Dayal Kaur Khalsa: The art of remembering

In the space of three years in the late eighties, Dayal Kaur Khalsa wrote and illustrated a series of picture books that constitute a visual (auto)biography. In these books, Khalsa explores the meaning and reliability of memory, and the importance of family context in life history. By evoking popular culture and its artifacts in her illustrations, Khalsaprovides afully realised, time-specific world for her character May to inhabit. Furthermore, through the device of self- referential visual quotations, by means of which characters and settings reappear from book to book, Khalsa creates a form of "visual intertextuality" unique in the canon of Canadian picture books.