Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

The limits of autobiography : trauma and testimony / Leigh Gilmore.

By: Series: Cornell paperbacksPublication details: Ithaca ; London : Cornell University Press, 2001.Description: x, 163 p. ; 23 cmISBN:
  • 0801486742
  • 0801437997
Subject(s):
Contents:
Represent yourself -- Bastard testimony : illegitimacy and incest in Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina -- There will always be a father : transference and the auto/biographical demand in Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the heart -- There will always be a mother : Jamaica Kincaid's serial autobiography -- Without names : an anatomy of absence in Jeanette Winterson's Written on the body.
Summary: Memoirs in which trauma take a major - or the major - role challenge the limits of autobiography. The author presents a series of "limit-cases"--Texts that combine various elements including autobiography and fiction, and demonstrates how and why their authors swerve from formal constraints.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Represent yourself -- Bastard testimony : illegitimacy and incest in Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina -- There will always be a father : transference and the auto/biographical demand in Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the heart -- There will always be a mother : Jamaica Kincaid's serial autobiography -- Without names : an anatomy of absence in Jeanette Winterson's Written on the body.

Memoirs in which trauma take a major - or the major - role challenge the limits of autobiography. The author presents a series of "limit-cases"--Texts that combine various elements including autobiography and fiction, and demonstrates how and why their authors swerve from formal constraints.