Table of Contents

Acknowledments

Part One: Origins

Origins: Personal Narratives Group

Part Two: Context

"Conditions Not of Her Own Making"
Personal Narratives Group

Liberating the Subject? Autobiography and "Women's History": A Reading of The Diaries of Hannah Cullwich
Julia Swindells

The Context of Personal Narrative: Reflections on "Not Either an Experimental Doll"—The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women
Shula Marks

Dissonance and Harmony: The Symbolic Function of Abortion in Activists' Life Stories
Faye Ginsburg

What's a Life Story Got to Do with It?
Karen Brodkin Sacks

Part Three: Narrative Forms

Forms That Transform
Personal Narratives Group
Gender and Narrative Form in French and German Working-Class Autobiographies
Mary Jo Maynes

Poetry and Truth: Elisa von der Recke's Sentimental Autobiography
Katherine R. Goodman

Considering More than a Single Reader
Elizabeth Hampsten

Nineteenth-Century Black Women's Spiritual Autobiographies: Religious Faith and Self-Empowerment
Nellie Y. McKay

Personal Narratives, Dynasties, and Women's Campaigns: Two Examples from Africa
Marcia Wright

Transformative Subjectivity in the Writings of Christa Wolf
Sandra Frieden

Women's Personal Narratives: Myths, Experiences, and Emotions
Luisa Passerini

Part Four: Narrator and Interpreter

Whose Voice?
Personal Narratives Group

"I'd Have Been a Man": Politics and the Labor Process in Producting Personal Narratives
Marjorie Mbilinyi

"What the Wind Won't Take Away": The Genesis of Nisa—The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman
Marjorie Shostak

The Double Frame of Life History in the Work of Barbara Myerhoff
Riv-Ellen Prell

Part Five: Truths

Truths
Personal Narratives Group

Contributors
Index

Promotional Information

Winner of Critic's Choice Award (AESA) for 1990