We begin by asking why colonial studies, despite its obvious commitment to
questions of memory, has dealt in such circumscribed ways with the nature of
remembering and the particular forms that memories of the colonial take. We
then turn to the specific recollections of former servants to question how their
colonial memories were framed. We ask how concrete and sensory memories
of cooking, cleaning and childcare evoke sensibilities that other ways of telling
do not. Throughout we reflect on the politics of interpretive license, and what
might be gained by making memory-work the subject, rather than a given of
colonial analysis.