Not only diaries : original variations of women’s memoirs (a selection of women’s autobiographical documentary literature)

This article is concerned with some 20th-century women’s autobiographies whose authors do not play according to the rules of the genological model of autobiography and even go round its fundamental assumption that the autobiographical pact between writer and reader is impossible outside the conventional diary narrative. The three memoirs discussed in the article (written by Halina Ostrowska Grabska, Zuzanna Rabska, and by the poetic duo of Maryla Wolska and Beata Obertyńska) exhibit a freshness and unconventionality which make them perfect examples of Jennifer A. Gonzáles’s subgenre of "autotopography". Organized round eye-catching random objects that generate a non-linear, non-sequential string of personal, or even intimate stories, they show that the true potential of women’s memoirs lies in their chequered, heterogeneous forms that can produce a seamless blend of the physical world and the world of words.