My Autobiography of Carson McCullers bookcover

My Autobiography of Carson McCullers

A Memoir
4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world

Description

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

PublisherTin House Books
Publish DateJanuary 05, 2021
Pages296
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9781951142292
Dimensions8.4 X 5.4 X 0.9 inches | 0.7 pounds

About the Author

Jenn Shapland's work won a 2017 Pushcart Prize and fellowships/residencies at Ucross, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Yaddo, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, and Vermont Studio Center. Her essays have been published in Tin House, THE Magazine, Pastelegram, The Lifted Brow, Electric Literature, NANOfiction, and The Millions. She teaches in the Creative Writing department at the Institute of American Indian Arts and has a PhD in English from UT Austin. She designs and makes clothing for Agnes. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Reviews

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 herself has made a major contribution to the genre of autobiography.-- "The Phi Beta Kappa Society"
A truly brilliant approach to biography. Bold, brave and fascinating.-- "The Charlotte Observer"
My Autobiography Of Carson McCullers asks sharp questions not just about the details of McCullers' life but, more broadly, how we understand historical figures who confound the social expectations of their time (and our own) and how, in turn, they can help us understand ourselves.-- "NPR"
A beautiful consideration of the nature of proof, and of self and identity and queerness and history and progress.-- "Vox"
A beautifully written and hard-to-categorize meditation on Carson McCullers and the hidden literary history of queer women.-- "Literary Hub"
A fascinating and intimate examination of the work of archives, research and historic preservation as well as the arc of identity and social construction. . . . [an] idiosyncratic and entirely winning book.-- "Observer"
A gorgeous, brilliant book.-- "Electric Literature"
A moving record of love at the margins.-- "The New Yorker"
A succinct, thought-provoking exploration of women's sexuality and the language that has been used to describe and limit our desires throughout history.-- "GOOP"
A treatise on seeing yourself in someone else.-- "Bustle"
An exquisitely rendered map of discovery--of an icon, and of a self.-- "Lambda Literary"
An intriguing, genre-blending debut.-- "Chicago Tribune"
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"
Positively breathtaking.-- "Forbes"
Revelatory.-- "O, The Oprah Magazine"
Sensational.-- "Star Tribune"
Shapland brings a sharp modern lens to her reading of McCullers' (and her own) life.-- "A.V. Club"
Stimulating . . . part fan letter, part detective story, and part steely corrective.-- "The New York Review of Books"
The kind of state-of-the-form reckoning that makes one wish there were more like it.-- "The New York Times Book Review"
This book will change the way you think about the truth.-- "Autostraddle"
Two books in one: an examination of a famous author whose narrative has been posthumously taken away from her, but also a vital memoir of Shapland's own experience as a queer woman looking for stories about people like her.-- "Harper's BAZAAR"
You do not need to be a queer woman, a lover of Carson McCuller's fiction, or interested in the mysterious junctures between our own lives and those of our favorite artists to love this book, but for those of us who are those things, Jenn Shapland's memoir is a particular trove of delights. My favorite biographies are full of historical literary gossip and interested in the shadow selves of public persons. My favorite memoirs are those that scrutinize the self as an unreliable source of narrative truth and the one we must nonetheless rely upon. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers manages to do all of this in earnest and honest and riveting vignettes. It is a detective story and a dissection of selfhood, a puzzle every piece of which pleased me as it clicked into place.--Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood
A mystery, a love story, a biography, several hearts on the page--I so loved this generous offering.--Molly Moore, BookPeople
Gorgeous, symphonic, tender, and brilliant.--Carmen Maria Machado, author of In The Dream House
Lucid, distilled, and honest.--Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
Mind-bending!--Emma Straub, Books Are Magic
Remarkable. . . . A biography that's also a memoir, a story of obsession and longing.--R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

Earn by promoting books

Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.sign up to affiliate program link
Become an affiliate