Life Writing as World Literature - (Literatures as World Literature) by Helga Lenart-Cheng & Ioana Luca (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A global array of contributors explore the interplay between translation and circulation, mediums and materialities, and aesthetics and politics in how life writing is shaped by and becomes world literature.

We live in the age of popular self-representation in that most people around the globe either produce or consume autobiographical material: memoirs, selfies, blogs, etc. The current volume investigates this global phenomenon and examines how life writing and world literature converge. Why do some personal stories get "picked up," translated, circulated, and taught in classrooms, while others remain moored in local waters? Do autobiographical stories that travel widely have something in common about them? Or is it the other way around, is it our notion of "world literature" that imposes uniform expectations on these diverse texts? And what can we gain from studying these two fields in conjunction?

Life Writing as World Literature brings together experts who map regional and local autobiographical traditions from six continents. These scholars explore the dynamic interplay between local and global aesthetics and sociopolitical concerns, presenting case studies that include prison narratives from communist regimes, Japanese diaries, multilingual Caribbean memoirs, Indian auto/biographical comics, and stories by Taiwanese domestic workers.

To understand how and why some personal stories enter global dissemination, contributors inquire into translation, market mechanisms, and circulation patterns, while also exploring the affordances of new media and materialities when recording contemporary lives. Life Writing as World Literature brings a fresh perspective to both fields - world literature and life writing - opening up exciting avenues of research.

Review Quotes

At its most measured, Life Writing as World Literature explores the challenges of enacting the transnational without reifying the nation, of advocating for the relational and collaborative without erasing individual agency, and of embracing the aesthetic while insisting on the citational. At its most ambitious, it suggests that life writing might usefully 'blow up the very notion of World Literature.' A valuable addition to the related projects of worlding literature and articulating lives.
Craig Howes, Professor of English, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, USA

This timely collection comparatively and provocatively situates practices and practitioners of life writing in multiple frameworks focused on their languages, origins, genres, and themes. Contributors, attentive to the polyphonic resonances of how autobiographical narratives negotiate geographic and ideological boundaries, make a compelling case for the 'worlding' of life writing.
Julia Watson, Academy Professor Emerita of Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University, USA

About the Author

Helga Lenart-Cheng is Professor of Global and Regional Studies at Saint Mary's College of California, USA. Her recent book, Story Revolutions: Collective Narratives from the Enlightenment to the Digital Age (2022), combines cultural studies and critical media theory.

Ioana Luca is Professor of English at National Taiwan Normal University. Her work focuses on life writing, Eastern European-US connections, and memory studies.