The thirteen essays in this volume come from Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, South Africa, and Hawai'i. With a shared focus on the specific local conditions that influence the ways in which life narratives are told, the authors engage with a variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, history, media studies, and literature, to challenge claims that life writing is an exclusively Western phenomenon. Addressing the common desire to reflect on lived experience, the authors enlist interdisciplinary perspectives to interrogate the range of cultural forms available for representing and understanding lives.
Contributors: Maria Faini, Kenneth George, Philip Holden, David T. Hill, Craig Howes, Bryan Kuwada, Kirin Narayan, Maureen Perkins, Peter Read, Tony Simoes da Silva, Mathilda Slabbert, Gerry van Klinken, Pei-yi Wu.