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Bearing(s) in Life Writing by Caro Giles and Kerri ní Dochartaigh

Authors :
Fiona McCann
Source :
Études Britanniques Contemporaines, Vol 67 (2024)
Publication Year :
2024
Publisher :
Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2024.

Abstract

Twelve Moons: A Year Under a Shared Sky (2023) by Caro Giles and Cacophony of Bone (2023) by Kerri ní Dochartaigh are both memoirs written by “northern women” during the Covid-19 global pandemic. Caro Giles is based in Northumberland while Kerri ní Dochartaigh is from the North of Ireland and their memoirs both deal with motherhood, loss, and isolation while foregrounding uplifting connections between human animals and the natural environment which surrounds them. Their “northernness” is central to the orientations of Twelve Moons and Cacophony of Bone, which toy with the tensions between losing one’s bearings, bearing the brunt of loss, traumatic past events, isolation, and political uncertainty, and re-engaging with what Donna Haraway calls ‘making kin’ (Haraway, 2016). This article aims to tease out these tensions alongside Haraway and to interrogate the ways in which both these non-fiction writers, who paradoxically emphasize their northern anchoring, foreground loss of bearings as simultaneously uncomfortable and as a prerequisite for healing. Loss of bearings, they show, is what facilitates a reconnection between themselves and the natural environment and is what makes the pain of traumatic events more bearable.

Details

Language :
English, French
ISSN :
11684917 and 22715444
Volume :
67
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Études Britanniques Contemporaines
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.1e72a0012249468a825b15130556ed
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.4000/12nah