Acts of Narrative Resistance: Women's Autobiographical Writings in the Americas

by Laura J. Beard

Overview

This exploration of women's autobiographical writings in the Americas focuses on three specific genres: testimonio, metafiction, and the family saga as the story of a nation. What makes Laura J. Beard’s work distinctive is her pairing of readings of life narratives by women from different countries and traditions. Her section on metafiction focuses on works by Helena Parente Cunha, of Brazil, and Luisa Futoranksy, of Argentina; the family sagas explored are by Ana María Shua and Nélida Piñon, of Argentina and Brazil, respectively; and the section on testimonio highlights narratives by Lee Maracle and Shirley Sterling, from different Indigenous nations in British Columbia. In these texts Beard terms "genres of resistance," women resist the cultural definitions imposed upon them in an effort to speak and name their own experiences. The author situates her work in the context of not only other feminist studies of women's autobiographies but also the continuing study of inter-American literature that is demanding more comparative and cross-cultural approaches.

Acts of Narrative Resistance addresses prominent issues in the fields of autobiography, comparative literature, and women's studies, and in inter-American, Latin American, and Native American studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813930572
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	10/01/2009
Series:	New World Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Laura J. Beard is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at Texas Tech University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

Part 1 Addressing the Self: Autobiographical Metafiction 11

1 The Mirrored Self: Helena Parente Cunha's women between Mirrors 15

2 The Self Exile: Luisa Futoransky's Babelic Metatext 40

Part 2 From Self to Family to Nation: The Family Saga as an Autobiographical Genre 65

3 Re-membering the Nation by Remembering the Family: Ana Maríia Shua's The Book of Memories 72

4 The Autobiographical Text as Memory Box: Neéelida Piò's Thr Republic of Dreams 93

Part 3 Bearing Witness to the Self and the Community: Testimonial Works by Indigenous women 111

5 "The Life of Bobbi Lee Is about Why We Must Talk": Testimonial Literature as a Call to Action 121

6 "Part of Surviving Is through Remembering": The Ethics and Politics of Life Narratives about Indian Residential School Experiences 139

Conclusion 165

Notes 169

Works Cited 177

Index 195

Editorial Reviews

Laura Beard's Acts of Narrative Resistance is a provocative and important intervention into theorizing women's autobiography in the Americas. Her comparative reading of Latin American women's life writing and Native Canadian narratives of the last three decades reframes theories grounded in the dominant Euro-American model and foregrounds hybrid autofictional forms such as the family saga, the testimonial, and metafiction. And Beard's focus on practice in and out of the classroom makes this study refreshingly useful for courses that take up resistance, whether in art or in life.

Julia Watson

"Laura Beard's Acts of Narrative Resistance is a provocative and important intervention into theorizing women's autobiography in the Americas. Her comparative reading of Latin American women's life writing and Native Canadian narratives of the last three decades reframes theories grounded in the dominant Euro-American model and foregrounds hybrid autofictional forms such as the family saga, the testimonial, and metafiction. And Beard's focus on practice in and out of the classroom makes this study refreshingly useful for courses that take up resistance, whether in art or in life. "—Julia Watson, Associate Dean of Humanities, The Ohio State University

From the Publisher