The author demonstrates how narrative inquiry and analysis are valid and important parts of the English discipline, too much so to be lost to academic politicking.
This pathbreaking book looks at everyday storytelling as a twofold phenomenon--a response to our desire for coherence, but also to our need to probe and acknowledge the enigmatic aspects of experience. Letting us listen in on dinner-table conversation, prayer, and gossip, Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps develop a way of understanding the seemingly contradictory nature of everyday narrative--as a genre that is not necessarily homogeneous and as an activity that is not always consistent but consistently serves our need to create selves and communities. Focusing on the ways in which narrative is co-constructed, and on the variety of moral stances embodied in conversation, the authors draw out the instructive inconsistencies of these collaborative narratives, whose contents and ordering are subject to dispute, flux, and discovery. In an eloquent last chapter, written as Capps was waging her final battle with cancer, they turn to unfinished narratives, those stories that will never have a comprehensible end. With a hybrid perspective--part humanities, part social science--their book captures these complexities and fathoms the intricate and potent narratives that live within and among us.
Autobiography is naturally regarded as an art of retrospect, but making autobiography is equally part of the fabric of our ongoing experience. We tell the stories of our lives piecemeal, and these stories are not merely about our selves but also an integral part of them. In this way we "live autobiographically"; we have narrative identities. In this book, noted life-writing scholar Paul John Eakin explores the intimate, dynamic connection between our selves and our stories, between narrative and identity in everyday life. He draws on a wide range of autobiographical writings from work by Jonathan Franzen, Mary Karr, and André Aciman to the New York Times series "Portraits of Grief" memorializing the victims of 9/11, as well as the latest insights into identity formation from the fields of developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, and neurobiology. In his account, the self-fashioning in which we routinely, even automatically, engage is largely conditioned by social norms and biological necessities. We are taught by others how to say who we are, while at the same time our sense of self is shaped decisively by our lives in and as bodies. For Eakin, autobiography is always an act of self-determination, no matter what the circumstances, and he stresses its adaptive value as an art that helps to anchor our shifting selves in time.
In a prose that is so beautiful it is poetry, we see the world of growing up and going somewhere through the dust and heat of Fresno's industrial side and beyond: It is a boy's coming of age in the barrio, parochial school, attending church, public summer school, and trying to fall out of love so he can join in a Little League baseball team. His is a clarity that rings constantly through the warmth and wry reality of these sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, always human remembrances.
Stories offer us some of the richest and most enduring insights into the human condition and have preoccupied philosophy since Aristotle. On Stories presents in clear and compelling style just why narrative has this power over us and argues that the unnarrated life is not worth living. Drawing on the work of James Joyce, Sigmund Freud's patient 'Dora' and the case of Oscar Schindler, Richard Kearney skilfully illuminates how stories not only entertain us but can determine our lives and personal identities. He also considers nations as stories, including the story of Romulus and Remus in the founding of Rome. Throughout, On Stories stresses that, far from heralding the demise of narrative, the digital era merely opens up new stories.
- This book contains custom design elements for each chapter. This classic of American literature, a dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave, was first published in 1845, when its author had just achieved his freedom. Its shocking first-hand account of the horrors of slavery became an international best seller. His eloquence led Frederick Douglass to become the first great African-American leader in the United States. • Douglass rose through determination, brilliance and eloquence to shape the American Nation. • He was an abolitionist, human rights and women’s rights activist, orator, author, journalist, publisher and social reformer • His personal relationship with Abraham Lincoln helped persuade the President to make emancipation a cause of the Civil War.
A guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of Love All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth. How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras. This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid intelligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of nonfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.
A New York Times bestseller! A pioneering and timely study of how to navigate life's biggest transitions with meaning, purpose, and skill Bruce Feiler, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Secrets of Happy Families and Council of Dads, has long explored the stories that give our lives meaning. Galvanized by a personal crisis, he spent the last few years crisscrossing the country, collecting hundreds of life stories in all fifty states from Americans who’d been through major life changes—from losing jobs to losing loved ones; from changing careers to changing relationships; from getting sober to getting healthy to simply looking for a fresh start. He then spent a year coding these stories, identifying patterns and takeaways that can help all of us survive and thrive in times of change. What Feiler discovered was a world in which transitions are becoming more plentiful and mastering the skills to manage them is more urgent for all of us. The idea that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness is hopelessly outdated. We all feel unnerved by this upheaval. We’re concerned that our lives are not what we expected, that we’ve veered off course, living life out of order. But we’re not alone. Life Is in the Transitions introduces the fresh, illuminating vision of the nonlinear life, in which each of us faces dozens of disruptors. One in ten of those becomes what Feiler calls a lifequake, a massive change that leads to a life transition. The average length of these transitions is five years. The upshot: We all spend half our lives in this unsettled state. You or someone you know is going through one now. The most exciting thing Feiler identified is a powerful new tool kit for navigating these pivotal times. Drawing on his extraordinary trove of insights, he lays out specific strategies each of us can use to reimagine and rebuild our lives, often stronger than before. From a master storyteller with an essential message, Life Is in the Transitions can move readers of any age to think deeply about times of change and how to transform them into periods of creativity and growth.
Powerful ideas from narrative therapy can teach us how to create new life stories and promote change. Our lives and their pathways are not fixed in stone; instead they are shaped by story. The ways in which we understand and share the stories of our lives therefore make all the difference. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell our stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and ease our sorrows. Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell about ourselves can make an enormous difference in the ways we live our lives. Drawing on wisdoms from the field of narrative therapy, this book is designed to help people rewrite and retell the stories of their lives. The book invites readers to take a new look at their own stories and to find significance in events often neglected, to find sparkling actions that are often discounted, and to find solutions to problems and predicaments in unexpected places. Readers are introduced to key ideas of narrative practice like the externalizing problems - 'the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem' -and the concept of "re-membering" one's life. Easy-to-understand examples and exercises demonstrate how these ideas have helped many people overcome intense hardship and will help readers make these techniques their own. The book also outlines practical strategies for reclaiming and celebrating one's experience in the face of specific challenges such as trauma, abuse, personal failure, grief, and aging. Filled with relatable examples, useful exercises, and informative illustrations, Retelling the Stories of Our Lives leads readers on a path to reclaim their past and re-envision their future.