LITERATURE OF MALAYSIA BBL 4306 WEEK 12

AUTOBIOGRAPHY  What is an autobiography?

The often quoted definition comes from Philippe Lejeune, who states that the autobiography is a “[r]etrospective prose narrative written by a real person concerning his own existence, where the focus is his individual life, in particular the story of his personality” (198) Lejeune, Phillipe. “The Autobiographical Contract” (Trans. R. Carter). In French Literary Theory Today: A Reader. Ed. Tzvetan Todorov. Cambrigde: Cambridge University Press

Autobiography and Multiculturalism  The concept of multiculturalism as it is commonly understood refers to members of a variety of ethnic groups interacting while maintaining their distinct cultural practices and priorities.

 Betty Ann Bergland states that  …autobiographies of ethnic groups with the United States provide a key and meaningful site for examining the politics of culture and identity past and present. Collectively, representatives of diverse histories, memories, and identities challenge any simplistic, unified, or dualistic map of the American Society. (70) Bergland, Betty Ann. “Representing Ethnicity in Autobiography: Narratives of Opposition.” The Yearbook of English Studies 24: Ethnicity and Representation in American Literature (1994):

Life stories by Women Writers  Smith and Watson propose that comparative ethnic studies can offer an avenue to focus on ethnicity and class position, as a means to emphasize the inadequacy of any single characterization of ethnicity, and how life stories written by multiethnic women writers in themselves intervene in simplistic notions of ethnic identity formation (15).  Smith, Sidonie, and Juliet Watson, eds. Before They Could Vote: American Women’s Autobiographical Writing, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.