num_pages: 266
description: My Autobiography of Carson McCullers is an audacious new form of nonfiction that remakes the boundaries between criticism biography and autobiography in search of two identities.While working as an intern in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center Jenn Shapland encounters the love letters of Carson and a woman named Annemarieletters are that are tender intimate and unabashed in their feelings. Shapland recognizes herself in the letters languagebut does not see Carson as history has portrayed her.And so Shapland is compelled to undertake a recovery of the full narrative and language of Carson's life: She wades through the therapy transcripts; she stays at Carsons childhood home where she lounges in her bathtub and eats delivery pizza; she relives Carsons days at her beloved Yaddo. As Shapland reckons with the expanding and collapsing distance between her and Carson she see the way Carsons story has become a way to articulate something about herself. The results articulate something entirely new not only about this one remarkable walleyed life but about the way we tell queer love stories. In genre-defying vignettes Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullerss to create a vital new portrait of one of Americas most beloved writers and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are. In genre-defying vignettes Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullerss to create a vital new portrait of one of Americas most beloved writers and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.
language: English
title: My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
publisher: Tin House Books