Contesting Childhood

Price: $23.95

Subtitle: Autobiography, Trauma, and Memory
Author: Kate Douglas
Subject: Childhood Studies, Literary Studies, American Studies
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4664-3
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4663-6
Pages: 208 pages
Publication Date: January 2010
Series: Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

Praise for Contesting Childhood

"Contesting Childhood offers a synoptic, multifaceted analysis, in clear accessible prose, of a life writing genre of great contemporary interest. It should become an indispensable resource on its topic."—G. Thomas Couser, author of Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing

The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge in the publication and popularity of autobiographical writings about childhood. Linking literary and cultural studies, Contesting Childhood draws on a varied selection of works from a diverse range of authors—from first-time to experienced writers. Kate Douglas explores Australian accounts of the Stolen Generation, contemporary American and British narratives of abuse, the bestselling memoirs of Andrea Ashworth, Augusten Burroughs, Robert Drewe, Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Pelzer, and Lorna Sage, among many others.  

Drawing on trauma and memory studies and theories of authorship and readership, Contesting Childhood offers commentary on the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that have shaped this genre. Douglas examines the content of the narratives and the limits of their representations, as well as some of the ways in which autobiographies of youth have become politically important and influential.  This study enables readers to discover how stories configure childhood within cultural memory and the public sphere.