Reviews

Abstract

This volume presents eighteen essays exploring the intricate relationship between life writing, the practice of reading, and the practice of writing. The introduction by Valérie Baisnée-Keay sets the theoretical and historical contexts for the essays that follow. Baisnée-Keay points out that the canonical terms “autobiography” and “biography” have tended to screen out the wide range of modes of presenting a “life”- memoirs, journals, diaries, anthropological life histories, oral narratives, graphic novels, photographs, and other visual texts - that have been employed particularly by women and other marginalized groups. Following Donald Winslow, Marlene Kadar, and more recently Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, she favors the more capacious term “life writing” because it is more conducive to exploring these forms and the theoretical issues they present.