Western Subjects

What, if anything, is western about western American autobiography? The essays in this anthology explore the idea of place as it is revealed in a variety of texts rooted in the West--from a bestselling memoir that connects environmental disruption with the impact of disease on a family, to a Paiute woman's personal history presented in defense of her public activities, to a famous folksinger's "novel" of his life. Whether studying writers such as Terry Tempest Williams, William Kittredge, and Woody Guthrie or lesser known men and women whose autobiographies are grounded in western America, this thorough volume of criticism and scholarship seeks to understand the ways the West takes shape in "lifewriting" as landscape, language, or state of mind.