- Publisher: Virago
- Year: 2021
- Format: Hardback
- Pages: 288pp
- Illustrated: No
- Dimensions: 240x160mm
- Condition: New
- Weight: 0.5kg
- ISBN: 9780349015668
- Product code: 518333
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
A Memoir
Jenn Shapland New Hardback
Postscript summary
While working in an archive as a graduate student Shapland discovered love letters from Swiss heiress Annemarie Clarac-Schwarzenbach to the American writer Carson McCullers (1917–1967), revealing a story sidelined by biographers. As she describes the search for clues in McCullers’ writings, possessions and therapy transcripts, Shapland weaves in her own story of self-discovery and considers how we tell gendered love stories.
Product information
Full publisher description
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fiction
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.
Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. 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. 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. 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?
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.
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fiction
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.
Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. 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. 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. 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?
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.
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518333
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
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/Non-Fiction/Highlights
While working in an archive as a graduate student Shapland discovered love letters from Swiss heiress Annemarie Clarac-Schwarzenbach to the American writer Carson McCullers (1917–1967), revealing a story sidelined by biographers. As she describes the search for clues in McCullers’ writings, possessions and therapy transcripts, Shapland weaves in her own story of self-discovery and considers how we tell gendered love stories.
Hardback
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rrp_info:£16.99
productId:65815
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£16.99
Jenn Shapland
General
240x160mm
Virago
No
Hardback
