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Cultural Migration in Autobiography Grundtvig Partnerships 2009-2011

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

e-mail: kszia@komesnet.com.pl http://cma.internetdsl.pl

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Authors don’t write biographies in vain Maria Antonieta Costa

Temporary or permanent immigration is a spontaneous phenomenon that characterizes the life of mankind. In Portugal, the process has been constant since the beginning of our History, with the fixation on the west of Iberian Peninsula of diverse people: Muslims, Gypsies, Jews and Indians. Currently, among the immigrant communities in Portuguese soil the highlight goes to the Brazilians, Cape Verdeans, Angolans, Ukrainians, Romanians and Asians.

This phenomenon has been such a great importance in our country that took me, in 2009, to accept the proposal which I was directed by the German colleague Dr. Reinhard Nowak, at this time Director of the Gmünder Volkshochschule, to collaborate on an interesting Grundtvig project called Cultural Migration in Autobiography, whose aim was to gather autobiographies of immigrant students.

Convincing immigrant trainees to narrate episodes of their lives was the most difficult task to accomplish. Some of them valued so little that thought there was nothing about themselves that was really worth telling. Another one did not want to make public painful, controversial or regrettable facts, raising grievances long trapped in a corner of their sufferer heart. Others still said they could not write.

Despite the obstacles, it was possible to assemble a small group of writers who, with my help, recalled fragments of time, images, smells, sounds and colors of a past that ultimately was not so far, so forgotten. The result of these evocations started taking a form, putting up words, gradually, over a few sheets of paper, allowing participants to reflect on various moments of their lives, who, voluntarily or forcibly, inhabited the realm of oblivion of each one. It was difficult to transform images into words, words into phrases.

In this process of introspection, my role as helping their memory and correcting their texts, gave me the privilege to participate in this adventure of letting their origins, families, friends, and communities and burst through a strange world, where everyone speaks an unknown language. In addition to the solutions that immigration may have brought to these people, all the stories I heard spoke mainly about cuts. And some of those blows were so violent that provoked in the victim the feeling of a full physical amputation, leaving wounds that still bleed! Because of this, we commonly agreed to publish only the good memories.