The voice of the mother
Subtitle: embedded maternal narratives in twentieth-century women's autobiographies
By: Jo Malin.
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Carbondale
Language: eng
Number of pages: 120
Subjects: American prose literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism; Autobiography -- Women authors; English prose literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism; American prose literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; English prose literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Women and literature -- English-speaking countries -- History -- 20th century; Narration (Rhetoric) -- History -- 20th century; Mothers and daughters in literature; Mother and child in literature; Motherhood in literature; Mothers in literature
Description: "In The Voice of the Mother, Jo Malin argues that many twentieth-century autobiographies by women contain an intertext, an embedded narrative, which is a biography of the writer/daughter's mother.".

"Analyzing this narrative practice, Malin examines ten texts by women who seem particularly compelled to tell their mothers' stories. Each author is, in fact, able to write her own autobiography only by using a narrative form that contains her mother's story at its core. These texts raise interesting questions about autobiography as a genre and about a feminist writing practice that resists and subverts the dominant literary tradition.".

"Malin theorizes a hybrid form of autobiographical narrative containing an embedded narrative of the mother. This alternative narrative practice - in which the daughter attempts to talk both to her mother and about her - is equally an autobiography and a biography rather than one or the other. The technique is marked by a breakdown of subject/object categories as well as auto/biographical dichotomies of genre. Each text contains a "self" that is more plural than singular, yet neither."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-114) and index.