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Articles

Shaping The Self

Sally Latham examines the construction of identity through memory.

I’ve kept a diary in one form or another since about the age of twelve. Sometimes a few words, sometimes pages and pages, but either way every day of my life is documented – apart, that is, from the ages of fifteen and sixteen. As with all teenagers, these were my angst years, and in a grand gesture of would-be liberation, symbolic of new beginnings, I burned them. The intended significance of the event was somewhat eclipsed when I set off my parents’ fire alarm and I realised that burning paper in my bedroom was exceedingly stupid. But anyway, those years are now lost, except for what I can recollect or others can tell me (which is pretty much the case for most people other than those who keep a daily diary).

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