Table of Contents:
  • 1. Identity and the coming-of-age narrative
  • Recreating womanhood
  • 2. Feminism, autobiography, and theories of subjectivity
  • Feminism and the autobiographical act
  • Western theories of subjectivity
  • Feminist poststructuralist revisions to subjectivity
  • 3. Coming of age in America
  • Historical accounts of adolescence
  • Psychological accounts of adolescence
  • Literary accounts of coming age
  • The coming-of-age-narrative
  • American grand narratives of coming of age
  • 4. Specifying American girlhood : Annie Dillard and Anne Moody
  • Specifying the universal in An American childhood
  • Hegemonic inscription of the body in Coming of age in Mississippi
  • 5. "Lying contests" : fictional autobiography and autobiographical fiction
  • "Lying contests" : signifying coming of age Janie's ways of knowing
  • 6. "Room for paradoxes" : creating a hybrid identity
  • A "World of paper strengths" : the education of Kate Simon
  • Mythology and narrative in the creation of identity: the Woman warrior.