My Autobiography of Carson McCullers

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fiction

How do you tell the real story of someone misremembered - an icon and idol - alongside your own? Jenn Shapland's celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploration of one of America's most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memory, obsession, and love.

Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. Though Shapland recognizes herself in the letters, which are intimate and unabashed in their feelings, she does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. Her curiosity gives way to fixation, not just with this newly discovered side of McCullers's life, but with how we tell queer love stories. Why, Shapland asks, are the stories of women paved over by others' narratives? What happens when constant revision is required of queer women trying to navigate and self-actualize in straight spaces? And what might the tracing of McCullers's life?her history, her secrets, her legacy?reveal to Shapland about herself?

In smart, illuminating prose, Shapland interweaves her own story with McCullers's to create a vital new portrait of one of our nation's greatest literary treasures, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.

About the author

Jenn Shapland is a writer and archivist living in New Mexico. Her first book, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Lambda Literary award. Her essays have won a Pushcart Prize, a Rabkin Foundation Award for art journalism, and a Howard Foundation Fellowship. She has a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently writing a collection of essays called Thin Skin.

Summary

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fiction

How do you tell the real story of someone misremembered - an icon and idol - alongside your own? Jenn Shapland's celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploration of one of America's most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memory, obsession, and love.

Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. Though Shapland recognizes herself in the letters, which are intimate and unabashed in their feelings, she does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. Her curiosity gives way to fixation, not just with this newly discovered side of McCullers's life, but with how we tell queer love stories. Why, Shapland asks, are the stories of women paved over by others' narratives? What happens when constant revision is required of queer women trying to navigate and self-actualize in straight spaces? And what might the tracing of McCullers's life?her history, her secrets, her legacy?reveal to Shapland about herself?

In smart, illuminating prose, Shapland interweaves her own story with McCullers's to create a vital new portrait of one of our nation's greatest literary treasures, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.

Foreword

A genre-defying examination of identity, queerness and love in the vein of Maggie Nelson's Argonauts

Additional text

In lucid, distilled, honest prose, Jenn Shapland teaches us about McCullers, the desire for recognition, loneliness, the complexities of queer history, the seductions and resistances of the archive and, all throughout, love

Report

Weaves together biography and memoir . . . Shards of the author's own life glitter amid the story of McCullers's triumphs and struggles . . . A lively cast of walk-on characters includes Tennessee Williams, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Sitwell and Robert Lowell . . . But it is Shapland's identification with her subject that energises the book . . . Only an accomplished writer could marshal this tricky material in order to enmesh two stories. The reader sees McCullers afresh in these pages . . . The politics of female queerness are central to this book, and Shapland handles the subject adroidy. At the same time, this volume, which I admire and recommend without reservation, speaks clearly and universally of the human heart, and specifically of the human heart in conflict with itself Sara Wheeler Literary Review

Product details

• Authors: Jenn Shapland
• Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.04.2021
• EAN: 9780349015675
• ISBN: 978-0-349-01567-5
• No. of pages: 288
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 232 mm x 26 mm
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, Biography: general