Blog 2

In the past, my definition of autobiography used to be a true and complete representation of the real life of the author, just like a realistic narrative film to represent the whole life experience of the author to the readers. But, Scott’s “Experience” has changed my notion of autography to be a polished or embellished work piece for experience is not equal to truth. Because what the authors wrote was what they felt, thought and saw, the real facts have been mixed and polished by their own opinion. And not every specific part of their life was presented in the autobiography. So the autobiography is not as true, complete, and unchanged as I used to think.

Now that the autobiography has been embellished by the author, this fact forms the one of the reasons why people read autobiography to some extent. People who read the autography are interested and care about the author, so they are curious about not only the story written in the autography, but also the information of the author hidden behind the autography. The very information, forms the very autography for the identity, gender, religion, race, experience and something like that have form the author’s philosophy, world view, sense of worth and ideology which the author used to us a different life representation of his/her own. That means a special identity has formed a special angle of view such as women, black man, and homosexual. In “A Tool Kit” written by Smith& Watson, we know that an autobiography has a strong relationship with  “authorship and historical moment” (Smith& Watson 165), “the history of reading publics” (Smith& Watson 167) and “identity” (Smith& Watson 168). So we could get conclusion that one of the reasons people read autobiography is that they wonder the effect on the autobiography of the authors’ gender, race, sex orientation and so on.

What’s more, the “cracks” formed by the special identity of the authors have also offered the opportunities for the feminist theorists. Through these “cracks”, the feminist theorist could discover the historical background, the special experience, and the contradictions of the author. The more they learn from the author, the more they deal with the feminism. That’s why the feminist theorist could find opportunity in the “cracks” of the autobiographical works.