Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2006
Abstract
Prior to the middle of the twentieth century, North American autobiography was defined largely by chronological, full-life narratives written by and about "great men." Since then, the canons of "self-lifewriting" have expanded to include not only memoir, diary, and correspondence, but also genres as far afield as autoethnography, oral tradition, and pictography. In Western Subjects: Autobiographical Writing in the North American West, editors Kathleen A. Boardman and Gioia Woods chart contemporary theoretical and critical approaches to North American autobiography in an anthology of intriguing, cogent essays that explore how autobiographers construct, communicate, and perform self in relation to its interaction with place. Here, place is the North American West-a region whose boundaries and definitions are as shifting and conflicted as those of the genre of autobiography.
Comments
Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 26:3 (Summer 2006). Copyright © 2006 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.