This paper interrogates how the memoirs of Tunisian leftists from the 1960s and 1970s were received and inspired actors of the left and student movements during the 2011 Revolution and its aftermath. From 2008, members of the Perspectives Tunisiennes movement began pushing against government-imposed censorship and amnesia by releasing memoirs that recalled their youthful idealism and dreams of a socialist society. After 2011, more Perspectivistes began releasing their memoirs sensing the historic opportunity going beyond the usual leaders of the movement to diversify and multiply the recollections of their struggle. They explored their social origins, their first protests at the university, and they culminated in histories of protest, plans for armed uprisings, and their lengthy prison sentences that signalled political defeat. This paper departs from the singularity of life-writing about contentious lives and revolutionary dreams during another episode of contention and revolution half-a century later. Drawing on Ann Rigney’s framework of the memory-activism nexus (2018), I argue that these published memoirs were intended to guide the post-2011 generation of Tunisian leftists and student protesters into the possibilities of revolutionary change, but especially, the means to remain hopeful and steadfast despite political setbacks. Indeed, I offer a reading of a sample of these memoirs that displaces its focus from the narrative content of their hopeful beginnings to the continuity of their struggle after their arrests, exile, ostracization and oblivion. I explore the reception of these memoirs by members of the younger generation of Tunisians in the online publication Nawaat and Nachaz (two notable spaces for young activists of the 2011 Revolution) in dialogue with the chances and setbacks of the Tunisian Left during the democratic transition process (2011-14). As such, this paper informs the process of inter-generational transmission and learning through life-writing, especially in the context of authoritarian closure where activists and contentious lives face defeat and disillusion more often than hope and successes.