Repossessing the World Reading Memoirs by Contemporary Women

Author/creator Buss, Helen M. Author
Format Electronic
Publication InfoWaterloo : Wilfrid Laurier University Press North York : University of Toronto Press [Distributor]
Description231 p. 09.000 x 06.000 in.
Supplemental ContentFull text available from Ebook Central - Academic Complete
Supplemental ContentFull text available from eBooks on EBSCOhost
Subjects

SeriesLife Writing Ser.
Summary Annotation <p>Why does it seem as if everyone is writing memoirs, and particularly women?</p><p>The current popularity of memoir verifies the common belief that we each have a story to tell. And we do...especially women. Memoirs are not only representations of women&#8217;s personal lives but also of their desire to repossess important parts of our culture, in which women&#8217;s stories have not mattered.</p><p>Beginning with her own motivations for writing memoirs, Helen M. Buss examines the many kinds of memoir written by contemporary women: memoirs about growing up, memoirs about traumatic events, about relationships, about work. In writing memoirs, these women publicly assert that their lives have mattered. They reshape the memoir, a form as old as the middle ages and as young as today, into a social discourse that blends the personal with the political, the self with the significant other, literature with history, and fiction with autobiography and essay. Buss urges readers to use their reading experience to help themselves understand and write the significance of their own lives.</p><p><i>Repossessing the World</i>is the first book-length critical inquiry into women&#8217;s use of a form that has often been dismissed as less important than autobiography, less professional than the novel, and less intellectual than the formal essay. Buss demonstrates that the memoir makes its own art, not only through selective borrowing from these genres but also through the unique way that the tripartite narrative voice of the memoir constructs the personal and public experience of the memorist as significant to our cultural moment.</p>
Access restrictionAvailable only to authorized users.
Technical detailsMode of access: World Wide Web
Genre/formElectronic books.
ISBN9780889204089
ISBN088920408X (Trade Cloth) Active Record
Standard identifier# 9780889204089
Stock number00200625

Availability

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Electronic Resources ✔ Available