PROUDLY PRESENTS...
WISCONSIN STUDIES
IN
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM L. ANDREWS
About the Series About the Editor Ordering Information
Please click on the titles
below to learn more about individual books:
Maverick Autobiographies : Women Writers and the
American West, 1900–1936 by Cathryn
Halverson
Campaigns of Curiosity: Journalistic
Adventures of an American Girl in Late Victorian London by Elizabeth L. Banks; Introduction by Mary Suzanne Schriber and Abbey Zink
Harriet Tubman : The Life and the Life Stories
The Text Is Myself: Women's
Life Writing and Catastrophe by Miriam Fuchs
Voices Made Flesh: Performing
Women's Autobiography Edited by Lynn C. Miller, Jacqueline Taylor, and M. Heather Carver
The Woman in Battle: The
Civil War Narrative of Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Cuban Woman and Confederate
Soldier by Loreta Janeta Velazquez;
Introduction by Jesse Alem·n
The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926–7 September 1986 by Kamau Brathwaite
Caribbean Autobiography :Cultural Identity and Self-Representation by Sandra Pouchet Paquet
The Autobiographical Documentary in America by Jim Lane
Diaries of Girls and Women: A Midwestern American Sampler Edited by Suzanne L. Bunkers
Rosa: The Life of an Italian Immigrant by Marie Hall Ets
The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb An American Slave With a new introduction by Charles J. Heglar
Illumination and Night Glare: The Unfinished Autobiography of Carson McCullers. Ed Carlos L. Dews
Who Am I? An Autobiography of Emotion, Mind, and Spirit by Yi-Fu TuanThe Making of a Chicano Militant: Lessons from Cristal by José Angel Gutiérrez
Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. Eds. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson Click here to see the Table of Contents
Jumping the Line: The Adventures and Misadventures of an American Radical by William Herrick
My Generation: Collective Autobiography and Identity Politics by John Downton Hazlett
Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing by G. Thomas Couser
Other books in the Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography Series include:
Intensely Family: The Inheritance of Family
Shame and the Autobiographies of Henry James by Carol Holly (1995). Please click here to see the table of contents for Intensely
Family.
Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Ante-Bellum Slave Narratives by Frances Smith Foster (1994)
American Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Writing. Edited by Robert F. Sayre (1994). Click here to see the table of contents for American Lives.
Native American Autobiography: An Anthology. Edited by Arnold Krupat (1994. Click here to see the table of contents for Native American Autobiography.
My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American Autobiography by Genaro M. Padilla (1994). Click here to see the table of contents for My History, Not Yours.
The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926-7 September 1986 by Kamau Braithwaite (1993)
My Lord, What a Morning: An Autobiography by Marian Anderson, with a new introduction by Nellie Y. McKay (1993)
A Woman's Civil War: A Diary with Reminiscences of the War, from March 1862 by Cornelia Peake McDonald. Edited, with an introduction, by Minrose C. Gwin (1992)
Livin' the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet by Frank Marshal Davis. Edited, with an introduction, by John Edgar Tidwell (1992)
American Women's Autobiography: Fea(s)ts of Memory. Edited, with an introduction, by Margo Culley (1992. Please click here to see the table of contents for American Women's Autobiography.
Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams by Joanne Jacobson (1992)
American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect. Edited, with an introduction, by Paul John Eakin (1991. Click here to see the table of contents for American Autobiography.
The Diary of Caroline Seabury, 1854-1863. Edited, with an introduction, by Suzanne L. Bunkers (1991)
The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, with a new introduction by Ann J. Lane (1991)
Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review, by Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Edited, with an introduction, by Michael J. Kiskis (1990)
Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women's Narratives. Edited by William L. Andrews, Sargent Bush, Jr., Annette Kolodny, Amy Schrager Lang, and Daniel B. Shea (1990). Please click here to see the table of contents for Journeys in New Worlds.
The Education of a WASP by Lois Mark Stalvey (1989)
Forbidden Family: A Wartime Memoir of the Phillipines, 1941-1945 by Margaret Sam. Edited by Lynn Z. Bloom (1989)
The Examined Self: Benjamin Franklin, Henry Adams, Henry James by Robert F. Sayre (1988)
Spiritual
Autobiography in Early America by
Daniel B. Shea (1988)
To
learn more about the above titles,
and to receive ordering
information,
please refer to the
University
of Wisconsin Press website.
About the Series: Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography, Edited by William L. Andrews
Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography promotes autobiography studies for a multidisciplinary, multicultural, and international audience. WSA publishes original autobiographical writing as well as historical, critical, and theoretical investigations of autobiography, biography, diary, letters, and related forms of lifewriting.
William L. Andrews
E. Maynard Adams Professor of English
UNC
Department of English
Greenlaw Hall, CB #3520
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520
Telephone: (919) 962-4029
Fax: (919) 962-3520
e-mail: wandrews@email.unc.edu
Author of To Tell a Free Story: The First Century
of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865 (1986)
Co-editor of The
Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997)
Co-editor of The Oxford Companion to
African American Literature (1997)
General Editor of The Literature of the American South: A Norton
Anthology (1997)
Series editor of North American Slave
Narratives, Beginnings to 1920
(www.lib.unc.edu/cdd/crs/docsouth/neh.html)
Associate Editor of a/b: Autobiography Studies
Information about individual titles in the
Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography:
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The Zea Mexican Diary
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"In this indefinable text, a diary/memoir and then some, West Indian poet and scholar Kamau Brathwaite conjures his wife, Doris, and tells of her death from cancer. Brathwaite can give even the clichés of death and mourning their flat but real weight."—Village Voice Literary Supplement
In May of 1986 Edward Kamau Brathwaite learned that his wife, Doris, was dying of cancer and had only a short time to live. Responding as a poet, he began "helplessly & spasmodically" to record her passage in a diary. Zea Mexican is a collection of excerpts from this diary and other notes from this period of the Brathwaites' lives, and few who read this book will fail to be caught up in the depth of Edward Brathwaite's grief.
Zea Mexican is a tribute to Doris Brathwaite and an exploration of the creative potency of love. (The title comes from the name Brathwaite gave Doris, who was originally from Guyana of part Amerindian descent.) Exposing the intimacy of his marriage, this book is the closest Brathwaite has ever come to an autobiographical statement. In examining his life with Doris he found the courage to reveal something of his own character. But, more than an autobiography, Zea Mexican is an extraordinary work of literature, much of it written in the expressive "nation language" of Jamaica and the Caribbean. Brathwaite filters his pain through his poetic gift, presenting it to the reader with all the poignancy poetry conveys.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite is professor of comparative literature at New York University. Among his many books of poetry and scholarship are Ancestors, Black + Blues, Masks, Islands, Days and Nights, Middle Passages, Our Ancestral Heritage, and History of the Voice. He received the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
"How important this personal view of the poet, the man, the philosopher, the romantic will be for the Brathwaite scholar! . . . Simply the most riveting, most poetic, most beautifully rendered autobiographical narrative that I've read in a long time. . . .To read Zea is more than simply to peruse a manuscript–it is to participate in a ritual."—Daryl Cumber Dance, author of New World Adams: Conversations with Contemporary West Indian Writers
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Caribbean Autobiography :Cultural Identity and
Self-Representation |
Despite the range and abundance of autobiographical writing from the Anglophone Caribbean, this book is the first to explore this literature fully. It covers works from the colonial era up to present-day AIDS memoirs and assesses the links between more familiar works by George Lamming, C. L. R. James, Derek Walcott, V. S. Naipaul, and Jamaica Kincaid and less frequently cited works by the Hart sisters, Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, Claude McKay, Yseult Bridges, Jean Rhys, Anna Mahase, and Kamau Brathwaite.
Sandra Pouchet Paquet charts the intersection of multiple, contradictory viewpoints of the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean, differing concepts of community and levels of social integration, and a persistent pattern of both resistance and accommodation within island states that were largely shaped by British colonial practice from the mid-seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century. The texts examined here reflect the entire range of autobiographical practice, including the slave narrative and testimonial, written and oral narratives, spiritual autobiographies, fiction, serial autobiography, verse, diaries and journals, elegy, and parody.
"Truly breaks
new ground in the field of Caribbean letters."
—Carole Boyce Davies, Northwestern University
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The Autobiographical Documentary in America |
Since the late 1960s, American film and video makers of all genres have been fascinated with themes of self and identity. Though the documentary form is most often used to capture the lives of others, Jim Lane turns his lens on those media makers who document their own lives and identities. He looks at the ways in which autobiographical documentaries—including Roger and Me, Sherman's March, and Silverlake Life—raise weighty questions about American cultural life. What is the role of women in society? What does it mean to die from AIDS? How do race and class play out in our personal lives? What does it mean to be a member of a family? Examining the history, diversity, and theoretical underpinnings of this increasingly popular documentary form, Lane tracks a fundamental transformation of notions of both autobiography and documentary.
"The autobiographical documentary is one of the most significant paths taken by American filmmakers in recent years, and Jim Lane is the ideal person to take on this important subject. A scrupulous film historian with a sophisticated grasp of the theoretical issues raised and addressed by autobiographical documentary films, he is also a gifted filmmaker personally committed to the movement he is studying. He writes with singular authority about films whose aspiration, and achievement, is to be at once subjective and objective."—William Rothman, University of Miami, author of The "I" of the Camera
"Analysis of some of the most interesting documentary work of the past three decades. A must-read for anyone studying or making documentary."—Julia Lesage, University of Oregon, co-editor of Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media
"Such fine and sustained work on the documentary film as autobiography is way overdue. Exploring the convergences of autobiography and film theory, Jim Lane makes a major contribution to the whole field of autobiographical studies, demonstrating in the process what significant work autobiography does in the history and culture of our time."—Susanna Egan, Mirror Talk: Genres of Crisis in Contemporary Autobiography
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Diaries of Girls
and Women: A Midwestern American Sampler |
Diaries of schoolgirls, newlywed wives, mothers, teachers, nurses, elderly women, nuns, travelers.
Diaries of Girls and Women captures and preserves the diverse lives of forty-seven girls and women who lived in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin between 1837 and 1999. A compelling work of living history, it brings together both diaries from historical society archives and diaries still in possession of the diarists or their descendents.
Editor Suzanne L. Bunkers has selected these excerpts from more than 450 diaries she examined. Some diaries were kept only briefly, others through an entire lifetime; some diaries are the intensely private record of a life, others tell the story of an entire family and were meant to be saved and appreciated by future generations. By approaching diaries as historical documents, therapeutic tools, and a form of literature, Bunkers offers readers insight into the self-images of girls and women, the dynamics of families and communities, and the kinds of contributions that girls and women have made, past and present.
As a representation of the girls and women of varied historical eras, locales, races, and economic circumstances who settled and populated the Midwest, Diaries of Girls and Women adds texture and pattern to the fabric of American history.
"No one is more qualified to undertake such a project; Suzanne Bunkers's extensive work with unpublished manuscript diaries and her work in diary/autobiography theory combine here to produce a volume of interest to scholars and general readers alike. This book will fill an important niche in the literature of American women's diaries."—Margo Culley, author of American Women's Autobiography and A Day at a Time: Diary Literature of American Women
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Rosa: The Life
of an Italian Immigrant |
"Rosa Cavalleri [is] a gifted storyteller."—Library Journal
"A vital record of another part of America's past."—St. Paul Pioneer Press
This is the life
story of Rosa Cavalleri, an Italian woman who came to the United
States in 1884, one of the peak years in the nineteenth-century wave of
immigration. A vivid, richly detailed account, the narrative traces Rosa
's life in an Italian peasant village and later in Chicago. Marie Hall Ets, a
social
worker and friend of Rosa 's at the
Chicago Commons settlement house during the years following World War I,
meticulously wrote down her lively stories to create this book.
Rosa was born
in a silk-making village in Lombardy, a major source of north Italian
emigration; she first set foot in the United States at the Castle Garden
immigrant depot on the tip of Manhattan. Her life in this country was hard and
Ets chronicles it in eloquent detail—Rosa endures a marriage at
sixteen to an abusive older man, an unwilling
migration to a Missouri mining town, and the unassisted birth of a child, and
manages to escape from a husband who tried to force her into prostitution.
Rosa's exuberant personality, remarkable spirit, and ability as a storyteller
distinguish this book, a unique contribution to the annals of U.S. immigration.
Marie Hall Ets [1895–1984] won a Caldecott Medal for the book Nine Days to Christmas.
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The Life and
Adventures of Henry Bibb An American Slave |
"Invaluable to students and scholars of the slave narrative tradition and of the broader African American literary tradition."—Christopher De Santis, author of Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender
"I was brought up in [Kentucky]. Or, more correctly speaking, I was flogged up; for where I should have received moral, mental, and religious instruction I received stripes without number, the object of which was to degrade and keep me in subordination. I have been dragged down to the lowest depths of human degradation and wretchedness, by Slaveholders." —Henry Bibb
First published in 1849 and largely unavailable for many years, The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb is among the most remarkable slave narratives. Born on a Kentucky plantation in 1815, Bibb first attempted to escape from bondage at the age of ten. He was recaptured and escaped several more times before he eventually settled in Detroit, Michigan, and joined the antislavery movement as a lecturer.
Bibb's story is different in many ways from the widely read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl . He was owned by a Native American; he is one of the few ex-slave autobiographers who had labored in the Deep South (Louisiana); and he writes about folkways of the slaves, especially how he used conjure to avoid punishment and to win the hearts of women. Most significant, he is unique in exploring the importance of marriage and family to him, recounting his several trips to free his wife and child. This new edition includes an introduction by literary scholar Charles Heglar and a selection of letters and editorials by Bibb.
"This new edition will be invaluable to students and scholars of the slave narrative tradition and of the broader African American literary tradition. Demonstrating sound scholarship and an eye for detail, Heglar's introduction shows how Bibb's story diverges from other slave narratives in its emphasis on the importance of the slave family."—Christopher De Santis, author of Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender.
"Bibb's compelling narrative of escape and recapture, of love and renunciation, is virtually unique in the annals of the slave narrative. Bibb offers a striking self-portrait of a man caught between two worlds, a slave past that he could not cast off or forget, and a future in freedom to which he urgently desired to commit himself. Bibb's dilemmas touch our sympathies in ways that Frederick Douglass, who seemed to assimilate and succeed in the North without so much as a longing look backward, does not move us. —William L. Andrews, coeditor of the Library of America anthology Slave Narratives.
Charles Heglar is assistant professor of English at the University of South Florida.
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Illumination and Night Glare: By
Carson McCullers |
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"McCullers's gift was to evoke, through an accumulation of images
and musically repeated phrases, the singularity
of experience, not to pass judgement on it.... McCullers's characters are like
us: human, hapless, hopeful, 'real'."
—Joyce Carol Oates, London Review of Books
"Carson's heart was often lonely and it was a tireless hunter for those to
whom she could offer it, but it
was a heart that was graced with light that eclipsed its
shadows."—Tennessee Williams
"Until now, no one had won the approval of McCullers's literary executors
to allow publication of
Illumination and Night Glare ... Carlos Dews, a daunting and meticulous
scholar, has done just that,
and the results are astounding; moreover, he was allowed to publish the 'war
letters' of McCullers and
Reeves, her ill-fated husband, a feat that throws important new light on their
ambivalent relationship
during the years between their anguished divorce and remarriage. Surely, this
important book will lead
readers and scholars alike back to McCullers's remarkable
fiction."—Virginia Spencer Carr, author of
The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers
More than thirty years after it was written, the autobiography of Carson
McCullers, Illumination and
Night Glare , will be published for the first time. McCullers, one of the
most gifted writers of her
generation—the author of Member of the Wedding, Reflections in a Golden Eye,
and The Ballad of
the Sad Cafe—died of a stroke at the age of fifty before finishing this, her
last manuscript. Editor Carlos
L. Dews has faithfully brought her story back to life, complete with
never-before-published letters
between McCullers and her husband Reeves, and an outline of her most famous
novel, The Heart Is a
Lonely Hunter.
Looking back over her life from a precocious childhood in Georgia to her
painful decline from a series of
crippling strokes, McCullers offers poignant and unabashed remembrances of her
early writing success,
her family attachments, a troubled marriage to a failed writer, and friendships
with literary and film
luminaries (Gypsy Rose Lee, Richard Wright, Isak Dinesen, John Huston, Marilyn
Monroe), and her
intense relationships with the important women in her life.
When she was interviewed by Rex Reed in the Plaza Hotel on her final birthday,
McCullers revealed her
reason for writing an autobiography:
"I think it is important for future generations of students to know why I
did certain things, but it is also
important for myself. I became an established literary figure overnight, and I
was much too young to
understand what happened to me or the responsibility it entailed. I was a bit
of a holy terror. That,
combined with all my illnesses, nearly destroyed me. Perhaps if I trace and
preserve for other
generations the effect this success had on me it will affect future artists to
accept it better."
Carlos L. Dews is associate professor of English at University of West Florida.
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Who Am I? By
Yi-Fu Tuan |
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"A stunningly good book—entrancing, exciting, beautifully written, full of
apercus that stimulate,
tantalize, and fulfill.
Perhaps it is enough to say that I like it even better than any of Tuan's
already
published books."—David Lowenthal, author of The Past Is a Foreign Country
Who Am I? reveals the bittersweet success story of a
Chinese-American who came to this country as
a twenty-year-old
graduate student and stayed to become one of America's best-known writers on
cultural geography,
landscape, nature, and environment. His autobiography is unique. No other tells
a
comparable story of a
Chinese immigrant whose life in the American academic world mixes recognition,
accolades, and even
affection—all signs of success—with a deep sense of personal failure.
At one level this is a chronicle of brilliant achievement, at another the story
of descent from the "world
stage" to privacy.
Tuan's story from a childhood in which his father hobnobbed with such Chinese
leaders as Chou En-lai,
to an adulthood spent in a number of U.S. universities, writing on themes of
great
interest to the general
public, but curiously isolating him from his home base of geography.
At a more serious level, Tuan's bitterness lies in his discovery of his own
moral failings, his lack of
courage—including the
courage to be open about his homosexuality—resulting, as Tuan writes, "in
a life
that is seamed in
ambivalence—achingly empty at the core, despairingly alone, yet often content,
occasionally even
happy:" as when he catches glimpses of heaven in his exploration of the
beautiful and
the good.
Yi-Fu Tuan, the J. K. Wright and Vilas Professor emeritus at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison, is
the recipient of
numerous honors and the author of more than two dozen books including
Topophilia;
Space and Place; Cosmos
and Hearth; Passing Strange and Wonderful; and Dominance and Affection;
and Escapism.
The Making of a
Chicano Militant: Lessons from Cristal
by José Angel Gutiérrez
Texas, for years, was a one-party state controlled by white democrats. In 1962, a young eighteen-year-old heard the first rumblings of Chicano community organization in the barrios of Cristal. The rumor in the town was that five Mexican Americans were going to run for all five seats on the city council. But first, poor citizens had to find a way to pay the $1.75 poll tax. Money had to be raised—through bake sales of tamales, cake walks, and dances. So began the political activism of José Angel Gutiérrez.
Gutiérrez's autobiography, The Making of a Chicano Militant, is the first insider's view of the important political and social events within the Mexican American communities in South Texas during the 1960s and 1970s. A controversial and dynamic political figure during the height of the Chicano movement, Gutiérrez offers an absorbing personal account of his life at the forefront of the Mexican-American civil rights movement—first as a Chicano and then as a militant.
Gutiérrez traces the racial, ethnic, economic, and social prejudices facing Chicanos with powerful scenes from his own life: his first summer job as a tortilla maker at the age of eleven, his racially motivated kidnapping as a teenager, and his coming of age in the face of discrimination as a radical organizer in college and graduate school. When Gutiérrez finally returned to Cristal, he helped form the Mexican American Youth Organization and, subsequently the Raza Unida Party to confront issues of ethnic intolerance in his community. His story is soon to be a classic in the developing literature of Mexican American leaders.
"One of the monumental narratives of the Chicano movement. . . . Gutiérrez has had remarkable influence, not only on the Chicano social agenda, but on formation of minority political parties and the rise of local control over everyday life."—Genaro Padilla, professor of English, University of California, Berkeley, author of My History, Not Yours
"Long overdue, this memoir of one of the giants that led the powerful Chicano movement is provocative, insightful, and extremely revealing. His candid portrayal of his life as a militant activist is a major contribution to the study of Chicano politics."—Armando Navarro, author of The Cristal Experiment: A Chicano Struggle for Community Control
About the Author: José Angel Gutiérrez is founder and former director of the Center for Mexican American Studies and associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is also a lawyer with a practice in Dallas, Texas.
Click here for information about ordering The Making of A Chicano Militant.
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Jumping the Line: The Adventures and Misadventures of an American Radical By
William Herrick |
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"William Herrick is an unstoppable truth-teller, just as brave in his older years as when he enlisted for the war against Franco. He is our American Orwell."—Paul Berman, from the Introduction
An eye-opening account of time served in the great battles of our century—for workers' rights, against Fascism, Communism, and racism—Jumping the Line is the life story of an American original. William Herrick chronicles his adventures and misadventures on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, in (and very much out of) the Communist Party, driving a tractor on a communal farm in Michigan, jumping the line as a hobo, organizing African American sharecroppers in Georgia, at work with Orson Welles, and immersed in his own writing.
Herrick chronicles a life of great conviction and great disillusion. He went to Spain in 1936 to fight against the Fascists and there witnessed the horrifying acts that Fascists and Communists alike committed, before he was felled by a near-fatal wound. Here he tells about the life that led him, a working-class Jewish kid from New York, into the idealism and then the murky politics of this internecine conflict. From the bloody fight in Spain he takes us to the battlefields of the Communist movement in the U.S., where he found himself parading up and down the garment district of Manhattan, denouncing his former comrades.
When Paul Berman interviewed Herrick in the Village Voice in 1986, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, Herrick's remarks so incensed other veterans of the Abraham Lincoln battalion that they picketed the paper. What William Herrick has to say doesn't always go down easily. But for those who like the truth, with a dash of wit and a healthy dose of history, it can be exhilarating.
About the Author: William Herrick is the author of ten novels, including the award-winning Hermanos!, based on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. His most recent novels are That's Life and Bradovich, and he has written reviews for the New York Times Book Review and the New Leader. Born in 1915 to parents from Belarus, he is a member of American PEN and lives in New York state.
Price and ordering information for several of William Herrick's novels,
including That's Life and Bradovich, can be found at the New Directions Books website. For
information about ordering Jumping the Line, click here.
Excerpt from Jumping the
Line:
Sunrise farm was a collective enterprise organized by J.J. Cohen,
editor
of the
Free Arbiter Shtimme, the Free Voice of Labor, a Yiddish anarchist
newspaper....Our first collective job was to weed our forty-acre parcels of
peppermint. You get down on your knees between two rows and crawl, pulling
out weeds
on either side of you. You have never done this before. You are a
dressmaker, a presser, a failed storekeeper, now you are on your knees under a
broiling
sun. Still, we love each other, we are idealists, we are living what we
have
dreamed all our lives. It is now tochiss afn tisch; literally, your ass
is on the
table;
you talked a good fight, now prove it."William Herrick
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My Generation: Collective Autobiography and Identity
Politics by John Downton Hazlett |
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John Hazlett's engaging and insightful study of writers from the 1960s demonstrates for the first time the ways in which the idea of the generation has affected autobiographical writing in this century. Exchanging "I" for "we," autobiographers from the sixties claim to speak on behalf of all members of their generation. However, the extent to which each perspective accurately represents that generation's beliefs, values, and goals will continually be contested by competing texts and narratives.
Writers whose work is addressed in My Generation include Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Michael Rossman, Dotson Rader, Raymond Mungo, Jane Alpert, John Bunzel, Peter Collier, David Horowitz, Joyce Maynard, David Harris, and Todd Gitlin.
As Hazlett
discovered, the stories these writers present are not simply straightforward
accounts; instead, each is constructed with a specific political and personal
agenda in an effort to define the generation's identity and the writer's own.
"A superb book—well conceived, thoroughly researched, theoretically informed, balanced in its judgments, and gracefully written."—Milton Bates, Professor of English, Marquette University
"My Generation offers exceptionally perceptive readings of autobiographical works by veterans of the 1960s culture wars, from the 'annunciatory narrative' of the Port Huron Statement to the self-consciously elegiac reflections of such Movement veterans Tom Hayden and Todd Gitlin. In the process, John Hazlett convincingly argues that these works constitute a new autobiographical genre intent upon illuminating the collective experience of an entire generation. My Generation deepens our understanding of the sixties and its long aftermath."—Paul Boyer, Merle Curti Professor of History, University of Wisconsin–Madison
"The 60s
is becoming a mythic story that will shape the consciousness of future
generations. But at present the 60s is still the subject of competing stories,
and this interesting book is the story of how the story is being
told."—Tom Hayden
About the Author: John Downton Hazlett is associate professor of English at the University of New Orleans. He taught as a Fulbright Lecturer at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and was visiting professor at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain. He has published essays on American literature and autobiography, book reviews, theater reviews, and articles on American film.
Click here for information
about ordering My Generation.
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Recovering Bodies: by G. Thomas Couser With a Foreword by Nancy Mairs |
This is a provocative look at writing by and about people with illness or disability—in particular HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, deafness, and paralysis—who challenge the stigmas attached to their conditions by telling their lives in their own ways and on their own terms. Discussing memoirs, diaries, collaborative narratives, photo documentaries, essays, and other forms of life writing, G. Thomas Couser shows that these books are not primarily records of medical conditions; they are a means for individuals to recover their bodies (or those of loved ones) from marginalization and impersonal medical discourse.
Responding to the recent growth of illness and disability narratives in the United States—such works as Juliet Wittman's Breast Cancer Journal, John Hockenberry's Moving Violations, Paul Monette's Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, and Lou Ann Walker's A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family—Couser addresses questions of both poetics and politics. He examines why and under what circumstances individuals choose to write about illness or disability; what role plot plays in such narratives; how closure is achieved; who assumes the prerogative of narration; which conditions are most often represented; and which literary conventions lend themselves to representing particular conditions. By tracing the development of new subgenres of personal narrative in our time, this book explores how explicit consideration of illness and disability has enriched the repertoire of life writing. In addition, Couser's discussion of medical discourse joins current debate about whether the biomedical model is entirely conducive to human care for ill and disabled people.
With its
sympathetic critique of the testimony of those most affected by these
conditions, Recovering Bodies contributes to an understanding of the
relations among bodily dysfunction, cultural conventions, and identity in
contemporary America.
"You set about doing whatever has to be done: buy a cane, go to physical
or occupational therapy, schedule surgery, join a support group, revise your
will. Being a social creature as well, you soon long for the guidance and
companionship of your fellow sufferers and, as you begin to get the hang of
your situation, to serve as a guide and companion yourself. Then, if you're a
writer, you start to scribble."—Nancy Mairs, author of Carnal Acts and
Waist-High in the World, from the Foreword
About the Author: G. Thomas Couser is professor of English at Hofstra University. His previous books include Altered Egos: Authority in American Autobiography and American Autobiography: The Prophetic Mode.
Click here for information
about ordering Recovering Bodies.
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Women, Autobiography, Theory: Edited by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson |
Women, Autobiography, Theory is the first comprehensive guide to the burgeoning field of women's autobiography, drawing into one volume the most significant theoretical discussions on women's life writing of the last two decades. A glance at the table of contents for this volume will reveal the depth and breadth of this Reader.
The authoritative introduction by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson surveys writing about women's lives from the women's movement of the late 1960s to the present. It also relates theoretical positions in women's autobiography studies to postmodern, poststructuralist, postcolonial, and feminist analyses.
The essays from thirty-nine prominent critics and writers include many considered classics in this field. They explore narratives across the centuries and from around the globe, including testimonios, diaries, memoirs, letters, trauma accounts, prison narratives, coming-out stories, coming-of-age stories, and spiritual autobiographies. A list of more than two hundred women's autobiographies and a comprehensive bibliography of critical scholarship in women's autobiography provide invaluable information for scholars, teachers, and readers.
"Well-conceived, astutely selected, unique in the field, and very much needed."—Shirley Neuman, University of British Columbia
"There is no other reader like this one on theories of women's
autobiography, despite the now wide-ranging approaches to this field. . . . It
has the merit of combining within the genre of autobiography criticism many of
the critical issues that have been paramount during the past two decades,
incorporating and going beyond what both feminism and cultural studies have
attempted. Important and timely."—Françoise Lionnet, Northwestern
University
About the Editors: Sidonie Smith is director of the Women's Studies Program and professor of English at the University of Michigan. Julia Watson is director of the Comparative Literature Program and associate professor of comparative studies at the Ohio State University. They previously coedited De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography and Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography.
For information
about ordering Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, please click here.
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People of the Book: Edited
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A Mark Twain scholar. An African American philosopher. A lesbian feminist literary critic. A Cuban-American anthropologist. A German immigrant to the United States. A professor of English at a Jesuit university. All share their reflections on the interconnectedness of identities and ideas in People of the Book, the first book in which Jewish-American scholars examine how their Jewishness has shaped and influenced their intellectual endeavors, and how their intellectual work has deepened their sense of themselves as Jews.
The contributors
are highly productive and respected Jewish American scholars, critics, and
teachers from departments of English, history, American studies, Romance
literature, Slavic studies, art, women's studies, comparative literature,
anthropology, Judaic studies, and philosophy. Nearly an equal mix of men and
women, the authors of these analytical and autobiographical essays include
white Jews and black Jews; orthodox, conservative, reform, and totally secular
Jews; Jews by birth and Jews by conversion; past presidents of the Modern
Language Association and American Studies Association and young scholars at the
start of their careers. Click here to see the table of contents for
this volume.
"Rubin-Dorsky and Fishkin have woven a beautiful tapestry from the colorful voices of Jewish scholars struggling to incorporate their Jewish identities into their work"--Publishers Weekly
"What is fresh and exhilarating about this volume is the articulation of a
wide array of very personal views on Jewish identity that are thoughtful,
interesting, often moving and inspiring. Most interestingly, they emanate from
scholars in secular fields who are uninterested in pleading a cause, staking a
claim, organizing a movement, or promoting an agenda, yet whose emotional ties
to Jewish peoplehood, values, and ideals are pronounced and eminently worth
discovering."--Rabbi Stanley M. Wagner, Center for Judaic Studies,
University of Denver
About the Authors: Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky, associate professor of English at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, is the author of Adrift in the Old World: The Psychological Pilgrimage of Washington Irving. Shelley Fisher Fishkin is professor of American Studies and English at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the author of Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-American Voices and From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Imaginative Writing in America, and co-editor of Listening to Silences: New Essays in Feminist Criticism.
Contributors include: Ruth Behar, Emily Miller Budick, Maria Damon, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Norman Finkelstein, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Doris Friedensohn, David A. Gerber, Miriyam Glazer, Susan Gubar, Oliver W. Holmes, Michael R. Katz, Suzanne Klingenstein, Paul Lauter, Herbert Lindenberger, Eunice Lipton, Elaine Marks, Nancy K. Miller, Laurence Mordekhai Thomas, Gary Saul Morson, Alicia Ostriker, Joel Porte, Riv-Ellen Prell, Michael S. Roth, Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky, Raphael Sassower, Allan M. Winkler, Seth Wolitz, Marilyn Yalom, and Bonnie Zimmerman.
For information
about ordering People of the Book, please click here.
This page last updated 17 February 1999
by Kathleen Drowne
Email Kathleen at a/b@unc.edu