RESPONSE - Generational storytelling and public history: a response to Once my Mother

I want to speak to silences in official histories, and the emerging role of generational voices in amending these silences. Individual stories of migration are not new to Australian popular culture or to public history. We are all familiar with migrant success storiesthose post-war migrants made good; further, we are all familiar with the idea of the socially mobile second generation. What Australian public history and popular culture is less familiar with are stories of single women, specifically unmarried mothers in post-war Australia. These histories are not just individual, they are not just familialthey are also a potent means to explore the running of the post-war migration scheme and to explore some of the myths that surround that scheme, and the image of Australia as proffering a national cuddle to those most in need. In Once My Mother, Sophia Turkiewicz referred to the lies of historians: the chapter on your story is missing she says of her mothers incredible trials during and after the war. We need these stories, not only to complicate popular success stories, but because they are national and international histories. I would also argue that the history of the post-war Polish experience, in all its diversity, is missing from the public record in Australia.