My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir
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.
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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.
A moving record of love at the margins.
The kind of state-of-the-form reckoning that makes one wish there were more like it.
An intriguing, genre-blending debut.
Mind-bending!--Emma Straub, Books Are Magic
A beautifully written and hard-to-categorize meditation on Carson McCullers and the hidden literary history of queer women.
A mystery, a love story, a biography, several hearts on the page--I so loved this generous offering.--Molly Moore, BookPeople
A treatise on seeing yourself in someone else.
An exquisitely rendered map of discovery--of an icon, and of a self.
This book will change the way you think about the truth.
Shapland brings a sharp modern lens to her reading of McCullers' (and her own) life.
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?
This book uncovers ways women's queer history has been ignored. It's a personal, powerful, genre-bending account of literary discovery.
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.
Positively breathtaking.
Revelatory.
Stimulating . . . part fan letter, part detective story, and part steely corrective.
A succinct, thought-provoking exploration of women's sexuality and the language that has been used to describe and limit our desires throughout history.
Gorgeous, symphonic, tender, and brilliant.--Carmen Maria Machado, author of In The Dream House
Lucid, distilled, and honest.--Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
Remarkable. . . . A biography that's also a memoir, a story of obsession and longing.--R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
A gorgeous, brilliant book.
A beautiful consideration of the nature of proof, and of self and identity and queerness and history and progress.
