Personal as Public in Radha Poudel's Jumla: A Nurse's Story

Abstract

The present research project makes a detailed investigation upon the autobiographical memoirJumla: A Nurse’s Storyauthored by Radha Poudel, an activist, in order to argue that her personal experiences during her service to Jumla, the most remote and backward community, reflect a larger public picture of Jumlis social life. It further argues that to be personal is tobe public because the personal accounts embody the association with the public life since person life is associated with the social spectrum. The research attempts to break down the traditional distinction between private and public through Poudel’s accounts of personal experiences and its association with the realistic picture of Jumlis society. For this to happen, the researcher will shed a light on the autobiographical concept of memory to discuss why the writer remembers her past and combine it within the theoretical insight of‘personal as political’which was the slogan of the feminist movement during twentieth century. The theoretical concept of ‘personal is political’ dismantles the conventional notion that there is dichotomy between private and public and assert that private also embodies the reality of the public life. The autobiographical notion of memory under the theoretical insight of Siodonic Smith and Julia Watson has been primary method. In doing so, the research concludes with the finding that the act of remembering is not neutral but political and one’s personal memories simultaneously document the public history of the contemporary society.