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.
"Introduction: Life Writing as World Literature 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 Fosatti, 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 Domestic 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 Julie Alekseyeva, University of Pennsylvania, USA Afterword Subramanian Shankar, University of Hawai'i, Manoa, USA Bibliography Index"
Helga Lenart-Cheng is Professor of Global and Regional Studies at Saint Mary's College of California, USA. Her recent book, Story Revolutions: Collective Narratives from the Enlightenment to the Digital Age (2022), combines cultural studies and critical media theory. Ioana Luca is Professor of English at National Taiwan Normal University. Her work focuses on life writing, Eastern European-US connections, and memory studies.
Reviews for Life Writing as World Literature
At its most measured, Life Writing as World Literature explores the challenges of enacting the transnational without reifying the nation, of advocating for the relational and collaborative without erasing individual agency, and of embracing the aesthetic while insisting on the citational. At its most ambitious, it suggests that life writing might usefully ‘blow up the very notion of World Literature.’ A valuable addition to the related projects of worlding literature and articulating lives. * Craig Howes, Professor of English, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, USA * This timely collection comparatively and provocatively situates practices and practitioners of life writing in multiple frameworks focused on their languages, origins, genres, and themes. Contributors, attentive to the polyphonic resonances of how autobiographical narratives negotiate geographic and ideological boundaries, make a compelling case for the ‘worlding’ of life writing. * Julia Watson, Academy Professor Emerita of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University, USA *
