idiosyncratic and entirely winning book.Ī beautiful consideration of the nature of proof, and of self and identity and queerness and history and progress. My Autobiography Of Carson McCullers asks sharp questions not just about the details of McCullers’ life but, more broadly, how we understand historical figures who confound the social expectations of their time (and our own) and how, in turn, they can help us understand ourselves.Ī succinct, thought-provoking exploration of women’s sexuality and the language that has been used to describe and limit our desires throughout history.Ī fascinating and intimate examination of the work of archives, research and historic preservation as well as the arc of identity and social construction. part fan letter, part detective story, and part steely corrective. The kind of state-of-the-form reckoning that makes one wish there were more like it.
In smart, illuminating prose, Shapland interweaves her own story with McCullers’s to create a vital new portrait of one of our nation’s greatest literary treasures, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are. Why, Shapland asks, are the stories of women paved over by others’ narratives? What happens when constant revision is required of queer women trying to navigate and self-actualize in straight spaces? And what might the tracing of McCullers’s life-her history, her secrets, her legacy-reveal to Shapland about herself? Her curiosity gives way to fixation, not just with this newly discovered side of McCullers’s life, but with how we tell queer love stories. Though Shapland recognizes herself in the letters, which are intimate and unabashed in their feelings, she does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. How do you tell the real story of someone misremembered-an icon and idol-alongside your own? Jenn Shapland’s celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploration of one of America’s most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memory, obsession, and love. Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner of the Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award, and a Lambda Literary Award
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