The Self and the World
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A. Rzepa D. Drewniak K. Macedulska AGNIESZKA RZEPA The self and the world: aspects of the aesthetics and politics of contemporary North American literary memoir by women constitutes an attempt at a selective, but far-ranging analysis of the aesthetics and politics of memoirs written by Canadian and US women DAGMara DREWNIAK of different racial and ethnic backgrounds since 1990. The study focuses on memoirs by experienced writers, consciously deploying in their texts a number of literary, visual and KATARZYNA MACEDULSKA paratextual devices. The aim is to illuminate the ways in which they make sense of their experience and how they endow it with a particular narrative shape, with special focus on the implicit and explicit ideological baggage of the memoirs. An important aspect of the project is the critical reflection on the nature of memory that emerges from the selected texts in connection with both individual and collective history. Special focus falls on configurations of gender and race/ethnicity in the contexts of the two multicultural North American societies, and their influence on the process of self-fashioning. The self and the world Agnieszka Rzepa, Dagmara Drewniak and Katarzyna Macedulska are Aspects of the aesthetics and politics professors at the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Agnieszka Rzepa has published widely on contemporary Canadian novel and short of contemporary North American story, Canadian life writing and Native Canadian literatures. Apart from numerous ar- ticles, her publications include the monograph Feats and Defeats of Memory: Exploring literary memoir by women Spaces of Canadian Magic Realism (2009) and the book Eyes Deep with Unfathom- able Histories: The Poetics and Politics of Magic Realism Today and in the Past (editor with Liliana Sikorska; 2012). She is editor-in-chief of TransCanadiana: Polish Journal of Canadian Studies. Dagmara Drewniak’s research interests include: life-writing, autobiography and The self and biography in Canadian literature, multiculturalism in English Canadian literature, im- ages of Poland and Eastern Europe in Canada and Canadian literature, literature by immigrants from Poland and Eastern Europe, Jewishness in Canadian literature, and postcolonial literature in English. She has published essays on autobiographical texts by such writers as Kulyk Keefer, Hoffman, Ondaatje, Appignanesi, Kojder, and other contemporary writers. In 2014 she published the monograph entitled Forgetful Recollec- tions: Images of Central and Eastern Europe in Canadian Literature. Katarzyna Macedulska (Kuczma) has worked on contemporary as well as 19th century American literature. She is author of Remembering Oneself, Charting the Other – Memory as Intertextuality and Self-Reflexivity in the Works of Paul Auster(2012), edi- the tor of Cultural Dynamics of Play (2013), and co-editor of Storying Humanity: Narratives of Culture and Society (with Richard Wirth and Dario Serrati; 2015). Currently, her re- search concerns memory, identity, and narrative in American autobiographical writing. world ISBN 978-83-232-3339-8 ISSN 0554-8144 WYDAWNICTWO NAUKOWE UAM The self and the world ADAM MICKIEWICZ UNIVERSITY IN POZNAŃ SERIA FILOLOGIA ANGIELSKA NR 57 AGNIESZKA RZEPA DAGMARA DREWNIAK KATARZYNA MACEDULSKA The self and the world Aspects of the aesthetics and politics of contemporary North American literary memoir by women POZNAŃ 2018 ABSTRACT: Agnieszka Rzepa, Dagmara Drewniak, Katarzyna Macedulska. The self and the world: Aspects of the aesthetics and politics of contemporary North American literary memoir by women. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Poznań 2018. Pp. 217. ISBN 978-83- 232-3339-8. ISSN 0554-8144. Text in English with a summary in Polish. The self and the world: aspects of the aesthetics and politics of contemporary North Ameri- can literary memoir by women constitutes an attempt at a selective, but far-ranging analysis of the aesthetics and politics of memoirs written by Canadian and US women of different ra- cial and ethnic backgrounds since 1990. The study focuses on memoirs by experienced writ- ers, consciously deploying in their texts a number of literary, visual and paratextual devices. The aim is to illuminate the ways in which they make sense of their experience and how they endow it with a particular narrative shape, with special focus on the implicit and explicit ideological baggage of the memoirs. An important aspect of the project is the critical reflec- tion on the nature of memory that emerges from the selected texts in connection with both in- dividual and collective history. Special focus falls on configurations of gender and race/ethnicity in the contexts of the two multicultural North American societies, and their in- fluence on the process of self-fashioning. KEY WORDS: memoir, life-writing, memoir by women writers, female memoir in Canada and the USA. Agnieszka Rzepa, Dagmara Drewniak, Katarzyna Macedulska, Faculty of English, Adam Mic- kiewicz University, al. Niepodległości 4, 61-678 Poznań, Poland; email: [email protected] Reviewer/Recenzent: Dr hab. Eugenia Sojka (University of Silesia) Publikacja finansowana przez Wydział Anglistyki UAM © Agnieszka Rzepa, Dagmara Drewniak, Katarzyna Macedulska 2018 This edition © Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, Poznań 2018 Cover design/Projekt okładki: Pracownia Wydawnicza WA UAM Typsetting and formatting/Skład i formatowanie: Pracownia Wydawnicza WA UAM ISBN 978-83-232-3339-8 ISSN 0554-8144 Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge the support of National Science Centre Poland; and of our home institution: Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. This study results from research supported by under grant UMO-2012/05/B/HS2/04004 Contents Introduction ........................................................................................... 7 In brief: focus, aim and scope ............................................................. 7 At some length: memoir, women life writers, national contexts ...... 10 Chapter One Out of many…: generic hybridity in memoir ................................... 19 1.1. Memoir and autobiography ....................................................... 21 1.2. Other generic blendings ............................................................. 41 1.3. Memoir and academic writing ................................................... 50 1.4. Memoir and travelogue ............................................................. 58 1.5. Memoir and cookbook ............................................................... 65 1.6. Memoir as a bricolage of graphic novel and comic strip ........... 71 Chapter Two The beholding eye: visual aspects of memoir ................................... 81 2.1. Photography in life-writing ....................................................... 81 2.2. Photography as illustration: Apolonja Maria Kojder’s Marynia, Don’t Cry. A Mother’s Legacy & Barbara Głogowska’s Three Generations ...................................................................... 85 2.3. Photography, typography and violations of textual space: Janice Williamson’s Crybaby! .................................................. 89 2.4. Photography and ekphrasis ...................................................... 100 2.5. Maps, graphs, genealogical trees as visual devices legitimising the “truthfulness” of the memoir: Mary A. Drzewiecki’s Born and Raised Under a Straw Roof .............................................. 102 2.6. Reconstructing genealogies, visualising (up)rootedness: the tribal and the private in Deborah A. Miranda’s Bad Indians. A Tribal Memoir ................................................ 107 2.7. The remains of the past: memoir as a space of (re)mediation between images and stories in What They Saved. Pieces of a Jewish Past by Nancy K. Miller ........................................... 116 6 Contents Chapter Three Hauntings: fashioning the (female) self at the intersection of the private, the public, the national and the global ................... 137 3.1. Mapping diasporic and national identity and belonging in Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return. Notes to Belonging .................................................................. 139 3.2. Hidden in plain sight: Sharon Butala’s triple discovery of Nature, the self and the (Native) other ................................ 147 3.3. Spectral shadowing: history and politics in three Hungarian- Canadian memoirs ................................................................... 155 3.4. Fragments and ghosts, fear and release in Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines and Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave ................................. 173 Coda .................................................................................................... 203 Works Cited ....................................................................................... 205 Ja i świat: wybrane aspekty estetyki i ideologii współczesnego pamiętnika literackiego pisarek północnoamerykańskich (Streszczenie) ..................................................................................... 217 Introduction In brief: focus, aim and scope The focus of this study is memoir as practiced by North American female authors in – roughly – the last three decades. Within that period, the flex- ibility – in terms of both theme and form – of this particular genre of life- writing, which historically predates autobiography, has made it a very popular vehicle for expressing the self emerging