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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.

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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?

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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

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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