents of children and youth with SEN regarding the impact of COVID-19 on social wellbeing during the first wave in the spring of 2020. Thematic analysis was conducted of the in-depth interviews, and two key narratives were created in order to tell the stories of families. These narratives provide evidence of the five major themes that were identified, namely: a) pathways to friends, b) isolated and disconnected, c) developmental concerns, d) siblings as peer proxies, and e) role of schools. We discuss these themes in relation to the growing body of research documenting the impacts of COVID-19 on the social lives of children and youth.

Telling a scientific story and governing the population: The Kallikak story and the historical mutations of the eugenic discourse.

In this article, we follow the trails of 20th-century psychologist Henry Herbert Goddard's influential study of the Kallikak family. Goddard's study is treated as a scientific story with two interlocking dimensions: One is the actual story of the Kallikak family, with literary elements such as setting, plot, and characters. The other dimension is the broader eugenic discourse, a powerful scientific narrative that calls for action in relation to society and the population. The purpose of the article is twofold. Firstly, to analyze the forming and articulations of this story and to explore some of the consequences for governing the population that it has made possible. Secondly, to explore some aspects of what a Foucauldian analytics of government can contribute with in relation to Goddard's work and the eugenic discourse from the early 20th century to today. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Transgressing Racial Lines in the Name of Love: An Afro-Chinese Family Story in China

Transgressing Racial Lines in the Name of Love: An Afro-Chinese Family Story in China

Young people at a crossroads: Climate solidarity through intergenerational storytelling

AbstractSchool‐based teaching on climate change rarely draws on diverse experiences and knowledge about climate change that circulate in migrant homes and communities. We set out to consider experiences of climate change education (CCE) in schools in Manchester, UK, and Melbourne, Australia, among migrant‐background students. We interviewed young people aged 14 to 18 and educators in multicultural secondary schools about climate change education. We then trained and supported young people to interview their parents. Here, we show how those interviews built young researchers’ appreciation of family stories. Those accounts revealed aspects of parents’ lives growing up that provided a platform from which families could discuss the changing relevance of climate change in their countries of origin and present locations. From those shared insights emerged critical, contextually informed understandings of climate change. Given those outcomes, we argue that intergenerational and cross‐cultural storytelling, when brought into dialogue with scientific knowledge, can support climate change educators. They can then draw upon a range of knowledges and responses to climate change wider than that, which currently exists in most classrooms. We conclude by suggesting that among diverse learner cohorts, what then becomes possible is work to build a greater sense of agency and capacity for empathy with respect to climate change.

Your Grandfather Is Wong Tin Lee

In this autoethnography, the author uses racial formation theory to contextualize her family experiences and the life story told to her by her grandmother. In an effort to clarify some aspects of family history after her grandmother passed away, the author searched Australian archival records looking for new information and accidentally uncovered a family secret. Specifically, their ancestors were neither upper class nor were they all white Europeans; the family story in Australia actually begins with an interracial marriage between a man from Canton, China, and a white woman born into extreme poverty. Moreover, two generations of children in this multiracial family had been removed from their parents and placed in institutions and foster families. The family history presented here challenges assumptions about what it means to be Australian and who was living in the Australian colonies at the time of Australian Federation. White Australia is explored as both an immigration policy and as a racial project that shaped the lives of non-whites living in Australia, including that of Chinese and multiracial Australians like the author’s maternal ancestors.

Mammy Chloe: Removing Fiction From Nonfictional Family Stories

Mammy Chloe: Removing Fiction From Nonfictional Family Stories

“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.

Stories of Justification – Stories of Absolution: How Families in Liberec Came to Terms with Post-Displacement Heritage

The article focuses on how residents of the north Bohemian town of Liberec deal in their family histories with possession of post-displacement. The objects they use were confiscated from the German-speaking minority in the aftermath of World War 2. The text provides an overview of narratives of this event in the Czech public discourse and discusses how these are reflected in family stories. The study is based on three family histories collected during ethnographic fieldwork and the analytical framework is informed by memory studies and theories of hauntology.

Dampak Pola Asuh Fatherless dalam Al-Qur'an: Study Kritis Parenting dalam Kisah Nabi Ya'kub

This research aims to investigate the impact of fatherless parenting as depicted in the Qur'an, especially through the story of the Prophet Ya'qub. The research method used is a critical analysis of parenting practices seen in the narrative of the Koran, with a focus on the role and influence of fathers in shaping the character of their children. This research describes fatherless parenting in the context of the life of the Prophet Ya'qub, who is the central figure in a complex and intriguing family story in the Qur'an. The results of the analysis highlight the various impacts that arise due to the absence of a father figure in the process of forming children's character. One of the main findings is the importance of the father's role as a family leader who provides moral direction and emotional support to children. Father absence can cause emotional instability and internal conflict in children and increase the risk of them falling into negative behavior. Apart from that, this research also explores the Prophet Ya'qub's efforts to overcome the challenges he faced as a single father. An in-depth analysis of the strategies used by the Prophet Ya'qub in raising his children provides valuable insight into the importance of a father's presence and influence in the family. The findings of this research provide an important contribution to our understanding of the importance of fathers' roles in the process of children's character formation, as well as their implications for contemporary parenting practices. The practical implications of this research include a better understanding of fatherless parenting and efforts that can be made to overcome its negative impacts in modern society.

An information behaviour exploration of personal and family information and curation of our life histories

Introduction. Family stories and life histories are often shared among household and family members via oral and written communication, family traditions, and many other information practices. We explore these practices through the lens of information behaviour. Method. This study uses first-hand reports of such family information practices. We use collaborative autoethnography through a narrative methodology for creating rich understandings of information practices within families. Analysis. The first-hand self-reports from the four authors/researchers from four different countries are analysed using a narrative analysis method. Results. Although each author describes the process of gathering and preserving their personal and family history differently, they all consciously or unconsciously defaulted to the role of information holders and occasionally gatekeepers of personal information within their families, especially as the previous generation age, suffer memory loss, or pass away. Conclusion. Family events such as holidays, celebrations, funerals, and other spaces in which members come together, serve as boundaries of our information worlds, or as information grounds. However, the tension between traditional and digital documentation and communication methods within families, the digital divide, and globally dispersed families can lead to intergenerational information loss.