American Autobiography after 9/11 PDF
Preview American Autobiography after 9/11
UWP: Brown: American Autobiography after 9/11 pagei American Autobiography after 9/11 UWP: Brown: American Autobiography after 9/11 pageii Wis con sin Stud ies in Auto biog ra phy williaml.andrews Se ries Ed i tor UWP: Brown: American Autobiography after 9/11 pageiii American Autobiography after 9/11 Megan Brown T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f W i s c o n s i n P r e s s UWP: Brown: American Autobiography after 9/11 pageiv This project has been supported, in part, by the at . Center for the Humanities Drake Univesity The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059 uwpress.wisc.edu 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden London WC2E 8LU, United Kingdom eurospanbookstore.com Copyright © 2017 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any format or by any means—digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise— or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. Rights inquiries should be directed to [email protected]. Printed in the United States of America This book may be available in a digital edition. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Brown, Megan (Professor of English), author. Title: American autobiography after 9/11 / Megan Brown. Other titles: Wisconsin studies in autobiography. Description: Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, [2017] | Series: Wisconsin studies in autobiography Identifiers: LCCN 2016014712 | ISBN 9780299310301 (cloth: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Autobiography. | American prose literature—History and criticism— 21st century. | Authors, American—Biography—History and criticism. | Biography as a literary form. Classification: LCC PS366.A88 B77 2017 | DDC 810.9/492—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014712 UWP: Brown: American Autobiography after 9/11 pagev To and Jeff Max For Marjorie Buddenhagen 1924–2011 UWP: Brown: American Autobiography after 9/11 pagevi blank UWP: Brown: American Autobiography after 9/11 pagevii Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 1 Keeping It Real: “Fraud” Memoirs and Representations of Ethnic Authenticity 17 2 Learning to Live Again: Contemporary U.S. Memoir as Biopolitical Self-Care Guide 34 3 Memoirs of Empire: Encountering Difference in the Global Marketplace 50 4 Babies, Blow Jobs, and Bombs: The Bromoir and/as Anxiety 65 5 Selling Subjectivity: Business Memoirs as Biopolitical Management 86 6 The Memoir as Provocation: A Case for “Me Studies” in Undergraduate Classes 99 Afterword 117 Notes 121 Bibliography 137 Index 145 vii UWP: Brown: American Autobiography after 9/11 pageviii blank UWP: Brown: American Autobiography after 9/11 pageix Acknowledgments I am grateful to the Drake University Center for the Humanities for its financial support of this project. The center’s grant afforded me the time to finish the manuscript, and the center itself has long provided a welcoming space for scholars in Drake’s College of Arts and Sciences to share their work and to learn from each other. Thanks, too, to Drake’s Department of English and the Joanne Brown Endowment for assistance with permissions and indexing costs. Publishing a book is a wonderful but challenging experience, and I thank the University of Wisconsin Press staff for their kindness, enthusiasm, support, and guidance throughout the process. My gratitude goes to Series Editor William L. Andrews, Executive Editor Raphael Kadushin, Senior Editor Sheila McMahon, Managing Editor Adam Mehring, Acquisitions Assistant Amber Rose, Com- munications Director Sheila Leary, and Associate Production Manager Carla Marolt. Also, thanks to Margie Towery for her expert indexing work. I value the many ways in which my colleagues in the Department of English have enriched my work and my life. Soon after I arrived at Drake, Joseph Lenz, then chair of the department and now interim provost of the university, encouraged me—a junior scholar fresh out of graduate school and most accus- tomed to instructing business writing classes—to try teaching the upper-level Reading and Writing Autobiography course. Without his encouragement, I suspect that my scholarship would have taken a different turn, and without his kindness, I might not have developed the confidence to start exploring this field of study. My dear friend Darcie Vandegrift had the great idea of scheduling a weekly, unbreakable date to spend time writing together—this small gesture had a huge impact, as has Darcie’s generous spirit and camaraderie. Another friend and colleague, Renee Cramer, helped me by talking through (and thereby clari- fying) some of my introduction’s connections between memoir and the post- 9/11 era. With Darcie, Renee, and many others, I treasure the opportunity to have conversations across disciplines. ix one line long
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