Constructing the Self

Constructing the Self

Essays on Southern Life-Writing

Aquest volum pretén mostrar com els meridionals s'han enfrontat al seu lloc i s'han construït a si mateixos. Els assaigs reunits exploren les diferents narratives i estratègies personals que els autors meridionals han emprat per canalitzar l'impuls autobiogràfic i donar expressió artística a les seues ansietats, traumes i revelacions, així com la seua relació amb la regió. Amb la discussió de diferents tipus de memòries, aquest volum reflecteix no només la transformació que ha sofert aquest subgènere des del boom dels anys 90, sinó també la seua flexibilitat com una forma popular d'escriptura de vida. This volume aims to show how southerners have faced their post and constructed a self. The essays in this volume explore the different personal narratives and strategies southern authors have employed to channel the autobiographical impulse and give artistic expression to their anxieties, traumas and revelations, as well as their relationship with the region. With the discussion of different types of memoirs, this volume reflects not only the transformation that this sub-genre has undergone since the 1990s boom but also its flexibility as a popular form of life-writing.
  • Halftitle
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • Dedication
  • Acknowledgments
  • INTRODUCTION: The Enduring Impulse to Tell about the Self and the South, Carmen Rueda-Ramos and Susana Jiménez Placer
  • PART 1: SUBVERSIVE (RE)CREATIONS OF THE SELF—PAST AND PRESENT
    • ‘My Story Is Better Than Yours’: The Changing Politics of and Motives for Composing Southern African American Life Narratives, Trudier Harris
    • Working a Lever: Booker T. Washington’s Autobiographies as Tools for Social Change, Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr
  • PART 2: THE LEGACY OF RACE:RECONCILING SELVES
    • ‘I Knew Then Who I Was’: Memory, Narrative, and Sense of Self in Autobiographies of the Jim Crow South, Jennifer Ritterhouse
    • Daily Encounters: The Coming of Age of Melton A. McLaurin, Elizabeth Hayes Turner
    • Life Writing in Poetry and Prose: Natasha Tretheway’s Personal and National Revelations, Pearl McHaney
    • Southern Autobiography Around the Table of Brotherhood: A Dream Deferred, a Dream Deceased, a Dream Destroyed, a Dream Dismissed?, Ineke Bockting
  • PART 3: AUTHORS,NARRATORS AND FICTIONALIZED SELVES
    • Memoirs’ Characters: Writer, Narrator, Protagonist, Peggy Whitman Prenshaw
    • Faulkner and Autobiography in Fiction, Thomas L. McHaney
    • ‘A Someone Somewhere’: Locating Richard Ford’s Southern Self in his Fiction and Non-Fiction, Gérald Préher
    • Self-Fashioning and Philippe Labro’s ‘Southern Memoir’, The Foreign Student Nahem Yousaf
  • PART 4: TRANSGRESSORS AND PERFORMERS OF SELF
    • Appalachian Women’s Autobiographies from the Margins: Crossing the Boundaries of the Genre, Carmen Rueda-Ramos
    • ‘Pariahs for Flattering Reasons’: Confessions of Failed Southern Ladies on the Black Help, Susana Jiménez Placer
    • ‘A Tarnished Lady?’: Tallulah Bankhead’s Southern Performance in Hollywood, Beata Zawadka
    • Grief and Humor: Appalachian Writers Using Autobiography to Find a Way Home, Sandra L. Ballard
  • PART 5: SITES FOR SELF-EXPLORATION:TRAVEL AND ILLNESS NARRATIVES
    • The Self Elsewhere: Alice Walker’s Identity in the Wider World, Jesús Varela-Zapata
    • Reflecting on the Region, Revisioning the Self: John Gould Fletcher’s Song of His Life and Its Transatlantic Context, Waldemar Zacharasiewicz
    • The Physicality of Reminiscence: The Stimuli of the South in Bobbie Ann Mason’s, Clear Springs: A Memoir Candela Delgado Marín
    • Coming to the End: The Perception of Mortality in the Autobiographical Writings of Reynolds Price and Tim McLaurin, Marcel Arbeit
  • Contributors

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