Acts of Narrative Resistance: Women's Autobiographical Writings in the Americas

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book has been a long time brewing on the back burners, bubbling up in conference papers presented, articles published, classes taught, grant proposals written, and many conversations with colleagues, family, and friends. It has been brewing long enough that it is hard to say exactly when it started, or what went into the pot first, but I have many people, organizations, and funding sources to thank in this space. I first wrote on Luisa Futoransky and Helena Parente Cunha as part of my doctoral dissertation in the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and I gratefully acknowledge the AmericanAssociationofUniversityWomenfortheAmericanFellowship that allowed me to devote my last year at Hopkins to writing full-time. My dissertation director, Dr. Sara Castro-Klarén, remains a remarkable mentor and friend; I cannot begin to express here all that she has meant to me. I also thank Noel Valis, for her careful reading of that long-ago dissertation. For opportunities to share conversations with Nélida Piñon, Helena Parente Cunha, Luisa Futoransky, and Ana María Shua, in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Louisville, Kentucky, I thank the generous support of the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, the Latin American Studies Program, and the Women Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University and the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Office of the Provost, and the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Texas Tech University. My greatest thanks and admiration go to the wonderful xii / acknowledgments authors themselves, for their works, their warmth, and their wisdom, their generosity and their humor. I thank my former colleagues in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University of Victoria, for introducing me to Lee Maracle’s Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel and encouraging me to include it in my course there on testimonial literature. A faculty development leave, supported by the Office of the Provost at Texas Tech University, in the spring of 2006 gave me the time needed to complete this book manuscript. Generous support from the Fulbright Program has also given me time to devote to research and writing. My first article on Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel and Shirley Sterling’s My Name Is Seepeetza was written while I was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Mexico in 1999–2000, working on a different project; and the final revisions of this manuscript were completed while I was occupying the University of Alberta Research Chair in Native Studies, doing research for a book on autobiographical narratives on the Indian residential schools. A 2002 Newberry Library Summer Institute entitled “American Indian Autobiography as Personal and Tribal History: Who Gets to Tell the Story?” helped form the way I approach Native autobiographies. I am grateful to the Lannan Institute, the Newberry Library, all my colleagues in the Institute, and, most particularly, to Kate Shanley for her amazing wisdom and grace in creating that space and that experience. In 1995, a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, “Issues in the Rhetorical Theory of Narrative,” with James Phelan at Ohio State University, sharpened my readings of narrative texts, and I similarly thank Jim for his wisdom and grace and my colleagues in that wonderful seminar for all the conversations in and out of class. I continue to learn from colleagues in the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, Feministas Unidas, the Latin American Studies Association, the Brazilian Studies Association, the International Auto/Biography Association, and the Modern Languages Association. My appreciation also goes to audience members for insightful comments and questions at the following conferences and venues where I have presented bits of this work: the International Auto/Biography Association; various International Conferences on Narrative, sponsored by the International Society for the Study of Narrative; Latin American Studies Association Conference; Modern Languages Association; the Exile in the Hispanic & Italian World Colloquium at the University of Victoria; the Fourth International Congress of the Americas, Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, Mexico; Seminario Nacional de acknowledgments / xiii Professores Universitarios de Literaturas en Lingua Inglesa, São Paolo, Brazil; Asociación de Literatura Femenina Hispánica Conference; the Mid-America International Conference on Hispanic Literature, and as a guest lecturer in the graduate program in English at the Universidad Federal de Santa Catarina, in Florianópolis, Brazil. Part of chapter 1 appeared in...