Contesting Childhood : : Autobiography, Trauma, and Memory / / Kate Douglas.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Rutgers University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Douglas, Kate,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2010]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (236 p.) :; 15

The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge in the publication and popularity of autobiographical writings about childhood. Linking literary and cultural studies, Contesting Childhood draws on a varied selection of works from a diverse range of authorsùfrom first-time to experienced writers. Kate Douglas explores Australian accounts of the Stolen Generation, contemporary American and British narratives of abuse, the bestselling memoirs of Andrea Ashworth, Augusten Burroughs, Robert Drewe, Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Pelzer, and Lorna Sage, among many others. Drawing on trauma and memory studies and theories of authorship and readership, Contesting Childhood offers commentary on the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that have shaped this genre. Douglas examines the content of the narratives and the limits of their representations, as well as some of the ways in which autobiographies of youth have become politically important and influential. This study enables readers to discover how stories configure childhood within cultural memory and the public sphere.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Constructing Childhood, Contesting Childhood -- 1. Creating Childhood: Autobiography and Cultural Memory -- 2. Consuming Childhood: Buying and Selling the Autobiographical Child -- 3. Authoring Childhood: The Road to Recovery and Redemption -- 4. Scripts for Remembering: Childhoods and Nostalgia -- 5. Scripts for Remembering: 106 Traumatic Childhoods -- 6. Ethics: Writing about Child Abuse, Writing about Abusive Parents -- 7. The Ethics of Reading: Witnessing Traumatic Childhoods -- Conclusion: Writing Childhood in the Twenty-first Century -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- About the author