Selves in Question: Interviews on Southern African Auto/biography 9780824843502
Wide-ranging and engaging, Selves in Question considers the various ways in which auto/biographical accounts situate and
202 26 1MB
English Pages 496 Year 2006
Table of contents :
Contents
I. Introduction
Auto/biographical Identities: Placing Selves in Question
Auto/biographical Accounts in South Africa in Three Parts
Thematic and Theoretical Issues in Southern African Auto/biography: An Overview
Scope of the Collection
Bibliography
II. Singing the Praises, Performing the Persona
Versions of a Life in Poetry
People Feel No Event Is Complete without a Poet
Folk Music as Popular Culture: A Life-history Approach
III. Representing Silence
I. Speak Their Wordless Woe
Making History’s Silences Speak
IV. Relating the Self
Creating a Climate for Change
This Miracle of a Book . . . It’s Just Like the Bible to Me
Collaborators
The Making of Katie Makanya
V. Fact or Fiction
All Autobiography Is Autre-biography
We Would Write Very Dull Books If We Just Wrote about Ourselves
Writing Autobiography and Writing Fiction
VI. Subject to Metaphor
Aquifers and Auto/biography in Namibia
Reflections on Identity
Rhythmic Redoublings
VII. From Daughters to Mothers
“Mummy, the Coolie Doctor Is at the Door”
Why Do You Abandon Me? I Am Your Daughter. Re-presenting Dona Ermelinda
Every Secret Thing as Family Memoir
VIII. Disarming White Men
White Men with Weapons: Performing Autobiography
Reflections in a Cracked Mirror
IX. Commemoration, Confession, Conversion
These Two Autobiographical Books Are My Identity Document
Philosophical Reflections on Chronicles of Conversion
X. Confessing Sexualities
Speaking about Writing about Living a Life
Man-bitch: Poetry, Prose, and Prostitution
XI. Re-collecting the New Nation
Group Portrait: Self, Family, and Nation on Exhibit
Resituating Ourselves: Homelessness and Collective Testimony as Narrative Therapy
Glossary
Contributors
Index
