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

Narrative resistance, as defined by Laura J. Beard, uses autobiography or works with an autobiographical function to resist and subvert the established order—whether it is a male dominated society, a racist educational system, or a stagnated literary genre. Beard effectively identifies historical parallels between the authors' lives and their characters' fictional backgrounds and demonstrates how their written messages challenge established paradigms. Although not autobiographies in the strictest sense, the six narratives analyzed all have several things in common: they serve an autobiographical function, they reflect women's issues in the Americas, and they achieve resistance status. What they do not have in common is a shared cultural background or language, since they span a vast geographical and linguistic area, ranging from Canada to Argentina. Readers of Hispania who want to focus on Hispanic texts and cultures will be most interested in Beard's close reading of works by Ana María Shua and Luisa Futoransky—both Argentine Jews. Those who study Portuguese will welcome texts by Brazilians Nélida Piñon and Helena Parente Cunha. While not directly related to Spanish and Portuguese, the indigenous traditions of two aboriginal women from British Columbia, Lee Maracle and Shirley Sterling, appeal to humanists and students of Comparative Literature since they illustrate a similar use of autobiographical techniques to broach resistance themes.

Although, as mentioned before, none are obvious autobiographies, these personalized fictions all contain elements closely identified with their authors. These quasi-autobiographical components add a degree of realism and credibility to the fictional characters and highlight the urgency for each of them to tell their stories and affirm their own heritage and identity in an effort to subvert, protest, and overcome the restrictions imposed by the dominant society. Perhaps one of Beard's most effective strategies for illustrating the narrators' personal situations is the use of graphic elements to tell their stories, including photographs, hand drawings, maps, and souvenirs of their childhood.

The six works are organized into three subgroups, which probe three essential ways that narrative forms identity: to reflect upon the self; to locate oneself in the community; and, in turn, to project one's identity upon outside social structures. Each subgroup provides two examples for each function. The texts selected amply trace the progression from self-discovery to community solidarity, and to leading society in new directions.

Perhaps the most typical reason for including autobiographical elements in narrative is what Beard labels "Addressing the Self." She chose Helena Parente Cunha's theoretical self-reflectivity in Women between Mirrors to underscore the importance of self-awareness for the writer. Although Cunha insists that she is not composing her memoirs or autobiography, she writes "myself for myself" (11) and questions how women view themselves from inside and outside, as if trapped or sandwiched in a mirror, and how writing constructs identity and existence, making this the most transcendental of the narratives. Less philosophically self-aware, Louisa Futoransky's cleverly illustrated paratactic scrapbook, De Pe a Pa, recounts itinerant travel narrative from Peking to Paris, while Son cuentos chinos explores Asian settings. These exotic destinations are familiar to the author herself, as well as to the protagonist whose name, Laura (Falena) Kaplansky, is derived from Futoransky's own, paralleling her nomadic life journey and self exile. Somewhat critically, Beard draws a fine line between self-discovery and self-promotion, underscoring Futoransky's obsessive "dream of receiving literary prizes, especially the Nobel" (61), not quite the same thing as resisting patriarchal hierarchies to serve noble principles.

Two books of autobiographical narratives about Indian residential schools in Canada fall under the category "Bearing Witness to the Self and the Community." As testimonials, Lee Maracle's Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel and Shirley Sterling's My Name is Seepeetza illustrate the practical impact of a narrative resistance that raises awareness and leads to enlightened societal attitudes and actual political change. As an example of decolonization literature...