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“We Make Our Own Familia” – The Transfer of Memory in Patricia Nell Warren’s Billy’s Boy (1997)

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Mętrak J.

Filoteknos

2021

issue 11

262-271

This paper aims at analyzing Patricia Nell Warren’s 1997 coming-of-age novel Billy’s Boy. Using the concept of the family as a social framework for memory (Halbwachs), as well as highlighting the role of objects (Olsen, Pomian) and photographs (Hirsch) in the process of memorizing William’s late father, the author demonstrates the traumatic impact his death has on the protagonist’s biological and chosen family. The paper shows that in Billy’s Boy, the third volume in her Harlan’s Story trilogy, Warren presents the experience of marginalized youth in the 1990s and interweaves it with her own life experience. Having previously written about the difficulties of being pushed to society’s margins in the early 1970s, in this novel, Warren familiarizes the readers with the representation of the life of the LGBTQ+ community in the early 1990s. By doing so, she shows the social changes that have happened and points to the ongoing social inequalities and homophobia. Notably, while Warren writes about the individual experience of William, the novel can become the source of next-generation memory for contemporary young readers, familiarizing them with the history of American LGBTQ+ community.

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1 Filoteknos

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1 2021

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“We Make Our Own Familia” – The Transfer of Memory in Patricia Nell Warren’s Billy’s Boy (1997)