This paper explores the changing modes and genres of remembering family history, ranging from traditional ancestor rituals, dirges and narrations during funerals and other family celebrations, gossip and ‘small memories’ of family relations to the more recent interest by lay family historians to research and document their family genealogy or share photographs and films on family events via Facebook among family members. I am interested in how autobiographical narratives of individual life courses, both oral and written, invoke elements of family histories and, vice versa, how rememberings of the family history shape individual memories. In Ghana, but also other (West) African countries there seems to be a rising popular interest in family history, accompanied by the creation of family foundations and regular family reunions, often at the rural ‘home’ of the extended family, in which the achievements of founding fathers (rarely mothers) are celebrated, and genealogical links or critical events in the life of family discussed. These new forms of collective remembering often go along with attempts to create a unified ‘official’ version of the family history; however, the multifaceted social interactions during and around these meetings facilitate multiple exchanges of individual memories that militate against endeavours of standardisation. In any case, as family members disperse geographically, with diverse professional careers and life styles, remembering the family origins, genealogy and ancestral traditions has become increasingly important for the continuation of a sense of belonging to one extended family.
In my paper, I will reflect on a recent research and book as well as film project that I conducted jointly with two African scholars, both members of one extended family straddling the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso – a family that has ‘adopted’ me thirty years ago.