Description
A global array of contributors explore the interplay between translation and circulation, mediums and materialities, and aesthetics and politics in how life writing is shaped by and becomes world literature.
We live in the age of popular self-representation in that most people around the globe either produce or consume autobiographical material: memoirs, selfies, blogs, etc. The current volume investigates this global phenomenon and examines how life writing and world literature converge. Why do some personal stories get “picked up,” translated, circulated, and taught in classrooms, while others remain moored in local waters? Do autobiographical stories that travel widely have something in common about them? Or is it the other way around, is it our notion of “world literature” that imposes uniform expectations on these diverse texts? And what can we gain from studying these two fields in conjunction?
Life Writing as World Literature brings together experts who map regional and local autobiographical traditions from six continents. These scholars explore the dynamic interplay between local and global aesthetics and sociopolitical concerns, presenting case studies that include prison narratives from communist regimes, Japanese diaries, multilingual Caribbean memoirs, Indian auto/biographical comics, and stories by Taiwanese domestic workers.
To understand how and why some personal stories enter global dissemination, contributors inquire into translation, market mechanisms, and circulation patterns, while also exploring the affordances of new media and materialities when recording contemporary lives. Life Writing as World Literature brings a fresh perspective to both fields – world literature and life writing – opening up exciting avenues of research.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Life Writing and World Literature: Introduction
Helga Lenart-Cheng, Saint Mary's College of California, USA, and Ioana Luca, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan
Part I: Frames of Reading
1. Collection, Connection, Translation, Comparison: The Provocations of Life Writing as World Literature
John David Zuern, University of Hawai'i Manoa, USA
2. Auto/biographical Comics in World Literature: Gaps and Silences
Julie Rak, University of Alberta, Canada
3. Life Writing and Citational Justice in the Context of World Literature
Kim Rostan, Wofford College, USA
Part II: From Local Traditions to Global Concerns
5. An African in the World: Noni Jabavu's Memoirs as World Literature
Athambile Masola, University of Cape Town, South Africa
6. "A Writer of the World": Peter Abrahams's Autobiographical Texts, South Africa, and World Literature
Marta Fossati, University of Milan, Italy
7. Rock-Star, Comedian, "Working Class Man": Popular Memoir and Celebrity Migrant Life Writing in Contemporary Australia
Jacqui Dickin and Kylie Cardell, Flinders University, Australia
8. Caribbean Life Writing as World Literature
Natalie Edwards (University of Bristol, UK)
Part III: Institutionalization, Circulation, Translation
9. Premodern Japanese Life Writing: Canonization, Translation, Adaptation, and Worlding
Christina Laffin, University of British Columbia, Canada
10. Whose Life (Narrative) Is It Anyways? Circulation, Translation, and Unbelonging in Gina Saraceni's Adriático and Raquel Rivas Rojas's Inventario para después de una Guerra
Irina R. Troconis, Cornell University, USA
11. Worlding Precarious Lives: Southeast-Asian Workers in Taiwan
Joan Chiung-huei Chang, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan
Part IV: Life Writing: Local History and Global Memory
12. Surviving Genres: Life Writing and the Communist Carceral Experience
Oana Popescu-Sandu, University of Southern Indiana, USA
13. A Nicaraguan Woman's Auto/biographical Resistance: Gioconda Belli and Literary [R]Evolution
Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle, The College of New Jersey, USA
14. Globalizing Caste: The Contemporary Dalit Feminist Memoir
Sreya Chatterjee, University of Houston, USA
Part V: Worldliness, Materialities, and Activism
15. Travel, Disease, and Life Writing as World Literature: Jack London, Audre Lorde, Gao Xingjian, Alfred Hornung
Johannes Gutenberg, University of Mainz, Germany
16. Children's Drawings from Ukraine: Drawing Life, Drawing the World
Kate Douglas and Edith Hill, Flinders University, Australia
17. Activism and the Graphic Memoir: Between the Personal and the Political
Julia Alekseyeva, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Afterword. Life History and the Literatures of the World: Notes toward a Provocation
S. Shankar, University of Hawai'i, Manoa, USA
Bibliography
Index
