In Her Own Words: Women's Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780679781530)

Jill Ker Conway, author of one of the most celebrated memoirs of recent decades, is also the premier anthologist of women's autobiographical writing. In Her Own Words is Conway's distillation of women's experience from the British Commonwealth world she came from, compared with major themes in women's lives in the United States, which is now her home.

In this dazzling collection, we meet twelve remarkable women--from Shirley Chisholm, the West Indian-raised girl who became the first black woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, to Janet Frame, the brilliant New Zealand writer who overcame involuntary treatment in a mental institution to write one of the archetypal analyses of the postcolonial experience. We learn how the world of politics and the private self intersect in the four offshoots of the old British world, and see how these women have made a difference--by their honesty, by the scale of their struggle for self-knowledge and autonomy, and by the power of their writing.

Includes writing from:

Patricia Adam-Smith Lillian Hellman
Rosemary Brown Dorothy Hewett
Kim Chernin Robin Hyde
Shirley Chisholm Dorothy Livesay
Lauris Edmond Sally Morgan
Janet Frame Gabrielle Roy

Author: Jill Ker Conway
ISBN-10: 0679781536
ISBN-13: 9780679781530
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Language: English
Published: 03/09/1999
Pages: 624
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.78lbs
Size: 8.72h x 5.60w x 1.55d