Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color - 105

In their 1994 article, The Changing Critical Canon, Bloom and Yu [1] note that, although, autobiography has not always been a genre given much critical attention, it has, nonetheless, been a favored one of writers. They cite Louis Kaplan’s [2] Bibliography of American Autobiographies (1961), which brings together 6,400 booklength autobiographies published before 1945 and Bloom’s bibliographic work with Briscoe and Tobias [3], American Autobiography, 1945-1980 (1982), which brings together 5,000 autobiographies (Bloom, 169). Additionally, my own bibliographic work with Deborah Stuhr Iwabuchi [4] resulted in two publications that bring together and provide annotations for over 1,000 autobiographies written by Americans of Color, published or reissued in new editions between 1980 and 2000 (Stuhr 1997, Iwabuchi, 2003) [5]. Additionally, other important bibliographies include those by Russell Brignano [6]: Black Americans in Autobiography: An Annotated Bibliography of Autobiographies and Autobiographical Books Written Since the Civil War (1974); William Andrews [7]: To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865 (1986); H. David Brumble III. An Annotated Bibliography of American Indian and Eskimo Autobiographies (1981) and his “Supplement” in Western American Literature (1982) [8, 9]; and Lynne Wood O’Brien’s [10] Plains Indian Autobiographies (1973). The extent of these resources both document and highlight the prevalence and importance of autobiography as a genre that provides a vehicle not only for self-examination, but that allows the writers of autobiography to place themselves within the context of a history that, as it has been written, all too often neglects the common, everyday, oppressed and marginalized individual. However, what we discover in reading these narratives is that these writers have been broadly influential and personally and socially triumphant. The unique perspective that is shared through autobiography makes possible a deeper understanding of events, times of change and revolution, or a rethinking of the status quo. All of this means that it is important that each autobiography should be part of the permanent record of our cultural and political history. Autobiographers take some of the most intimate aspects of their lives, and publish them to a wide audience. If they are honest they not only present their accomplishments but also reveal their mistakes, weaknesses, and failings—characteristics that allow the reader to see the writer as an ordinary human and not a superhuman of mythic proportions. If they are thoughtful, they place their lives within a historical context of events, family, mentors, neighbors and neighborhoods. Perhaps they look to the importance of institutions, cultural practices, or spiritual beliefs and communities. By committing one’s life story to the permanent, printed, published record, that individual’s story becomes part of history: a fragment of history to be discovered and absorbed, and that may make its way into the collective memory, or common shared experience of the nation. The literature on autobiography ranges from exploring the definition of the genre, to looking specifically at the autobiographers from particular groups. Those critics writing about the autobiographies of Americans who are not part of the dominant culture view the genre as an empowering tool. Susanna Egan [11] writes in her 1987 article, The Changing Faces of Heroism, that the autobiographer writing from within a circle of power and status “could assume . . . the value of their lives to society” (Egan, 21). She finds that the newest autobiographers do not come from the cultural elite, but from “the minorities of our culture who write precisely because of their lack of other kinds of power and their need to be heard” (Egan, 23). Looking at autobiography in a somewhat different light, Emmanuel Nelson [12], in his preface to African American Autobiographers: A Sourcebook (2002) describes autobiography, and in particular the narrative of fugitive slaves, as “carefully crafted instruments of resistance,” and 105

Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color

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