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Telling True Stories Week 6 - Coggle Diagram
Telling True Stories Week 6
Autofiction
Fiction of strictly real events.
Genre for anybody
Presenting your events but taking it to a more symbolic terms.
Doesn't have to be completely 100% accurate
Creating yourself as something that overlaps with the truth.
James Frey
Wrote a memoir and had it published as a memoir
Oprah was his biggest advocate
A lot of it was fiction rather than fact.
Said he assaulted a police officer but really he was just given a speeding ticket.
Set texts
Nina Bouraoui
We the animals
Not looking at how he classifies it
Not writing as themselves but rather unnamed narrators
Tara June Winch
Not writing as themselves but rather unnamed narrators
Is Autofiction Life Writing?
It can be but may also not be
Not complete truth but not complete fiction
Life Writing
Biography
Autobiography
Memoir
Letters
Diaried
Journals
Oral histories
Essays
Film
Graphic novel
Online
Anthropology
Kacandes
Autofiction is not life writing
The pact
A promise to the reader that he text concerns the life of the author, narrator and protagonist and this serves as 'proof of honesty'
For it to be life writing it has to be consistent with this pact
Where does that leave autofiction
Can be a type of life writing
Genre for rule benders
'fiction life writing text'
Does complicate the genesis of life writing
Isn't life writing but it can be.
But why
More than just a non fiction or fiction
It allows a more room for interpretation
More interesting for the writer and reader
Can be seen as more self conscious
If it is one part that isn't 100% true and people judge it then it doesn't hit as hard.
Writing from the soul wound
If you can't remember precisely you can still write about the memory and express the emotions
Experience or theme to express to the audience but nothing personally to express.
Have a greater influence
Perspectives
Some are told from minorities
Not always told from minorities
Key powers is that it enables minority stories to be shared
Allows trauma to be shared because of the distancing
The elements
Author/Narrator/Character, it kind of isn't really them but it is
Development of literary fiction
use you real name
use a pseudonym
Don't use a name at all
Literary existence, you crafted in a literary form
Creating your identity through reflections on issues such as relationships, future , career
Oscillation between non-fiction and fiction
Format supports the focus, it's just how you write it.
Focus on self Jane Winch
Our understanding of who we are and who other people are and reciprocally other peoples understanding of themselves and of others (which includes us)
Holding onto her pain which forms who she is
I remember the day I found out my mother was head sick
Mum's sad emerald eyes bled through her black canvas and tortured willow hair
Tortured child and how her childhood events impacted her identity
Focus on self Bouraoui
When I begin to write, my first creation is a woman, a woman abused. I don't realize I'm sketching a portrait of mother.
Torres - focus on self
Family unit and brothers.
Transformation from we to I as he is separated from his family.
As he is separating from his brothers the imagery is so visceral that it describes beautifully what happens
Oscillation
Bouraoui explicitly tells the reader that it is not autobiography
Winch tells us that the way she is describing her mother is not solid truth because the memory is lost
Format supports focus
Torres - 'We want more', 'Other locusts', 'The night I am made'
Bouraoui - 'Becoming', 'Remembering', 'Knowing', 'Being'
Winch 'Swallow the air', 'Cloud busting', 'The Jacaranda Tree'
Dinkus
Signals that the narrative perspective is changing
Paragraph breaks between parts of a story
Not Veiled autobiography
Autofiction is intentional symbolic crafting of a literary existence