The Work of Life Writing: Essays and Lectures

Description

Life writing, in its various forms, does work that other forms of expression do not; it bears on the world in a way distinct from imaginative genres like fiction, drama, and poetry; it acts in and on history in significant ways. Memoirs of illness and disability often seek to depathologize the conditions that they recount. Memoirs of parents by their children extend or alter relations forged initially face to face in the home. At a time when memoir and other forms of life writing are being produced and consumed in unprecedented numbers, this book reminds readers that memoir is not mainly a "literary" genre or mere entertainment. Similarly, letters are not merely epiphenomena of our "real lives." Correspondence does not just serve to communicate; it enacts and sustains human relationships. Memoir matters, and there’s life in letters. All life writing arises of our daily lives and has distinctive impacts on them and the culture in which we live. Cover Endorsement Page Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Prologue: Death and Life Writing: Reflections on My Morbid Career * Note Bibliography Chapter 2: Introduction: The Work of Memoir * Works Cited Chapter 3: Quality-of-Life Writing: Illness, Disability, and Contemporary American Memoir * Works Cited Chapter 4: Is There a Body in This Text?: Embodiment in Graphic Somatography * Notes Works Cited Chapter 5: Genre Matters: Form, Force, and Filiation * Works Cited Chapter 6: Memoir and (Lack of) Memory: Filial Narratives of Paternal Dementia * Works Cited Chapter 7: Paper Orphans: Writers’ Children Write Their Lives * Notes References Chapter 8: Filiation in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father * Note Works Cited Chapter 9: Disability, Depression, Diagnosis, and Harm: Reflections on Two Personal Scenarios * The Diagnostic Scenario Post-partum Diagnosis of Disability Late-life Diagnosis of Depression Conclusion: Diagnosis and/As Harm Notes Works Cited Chapter 10: Vulnerable Subjects: Caveat Scriptor * Works Cited Chapter 11: The Shape of Death in American Autobiography * Works Cited Chapter 12: On “Freedom Writing”: Expression and Repression * Works Cited Chapter 13: Life in Letters: Letters as Life * Works Cited Index