Book

Western subjects : autobiographical writing in the North American West / edited by Kathleen Boardman and Gioia Woods.

Salt Lake City : University of Utah Press, 2004.

vi, 447 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

"What, if anything, is western about western American autobiography? The essays in this anthology explore the idea of place as it is revealed in a variety of texts rooted in the West - from a bestselling memoir that connects environmental disruption with the impact of disease on a family, to a Paiute woman's personal history presented in defense of her public activities, to a famous folksinger's "novel" of his life. Whether studying writers such as Terry Tempest Williams, William Kittredge, and Woody Guthrie or lesser known men and women whose autobiographies are grounded in western America, this thorough volume of criticism and scholarship seeks to understand the ways the West takes shape in "lifewriting" as landscape, language, or state of mind."--Jacket.

American prose literature -- West (U.S.) -- History and criticism.

Authors, American -- Homes and haunts -- West (U.S.)

Autobiography.

West (U.S.) -- Biography -- History and criticism.

West (U.S.) -- Intellectual life.

Boardman, Kathleen, 1947-

Woods, Gioia, 1968-

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction : what's western about western autobiography? / Kathleen Boardman and Gioia Woods -- A panel of writers : Julene Bair, Mary Clearman Blew, Norma Elia Cantu, Patricia Hampl, and John Price -- "Gifted with reason" : progressive fictions in two early twentieth-century western autobiographies / Eric Waggoner -- Textual performance and the western frontier : Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins's Life among the Piutes : their wrongs and claims / Danielle Tisinger -- Ecce cowboy : E.C. Abbott's We pointed them north / Richard Hutson -- African-American autobiography and self-publication in the American West / Dan Moos.

Table of contents

2004017797

0874808154

9780874808155

0874808154 (pbk. : alk. paper)

56086044

1

0

1

150892

1

1

810.93278 Western