Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2001-2002

There are more ways of seeing people than in the straitjacket of race, creed or whatever we mean by "civilisation." Variety is the name of the identity game—and a safer way to go than confrontation in the name of difference.

—Amartya Sen

. . . collective memory is the product of individuals and groups who come together in the act of remembrance.

—Theo Farrell

Unfortunate are those stories left untold, because they will never have existed.

—Héctor Bianciotti, cited in Robert Richmond Ellis's
They Dream Not of Angels but of Men

This year's annotated list of books, collections, edited volumes, annuals, special issues, articles, essays, and dissertations about life writing covers the period 2001 to Fall 2002.

Books

Ahearn, Laura M. Invitations to Love: Literacy, Love Letters, and Social Change in Nepal. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001.

By focusing on contemporary love letter correspondence, examines consequences of increasing literacy and changing notions of agency, selfhood, and gender in Nepal.

Allister, Mark. Refiguring the Map of Sorrow: Nature Writing and Autobiography. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2002.

Argues for a distinct form of grief narrative in which writers deal with mourning by making writing about the natural world part of the grieving process.

Almon, Bert. This Stubborn Self: Texas Autobiographies, 1925-2001. Fort Worth: Texas Christian UP, 2002.

Explores the senses of place, geography, and history, and the economic, social, and religious practices revealed by autobiographers from Texas.

Amato, Joseph A. Rethinking Home: A Case for Writing Local History. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002.

Using southwestern Minnesota as an example, argues for the use of local history to revivify the personal, the individual, and the particular in patterns of global forces and sensibilities.

Apel, Dora. Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing. Piscataway: Rutgers UP, 2002.

Explores depictions of the Holocaust and its collective memory in works by artists born after World War II.

Bell, Rudolph M., and Cristina Mazzoni. The Voices of Gemma Galgani: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Saint. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002.

Uses Galgani's diary, letters, and autobiographical accounts to reconstruct the life and canonization of the first person who lived in the twentieth century to become a saint.

Besemeres, Mary. Translating One's Self: Language and Selfhood in Cross-Cultural Autobiography. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.

Close readings of memoirs by seven bilingual autobiographers shed light on the various translations involved in translingual and transcultural emigration.

Blight, David W. Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 2002.

Examines the various ways Americans, black and white, from the North and South, developed historical memories of the Civil War to serve contemporary social needs.

Booy, David. Personal Disclosures: An Anthology of Self-Writings from the Seventeenth Century. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001.

Arranged by topic to facilitate comparative analysis of female and male representations of the self: marriage, parents and children, beyond the family, states of the body and states of mind, religious experience, and new worlds.

Bouchard, Constance Brittain. "Those of My Blood": Constructing Noble Families in Medieval Francia. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2001.

Focuses on how medieval nobles "constructed" their families between the eighth and twelfth centuries.

Brandreth, Gyles. Brief Encounters: Meeting with Remarkable People. London: Politico's, 2001.

Brandreth demonstrates his unique brand of networking in this collection of multimedia interviews.

Buss, Helen M. Repossessing the World: Reading Memoirs by Contemporary Women. Waterloo, ONT: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2002.

Notes how a variety of contemporary women memoirists use a tripartite narrative voice to reshape the genre into a social discourse blending personal with public and political.

Cayton, Andrew R. L. Ohio: The History of a People. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2002.

Uses memoirs, diaries, letters, novels, and paintings to show how over two hundred years the diverse inhabitants of Ohio have created a collective, imagined biography.

Champagne, Roland A., Nina...