Post on 10-Jul-2020
1
LIFE WRITING
VERY IMPORTANT
■ I will remind you of this later, but let me begin by saying that all course materials will be posted on the course blog:
■ https://5260lifewriting.wordpress.com/
■ I will be inviting you to this blog soon
AUTO-BIO-GRAPHY
ROUSSEAU, CONFESSIONS
BASIC AIMS OF THE COURSE
■ To ‘define’ life writing ■ To think critically about theories of life
writing■ To read specific themes, histories, and
literary contexts relevant to our examples■ To explore terms and methods useful for
studying these & other examples of life writing
COURSE FOCUS
Life narratives organized around recurrent themes:
■ Place, home, and exile■ Lives in languages: translations
■ Race & gender
■ The relational self
MAIN TEXTS
■ Martin BOOTH, Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood. London: Doubleday, 2004.■ Eva HOFFMAN, Lost in Translation: A Life in a New
Language. London: Random House, 1989.■ Shirley Geok-Lin LIM, Among the White Moonfaces:
An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands. New York: Feminist Press, 1996.
■ Edward W. SAID, Out of Place: A Memoir. London: Granta, 1999.
2
CRITICAL TEXT
■ Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson
Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (2nd ed.)[e-text available through CUHK library]
Smith and Watson: Get a Life
■ “Getting a life means getting a narrative, and vice versa” (p.102)
■ Short version of the course:
through our example texts we will explore the different ways writers get lives and get narratives
‘Getting a narrative’ means that thematic reading needs to be supplemented by formal study: how are lives structured, what metaphors are used, etc.?
EVA HOFFMAN
“I am thirteen years old, and we are emigrating. It’s a notion of such crushing, definitive finality that to me it might as well mean the end of the world.”
■ Translated lives: Poland, Canada, the US
■ How to write about the past and present
■ Life in a new language? Lives between languages?
3
EDWARD SAID
“There was always something wrong with how I was invented”
■ Life writing in relation to a ‘death sentence’: diagnosis of leukemia■ Palestinian-American intellectual
journey & experiences■ Explores multilingualism &
identity■ Home and exile: meanings of
‘belonging’
SHIRLEY LIM
“Too many names, too many identities, too many languages.”
■ Translated life: from colonial Malaya to the US
■ Culture, collectivity, and individualism
■ Gender and telling one’s own story
MARTIN BOOTH
“[When] my grandmother commented that I was now ‘a proper little Chinese boy’, I felt strangely proud.”
■ Childhood and place: identity and identification
■ Gender roles and otherness
■ Memory and nostalgia
FOR NEXT WEEK
■ Read critical text: Smith and Watson, Chapter One
■ Read literary text: extract from André Aciman’s False Papers
STRUCTURE OF EACH WEEK
1) Lecture/discussion of issues (e.g. from Smith & Watson’s book)
2) Discussion: for each reading (critical plus literary), specified students will choose an issue and prepare two questions on it
3) Close-reading of the main life writing text
ASSESSMENT
• Class participation 20%• Short paper 30%• Final paper 50%
Detailed guidance on the papers will be made available on the course blog
4
RELATIONAL INTRODUCTIONS
■ Now I want you to, rather than introduce yourself, find out about the person sitting next to you
■ You will introduce the person sitting next to you
■ Take ten minutes to ask them questions, write down their answers, introduce them to me and the class
THINGS TO DO NEXT
■ Make a note of the provisional date for the short and final paper: April 30th
■ Generally: try to read ahead
Again, remember to read: Smith & Watson, Ch.1; also André Aciman, ‘Shadow Cities’, from False Papers
VERY IMPORTANT (again)
■ All course materials will be posted on the course blog:
https://5260lifewriting.wordpress.com/
■ I will be inviting you to this blog soon, so finally: email addresses please