Auto/biography in Canada: Critical Directions widens the field of auto/biography studies with its sophisticated multidisciplinary perspectives on the theory, criticism, and practice of self, community, and representation. Rather than considering autobiography and biography as discrete genres with definable properties, and rather than focusing on critical approaches, the essays explore auto/biography as a discourse about identity and representation in the context of numerous disciplinary shifts. Auto/biography in Canada looks at how life narratives are made in Canada . Originating from literary studies, history, and social work, the essays in this collection cover topics that range from queer Canadian autobiography, autobiography and autism, and newspaper death notices as biography, to Canadian autobiography and the Holocaust, Grey Owl and authenticity, France Th?oret and autofiction, and a new reading of Stolen Life, the collaborative text by Yvonne Johnson and Rudy Wiebe. Julie Rak’s useful “big picture” introduction traces the history of auto/biography studies in Canada. While the contributors chart disciplinary shifts taking place in auto/biography studies, their essays are also part of the ongoing scholarship that is remaking ways to understand Canada.
Author(s): Julie Rak
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 264
Contents......Page 8
Introduction: Widening the Field: Auto/biography Theory and Criticism in Canada......Page 10
Generations of the Holocaust in Canadian Auto/biography......Page 40
The Modern Hiawatha: Grey Owl's Construction of His Aboriginal Self......Page 62
"This is my memory, a fact": The Many Mediations of Mothertalk: Life Stories of Mary Kiyoshi Kiyooka......Page 78
Auto/biographical Jurisdictions: Collaboration, Self-Representation, and the Law in Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman......Page 98
Biographical versus Biological Lives: Auto/biography and Non-Speaking Persons Labelled Intellectually Disabled......Page 118
A Transfer Boy: About Himself......Page 138
Creativity, Cultural Studies, and Potentially Fun Ways to Design and Produce Autobiographical Material from Subalterns' Locations......Page 154
Camp, Kitsch, Queer: Carole Pope and Toller Cranston Perform on the Page......Page 182
Writing Lives in Death: Canadian Death Notices as Auto/biography......Page 196
(Un)tying the Knot of Patriarchy: Agency and Subjectivity in the Autobiographical Writings of France Théoret and Nelly Arcan......Page 216
Auto/Bio/Fiction in Migrant Women's Writings in Québec: Régine Robin's La Québécoite and L'immense fatigue des pierres......Page 244
"The ensign of the mop and the dustbin": The Maternal and the Material in Autobiographical Writings by Laura Goodman Salverson and Nellie McClung......Page 256
Contributors......Page 272
