{"title":"Teaching Black Life Writing in the 2020 US Election Season and beyond","authors":"Joycelyn K. Moody","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2154439","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154439","url":null,"abstract":"... we create scholarship not simply for ourselves but for the unseen faces of people who depend on the unwavering commitment of scholars who take up justice work. We know that the ongoing work to rescue and reclaim the history and lives of black women [and men] is important and that it is our duty ... to collect and share their life and experiences “for the future of our children... if necessary, bone by bone.”—Karsonya Wise Whitehead and Conra D. Gist1","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":"393 - 410"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84538440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Scraps and Maps: Handwriting and Drawing as Early-Stage Process Methods for Autobiography","authors":"V. Berry","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2154440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154440","url":null,"abstract":"In teaching autobiography and memoir, I have a particular interest in the introductory and early stages of the writing process, and the kinds of work students do to warm up, to generate ideas, and to begin. These early stages are ones of orientation, in which apprehension and attention is shaped and turned toward particular objects.1 In describing the connections between orientation and phenomenology, Sara Ahmed writes: “It matters how we arrive at the places we do.”2 This statement is also resonant for teaching writing, where the “how” of “how we arrive” can be thought of as the process of writing that teachers guide students through. As with any journey, the departure establishes the direction and the mode of travel. Beginning opens up possibilities, prepares for the “deeper work which comes later.”3 On this journey let’s start slowly, lightly, by picking up a pencil, and a scrap of paper. In the early stages of a class or course I use handwriting, drawing, and mapping by hand, as deliberate methods and strategies. Early-stage processes are usually rendered invisible in a published text, but are vital in establishing the student’s direction in the class or course, their sense of what is possible in their writing, and their mode of embodied writerly attention. This way of working highlights the physical and the embodied aspects of writing, connecting students with a sense of intimacy and gesture, and the affordances of different physical methods of textual production. It centers attention on the body as the source of autobiography, carrying and articulating experiences, and memories. While I focus on “by-hand” methods in this essay, this slow and incidental method of writing---a scrap, a note to self or captured thought, a rough sketch---can also be adapted for students for whom handwriting is not an accessible mode, as an approach that can be brought to work done with digital equivalents. My life writing teaching has been in autobiography and memoir, guiding students in writing their own life stories. For the last fifteen years I have taught creative writing and life writing in university courses for https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154440","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"411 - 418"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78430901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Getting Emotional, Getting Personal. Writing Autobiographically about Teaching Life Writing in Times of Crisis","authors":"Aneta Ostaszewska","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2154447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154447","url":null,"abstract":"hierarchy; and recognition of the meritorious complexities of various ide-ologies. In addition, [feminism honours] the personal as a way of knowing, giving credence to thought, feelings, and experience.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"57 1","pages":"469 - 477"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78798854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rev. Lives beyond Borders: US Immigrant Women’s Life Writing, Nationality, and Social Justice","authors":"Farida Abla","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2123598","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2123598","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"183 1","pages":"533 - 536"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74629486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Art of Life Storytelling: Sharing and Exchanging Moments of Ambition in Summer Bridge Programs","authors":"Leila Moayeri Pazargadi","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2154453","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154453","url":null,"abstract":"Life storytelling—as a vehicle for autobiographical self-disclosure—has the capacity not only to educate the listener, but also to enable thoughtful self-reflection by the storyteller. For me, life storytelling, a practice unknowingly instilled in me from an early age by my Iranian family, was something I was unwittingly engaging with my entire life. Everyone in my family is a storyteller of some kind, whether it is about our family’s past, the day’s events, the move to the US after the Iranian Revolution, or the repetition of a punchline that hits close to home (an Iranian practice that never fails to amuse or irk, depending on your mood). By listening to the stories of others, I often found myself musing over shared experiences, while also savoring their stark differences. Each was a story to treasure and learn from. It was not surprising, then, that I gravitated toward life storytelling when planning the curriculum for the Nepantla Summer Bridge Program at Nevada State College. My aim in creating the program was (and continues to be) as follows: (1) to create a six-week academic program to help support first-generation college students’ transition from high school to college; (2) to offer a curriculum that appeals to underrepresented students by way of ethnic American studies and post-colonial studies; and (3) to increase access to college resources and support services at Nevada State to boost retention and graduation rates. When creating the program in 2012, I knew that I would want the program to center around themes of liminality and in-betweenness, as Nepantla pedagogy so often does. Sprung from the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, Nepantla pedagogy was birthed from the borderlands between Mexico and the US. It was from these physical and figurative spaces that Anzaldúa challenged American epistemologies about marginalized others, as channeled through specific examples of her own queer Tejanx identity.1 As Anzaldúa notes in This Bridge We Call Home, “Nepantla is the site of transformation. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154453","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":"511 - 518"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88417623","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Life-Writing Research beyond “The Black Hole” Effect","authors":"J. Rak","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2154438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154438","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"41 1","pages":"385 - 391"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88019302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rev. of Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism","authors":"Desirée Henderson","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2087969","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2087969","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"385 - 388"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82981850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Getting the Joke: Self -Deprecating Humor in Anh Do’s The Happiest Refugee","authors":"Jacqui Dickin","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2136827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2136827","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Self-deprecating humor, the comedic act of making oneself the butt of the joke, is a staple of the Australian comedy industry and part of Australia’s national self-concept. Vietnamese Australian Anh Do is one of Australia’s most famous migrant comedians and performs self-deprecating humor while drawing on sometimes traumatic experiences from his personal life as part of his stand-up comedy sets. This essay examines how Do’s style of self-deprecating comedy extends from his stand-up comedy to his national bestselling memoir The Happiest Refugee (2010). The author argues that Do’s self-deprecating humor smuggles trauma to Australian audiences through laughs, and she explores the ambiguity in Do’s ability to occupy opposing identities of the “Other” and the “Aussie kid|bogan” simultaneously. Additionally, the author discusses how Do’s use of humor in his life narrative negotiates model-minority expectations leveled against Asian Australians to turn, in a subtle way, what appears to be a joke on him into a joke about the audience.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"55 1","pages":"317 - 334"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88450219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"No Joke, This Actually Happened: A Not Unfunny Interview with Danielle Seid","authors":"Danielle Seid","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2136825","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2136825","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"285 - 298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82427647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}