This paper examines the interplay of public and private, personal and political, in the life of one Tunisian public figure, Radhia Haddad. These threads are intertwined in Haddad’s story (as narrated in Arabic as part of a collection of oral histories in 1993 and her memoirs published in French in 1995) as her political activities built upon family networks, and much of her public action focused on the family. Active with the nationalist movement prior to independence in 1956, Haddad is most know through her service as the first president of the National Union of Tunisian Women from its foundation until 1972. Her writing is framed within the nationalist project and is intertwined with her relationship to Bourguiba and his wife. Her political education and activism was profoundly influenced by her family; her brother, husband, and father-in-law were all nationalists, and her participation in women’s associations was facilitated by familial ties to Wassila Bourguiba. As a representative of Bourguiba’s government, Haddad helped extend the reach of the one-party state into the personal and intimate lives of many Tunisian women. Yet despite Haddad’s nationalist credentials and ties to Bourguiba, he forced her to resign from the Women’s Union and the Destour Party in 1972, subjecting her to a defamation campaign and charges of corruption. Haddad’s retrospective testimony about these events is written in conversation and tension with official narratives. I propose to frame her self-presentation in relation to accounts in the contemporary press (largely controlled by Bourguiba and the Destour Party), as instances of overlapping or competing testimonies. On the one hand, descriptions of her activities with the Women’s Union echo the party goals and developmentalist frameworks regarding the nature of women’s contribution to the nation, and the specifically liberal iteration of women’s citizenship. On the other hand, Haddad utilizes the space of her memoir to absolve herself from responsibility in Bourguiba’s authoritarian practices, painting herself as one of its victims. In this respect, Haddad’s insistence that he was manipulated by factions within the presidential palace and presents her demotion and persecution as irrational, and substantiates Ben Ali’s rhetoric that Bourguiba’s senility made him incapable of governing. I hope to combine historical methodologies with a theoretical perspective informed by textual studies and literary critique in the reading of these testimonies.