Represent yourself -- Bastard testimony : illegitimacy and incest in Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina -- There will always be a father : transference and the auto/biographical demand in Mikal Gilmore's Shot in the heart -- There will always be a mother : Jamaica Kincaid's serial autobiography -- Without names : an anatomy of absence in Jeanette Winterson's Written on the body
Summary
Memoirs in which trauma take a major - or the major - role challenge the limits of autobiography. The author presents a series of "limit-cases"--Texts that combine various elements including autobiography and fiction, and demonstrates how and why their authors swerve from formal constraints
