In this Book

Locating Life Stories: Beyond East-West Binaries in (Auto)Biographical Studies

Book
edited by Maureen Perkins
2012
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
summary
The thirteen essays in this volume come from Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, South Africa, and Hawai‘i. With a shared focus on the specific local conditions that influence the ways in which life narratives are told, the authors engage with a variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, history, media studies, and literature, to challenge claims that life writing is an exclusively Western phenomenon. Addressing the common desire to reflect on lived experience, the authors enlist interdisciplinary perspectives to interrogate the range of cultural forms available for representing and understanding lives.

Contributors: Maria Faini, Kenneth George, Philip Holden, David T. Hill, Craig Howes, Bryan Kuwada, Kirin Narayan, Maureen Perkins, Peter Read, Tony Simoes da Silva, Mathilda Slabbert, Gerry van Klinken, Pei-yi Wu.

30 illus.

Table of Contents

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Cover

Contents

pp. v

Never the Twain: Life Writing’s Geographical Contexts

pp. 1-14

Refusing the Cultural Turn: Amir Muhammad’s Politics of Surfaces

pp. 15-34

Life Writing and the Making of Companionable Objects: Reflections on Sunaryo’s Titik Nadir

pp. 35-54

“These people are my people, these places are my places”: Cultural Hybridity and Identity in South African Artist David Kramer’s Oeuvre

pp. 55-82

Under New Management: Whiteness in Post-Apartheid South African Life Writing

pp. 83-96

Martin Amis, Mimetic Contracts, and Life Writing Pacts: A Story about 9/11

pp. 97-114

Hidden Heroes: Cultural Interaction and Nationalism in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Hawaiian Biographies

pp. 115-138

Ethics, Oral History, and Interpreters in the Iraq War

pp. 139-168

“Don’t write this”: Researching Provincial Biographies in Indonesia

pp. 169-192

Biography in the Court Room? Far from a Final Judgment

pp. 193-214

Writing Lives in Exile: Autobiographies of the Indonesian Left Abroad

pp. 215-238

Local Boons: The Many Lives of Family Stories

pp. 239-258

The Jiwen of Shen Cheng for his Daughter Azhen

pp. 259-262

Contributors

pp. 263-265
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