Mapping Our Selves: Canadian Women’s Autobiography in English by Helen Buss (review)

188 LETTERS IN CANADA 1992 Woodcock claims to have updated these introductions since some were first published a decade ago. He has, in fact, added several authors, ancient and modern (some early and several contemporary poets McCulloch , O'Hagan, and Timothy Findley - the most glaring lacuna in the CWTW series). The additions rarely amount to more than a paragraph, but two pages on Jolm Glassco and three on Findley do establish their place in the canon. More seriously, although he has updated his remarks on Richler and Atwood with reference to Solomon Gursky Was Here and Cat's Eye, his excuse that he has only added to his comments 'in cases where the more recent work seems to demand an important reassessment of the writer's oeuvre' does not seem to justify his omission of the last decade of production by Ondaatje, Hodgins, and even Davies, Callaghan, and Hood (he counts only five New Age novels), He mentions bpNicol's tragic death but not Gwendolyn MacEwen's, for whom he uses the present tense. There is also a curious reference including Findley among the expatriate writers who 'have lived most of their writing lives in Europe'! Generally, however, this is a clearly written, nicely produced work. An index would have been helpful (especially since there are three significant omissions from the table of contents), but it is a useful introductory reference text. (BARBARA PELL) Helen Buss. Mapping Our Selves: Canadian Women's Autobiography in English McGill-Queen's University Press. X, 238. $39.95 Helen Buss's study concludes with the following assertion: I believe that we have a right to demand a tradition of our own, one that allows us to live and grow within its enabling embrace ... And that is, in the long run, why I map these women's accounts; to locate them for myself and other women who need a reading space of their own, a tradition of their own ... We need to name this tradition if it is to be ours. Buss names this tradition 'autobiography' and, as this passage emphasizes , her engagement with the project is deeply personal. At stake in these readings of a wide array of autobiographical material is 'personal empowerment' and the construction of a genealogy where links are forged betwe~n the author as 'girl-child' and her literary 'ioremothers.' , In accordance with this feminist agenda, the introduction to each of the three sections offers an ongoing meditation on the author's childhood memories and experiences - a meditation which undergoes revision as the author responds to the works under consideration. In this fashion, this study foregrounds texts as well as a method for reading. HUMANmES 189 For anyone interested in autobiography, this book will prove a valuable resource. The first section provides informative readings of pioneer women's diaries, journals, and memoirs, moving from obscure works to more celebrated texts by Susanna Moodie and Anna Jameson. Part 2 extends this chronological examination to probe autobiographical works penned in the early part of this century. The final section gathers together an equally impressive selection of works by twentieth-century authors, ranging from the memoirs of Ga~rielle Roy and Margaret Laurence to texts such as Daphne Marlatt's Ana Historic. In addition to,surveying a , broad range of authors, Buss's study also engages with an extensive body of theoretical material that has contributed to more nuanced understandings of women's distinctive treatment of autobiography and related genres. Ultimately, it is Buss's own theoretical perspective that shapes the study, and several concerns arise in conjunction with her approach. For example, in the introduction, Buss hastily invokes and rejects both humanist and poststruchnalist theories of subjectivity; her treatment positions one lone male in each category. Equally problematic is the way in which the author dismisses theorists who rely on Lacanian psychoanalytic models of subjectivity on the grounds that 'the metaphor of the mirror [isJ insufficient to describe the core experiences of human identity formation, especially female identity.' As the title of the work indicates, Buss champions the model of cartography, asserting that it is preferable because mapping is not exclusively sight-based and Idoes not lie to us in the way...