Western Subjects
Autobiographical Writing in the North American West

Edited by Kathleen A. Boardman and Gioia Woods

530 pp., 6 x 9
35 illustrations
Paper $24.95
ISBN 978-0-87480-815-5
Literary Criticism/West

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.

Kathleen Boardman is associate professor of English and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Gioia Woods is assistant professor of humanities at Northern Arizona University. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.

“Western Subjects is the most insightful book I’ve ever read about autobiographical writing in general and about western lifewriting in particular. It includes smart essays that touch on ethnic, cultural, and regional complexities, as well as a graceful introduction that places such writing in a thoughtful theoretical context.”
—Ann Ronald, author of The New West of Edward Abbey

A Panel of Writers: Julene Bair, Mary Clearman Blew, Norma Elia Cantú, Patricia Hampl, John Price

“Gifted with Reason”: Progressive Fictions in Two Early Twentieth-Century Western Autobiographies Eric Waggoner

Textual Performance and the Western Frontier: Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins’s Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims Danielle Tisinger

Ecce Cowboy: E. C. Abbott’s We Pointed Them North Richard Hutson

African-American Autobiography and Self-Publication in the American West Dan Moos

Vulgar Words of Language: The Sacred and Profane Hero of Woody Guthrie’s Bound for Glory Edward Shannon

Bringing Mary MacLane Back Home: Western Autobiographical Writing and the Anxiety of Place Julia Watson

Opal Whiteley and the Disappearing Region Cathryn Halverson

Family Memoirs and the Mexican Diaspora: John Rechy, John Phillip Santos, and Pat Mora Bert Almon

Labored Realisms: Geopolitical Rhetoric and Asian American and Asian (Im)migrant Women’s (Auto)biography Wendy S. Hesford and Theresa A. Kulbaga

Sentimental Eco-Memoir: Refuge, Hole in the Sky, and the Necessary Reader Tara Penry

The Erosion of Memory: Deep Mapping an Alaskan Landscape of Loss in Sheila Nickerson’s Disappearance: A Map Susan Naramore Maher

Prepositional Spaces: Family Photographs, History, and Storytelling in Memoirs by Contemporary Western Writers Melody Graulich

“Settling Down” in Western Nebraska: Grounding Local History through Memoir Charlotte Hogg