The Life Writing of Otherness

This book demonstrates a multifaceted approach to autobiographical writing by those the dominant deem 'other' than themselves. Focusing on four major texts of multiculturalism, the author examines how they each represent the self as unique, as collectively 'othered', and as inclusively human, and how these opposing aspects of selfhood interact. Rusk also analyzes the strategies that the writers speak to their multiple, divided audiences. For these authors, articulating a life experience and a selfhood more complex than society admits is an act of repudiation and transgression that bursts the confines of genre. Rusk therefore considers as well the ways each hybrid work draws meaning from its diverse generic roots. The Life Writing of Otherness begins with a discussion that integrates reader-response, social, and genre theory. Thereafter, it offers an in-depth reading of each text, treating not only self-representation, audience and voice, and genre, but also the work's other themes, allusions, philosophic concerns, and aesthetic strategies. In particular, the book shows how these texts challenge their readers to work through puzzles that mirror the writer's own struggles to wrest sense from the cultural contradictions they have faced.