Personal narratives, including oral histories, memoirs, letters, and
diaries, provide access to intimate pasts otherwise difficult to grasp.
For scholars interested in family memories or migration, diaries offer a
more direct and rawer glimpse to the author’s past than memoirs and
oral histories, which are written retrospectively, or letters, which are
addressed to a specific reader or readers. This chapter examines
Pauli’s diary as one version of my father’s life story. The stories he
tells (orally, conversationally) about his life represent another
version of Pauli’s life story. Although the diary is a chronological and
detailed account of his journey to Australia, the events and
experiences he has chosen to write about express something about him,
just like the stories he entertains people with. Though this chapter
focuses on a particular individual, my father, and his unique
experiences, it also tells a more or less typical story of a young
working-class (Finnish) man with little formal education migrating to
Australia. The diary can be used as a historical source to examine
experiences of migration or gender, class or ethnicity, or to explore
the author’s subjective views on these or as a reference point to his
current life story.