Abstract:

Adopting a boldly innovative approach to women’s autobiographical writing, Francoise Lionnet here examines the rhetoric of self-portraiture in works the authors of which are bilingual or multilingual or of mixed races or culture. Autobiographical Voices offers incisive readings of autobiographical texts by the Afro-Americans Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou; Marie Cardinal, a Franco-Algerian; the Caribbean writer Maryse Conde; Marie-Therese Humbert, from Mauritius and two canonical male figures, Augustine and Nietzsche.