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Description
Winner of the Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Winner of a Lambda Literary Award
Finalist for the National Book Award
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
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.
Product Details
| Publisher | Brilliance Audio |
| Publish Date | March 10, 2020 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  CD-Audio |
| EAN/UPC | 9781713501732 |
| Dimensions | 6.7 X 5.3 X 0.5 inches | 0.1 pounds |
About the Author
Reviews
"Jenn Shapland's narration of her audiobook embodies a deeply personal journey.... Her performance feels like an intimate podcast. Shapland's voice reflects her self-discovery, making this listening experience seem far too short."
--AudioFile Magazine
"A hard-won inquiry into how we seek out the truth of ourselves and others in ways that often, by necessity, aren't straightforward, that arrive in our lives in glimmering bits and shards. . . . Shapland's book is the kind of state-of-the-form reckoning that makes one wish there were more like it."
- The New York Times Book Review
"An unpretentious, moving record of love at the margins."
- The New Yorker
"Following along with Shapland-as-detective is a delight, and the mystery she sets out to solve is one of those wicked unsolvables: how do we account for the apertures in language, history, and identity?"
- The Los Angeles Review of Books
"Her stimulating book is part fan letter, part detective story, and part steely corrective."
- The New York Review of Books
"This book will change the way you think about the truth. . . . Shapland possesses the perfect storm of talents to push McCullers's love life, and beautiful writing, into the light of this century during a moment when we need all the queer heroes we can get."
- Autostraddle
"This is a gorgeous, brilliant book that is all but guaranteed to resonate with queer folks, word nerds, and readers everywhere."
- Electric Literature
"This book uncovers ways women's queer history has been ignored. It's a personal, powerful, genre-bending account of literary discovery."
- Book Riot, "Best Books of 2020"
"Shapland interweaves candid self-questioning and revealing personal stories with a nuanced portrait of a writer who confessed her loves were 'untouchable' and her feelings 'inarticulable.' A sensitive chronicle of a biographer's search for truth."
- Kirkus Reviews
"Sleek, elegant. . . . both a memoir of her own coming-out and a nuanced exploration of her magnificent obsession with the Georgia author known for her sensitive portrayals of misfits."
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"A fine narrative of how the best writers express the deepest secrets of the heart."
- Library Journal
"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."
--Maggie Nelson
"You don't have to be a Carson McCullers fan to admire this remarkable book. It's a biography that's also a memoir, a story of obsession and longing. Captivating and trenchant and moving, Shapland's genre-mixing debut will stay with me a long time."
--R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
"Gorgeous, symphonic, tender, and brilliant, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers is a monumental achievement. In this genre-bending work of nonfiction, Shapland brings the full weight of her intellect to bear on one of literature's most important questions: How do queer readers find the truth―and themselves―between the lines?"
--Carmen Maria Machado
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