Life Writing

“Life writing” is an inclusive term used to describe the multitude of ways people construct “true” stories about their lives and/or the lives of others. The term is often used interchangeably with “life narrative, " “autobiography, " “auto/biography, " “autobiographical fiction, " “biography, " “memoir, " and “first-person media.” There are distinct differences between these alternative terms-particularly as they represent diverse subgenres and movements within what has been historically known as “autobiography.” Though the term “life writing” has been in use since the eighteenth century, it has gained currency in recent times as an umbrella term to represent all forms of nonfictional life-story telling (Jolly; Smith and Watson, 2001). Life writing attempts to circumvent problems associated with the term autobiography-which has historically been associated with an exclusive genre of writing-dominated by portraits of “great men.” Alternative terms such as “memoir” attempted to broaden and reshape the field-to promote life stories that had been excluded by the limits of autobiography. Life writing proposes to broaden the parameters of life and self-representation even further, to promote a greater inclusive-ness, and to provide a site for the cross-examination of an expansive set of life-story texts. Life writing considers the multitude of ways that people narrate their lives and the lives of others, in light of the texts and technologies people use to record these lives. Thus the term “life writing” has come to encompass texts other than written texts-oral testimony, artifacts, visual texts (photography, film, on-line media), and so on (Jolly, ix).