WHY READ AUTOBIOGRAPHIES?

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1 Page 8.1 of 5 Supplement to Orientation to College: A Reader on Becoming an Educated Person by Elizabeth Steltenpohl, Jane Shipton, Sharon Villines. WHY READ AUTOBIOGRAPHIES? Unlike biographies, which are written by scholars and researchers about people who have become famous as world leaders, sports heroes, or survivors of catastrophic illnesses or world events, autobiographies are more personally revealing and often humorous. They are stories told by interesting people about the circumstances of their lives and how they felt about them. They are more emotionally revealing and more focused on how life had affected them rather than how they affected the lives of others. Autobiographies are often touching and always inspiring because they show us how others have negotiated the white waters, often the same white waters we will confront ourselves at one time or the other. Autobiographies show us how to live, or how we might live. They help us understand the ways we in which we can learn to change our lives. They can also be very useful in revealing to us what it is like to live in a profession or career that we are considering. What are the conditions that a doctor or writer live with? How could being a teacher affect us? Or a politician? Reading autobiographies is the closest we can come to living the lives of others and learning from them. Autobiographies can be read to enrich self-reflection or to form the basis of interesting writing and research projects. In conjunction with keeping a journal, reading autobiographies can raise questions for you to reflect on about your own life. They can serve as a mirror in which you can see yourself, trying on different roles or measuring the differences between yourself and the author. Comparing life stories in two or more autobiographies can be a good exercise in critical analysis. How did each person make choices that led to other similar or different results in their lives? What choices did each one avoid that might have led to different outcomes? How did differing life circumstances such as greater or lesser wealth or physical health affect their lives? This is a very small selection of the many wonderful autobiographies available. They represent those that have been found to be inspiring and educational by a wide range of students.

2 Page 8.2 of 5 The dates of the first editions are given but all have been published in many editions and are widely available in inexpensive paperbacks, new and used, as well as in libraries. Angelou, Maya. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. First edition: New York: Random House, The story of an African American child who was sent on a train from California with a tag on her wrist to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The first of five autobiographical works, this volume covers what she learned from her grandmother living in a deeply racist community and how she survived her teens, emerging with a baby, to become an artist of great sensitivity and humor. The volumes written much later also reflect on this period of her life offering new interpretations and realizations from her position as a world-renowned poet. Bateson, Mary Catherine. Composing a Life. First edition: New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, Less an autobiography than a reflection on her own life and those of her friends, all professional women, revealing the ways in which they adjusted and coped with discrimination against women in professions traditionally dominated by men. Particularly useful for the metaphor Bateson weaves around life as a patchwork quilt that one designs out of the influences and inheritances of those around us, piecing them into a new pattern stitched to a new foundation. Bateson is the daughter of Margaret Mead. Conway, Jill Ker. The Road From Coorain. First edition: New York: Knopf, A chronicle of moving from life in the Australian countryside to urban Sidney, of losing first her father and her brother to death, and then her mother to mental illness, and realizing that she must define and liberate herself from the tragedy of her family and the domination of her country by British culture. One of several memoirs, this volume is her story through the age of 23, of defining and redefining herself in new cultures. True

3 Page 8.3 of 5 North (1994) covers her education in America, and A Woman s Education (2001) covers her life as president of Smith College. X, Malcolm, with Alex Haley. Autobiography of Malcolm X. First edition: New York: Grove Press, Chronicles the enthusiasms of a young boy for all aspects of popular Black culture who becomes a bitter anti-social petty thief who then educates himself in prison and becomes a respected political activist of great spiritual depth. As an activist he continues to define and redefine his goals in life, making radical changes when necessary, denouncing what he found to be wrong, and being assassinated at the age of 39. Remarkable for the vibrancy and detail with which he describes his life and then strength he exhibits in admitting that he was wrong and taking a completely new path in life several times. Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language. First edition: New York, Dutton, As a thirteen-year-old girl, daughter of Holocaust survivors, Hoffman was transplanted from war-ravaged Poland to a foreign Canadian suburb, where she recreates herself. But she remains bicultural, lost between two languages, living two lives. Beautifully written and explains how even a hostile environment can be a treasured part of one s self and how one can learn to accept a new life while remaining defined by the old. Mead, Margaret. Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years. First edition: New York: Morrow, The early life story of an influential anthropologist who changed the way we think about families, sex, culture, women, and careers. At a time when women did not go out into the world as professionals, Margaret Mead did. In this volume she discusses openly the influence of her parents on her life. Not as focused on personal emotions as many of the other autobiographies but rather on the analysis of her culture and how it influenced her.

4 Page 8.4 of 5 In essence, this is an application of cultural anthropology to her own life and a study of the way our families determine who we are and the decisions we make for ourselves. Monet, Paul. Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story. New York: Harcourt, This is the story of a boy growing up as a perfect son and student in Andover, Massachusetts and at Yale University, and struggling to become a gay man in a homophobic culture. A poignant and bittersweet story of living exceptionally well in every way except in living one s own life and becoming one s own person. Written after On Borrowed Time in which he explores his anger, Becoming a Man is very humorous but searingly honest and graphic. Monette died of AIDs at the age of 50. Rodriguez, Richard. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. First edition: Boston: Godine, A painful and triumphant story. An intellectual autobiography by a Mexican American that begins with his entering school in California knowing only 50 words of English, traveling a road of change and alienation from his own culture, studying Renaissance Literature in the British Museum, and ending with his teaching at the University of California in Berkeley. The controversial opinions expressed about education in this country will not sit well with all students but the story about what it feels like to lose contact with one s own culture because one is grasping education in another is superb. Soto, Gary. A Summer Life. First edition: Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, An American poet s vivid memories of himself as a boy of five in Southern California. Remarkable for the richness of his memories and language, the depth of his experience, and his view of the world from ground level. A lovely example of how much we know and learn when we are so young. Inspiring for its revelations about simply experiencing the richness of the world around us.

5 Page 8.5 of 5 Thomas, Piri. Down These Mean Streets. New York: Knopf, A lacerating and lyrical story of coming of age in Spanish Harlem. Born into a dark skinned Peurto Rican family that refused to acknowledge its African heritage, a morenito, Thomas tells of drugs, street fights, armed robbery, and a prison cell at Sing Sing. Living with racial hatred on all sides, he tells a story of self-liberation and renewal in which he finds his own voice as a poet. The Thirtieth Anniversary Edition published by Vintage in 1997 includes a new introduction by the author.