Sidonie smith reading autobiography assignment

Preprint from Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide to Interpreting Life Narratives.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010 (2nd extended edition). CHAPTER 9 A Tool Kit: Twenty-four Strategies for Reading Life Narratives You pick up a memoir in your local bookstore that looks interesting and read the opening page.

Sidonie smith reading autobiography assignment pdf

Or you’re asked to read a well-known autobiography for a college course or exam. Or you come upon a personal narrative in an archive you’re perusing for a history project. Or you find yourself a captive listener at a family gathering during which people regale one another with stories of the past.

Given the complexity of autobiographical acts that we have charted in chapters 2 and 3, what kind of questions might you ask as you become immersed in these autobiographical narratives? How exactly might you read them? In this chapter we present you with a “tool kit” for appr