Lives in the Making: The Possibilities and Impossibilities of Autobiography with Reference to the Case of Amina Cachalia

This article takes the author's recent experiences of working with Amina Cachalia on her memoirs as a starting point for engaging with the knotty problems of the autobiographical genre, especially in its relationship with more orthodox forms of history writing. An examination of South African women's autobiographies and memoirs suggests the existence of different kinds of historical narratives that subvert, either explicitly or tacitly, what Elaine Unterhalter drew attention to as the ‘heroic masculine’ narrative commonly told by male South African autobiographers.