American Autobiography after 9/11

173 Pages·2017·1.008 MB·English

by  Megan Brown

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American Autobiography after 9/11
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Wis con sin Stud ies in Auto biog ra phy
­william­l.­an­drews
Se ries Ed i tor
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American Autobiography
after 9/11
Megan Brown
T h e U n i v e r s i t y o f W i s c o n s i n P r e s s
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This project has been supported, in part,
by the at .
Center for the Humanities Drake Univesity
The University of Wisconsin Press
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Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
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Copyright © 2017
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any
format or by any means—digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—
or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin
Press. Rights inquiries should be directed to [email protected].
Printed in the United States of America
This book may be available in a digital edition.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brown, Megan (Professor of English), author.
Title: American autobiography after 9/11 / Megan Brown.
Other titles: Wisconsin studies in autobiography.
Description: Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, [2017]
| Series: Wisconsin studies in autobiography
Identifiers: LCCN 2016014712 | ISBN 9780299310301 (cloth: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Autobiography. | American prose literature—History and criticism—
21st century. | Authors, American—Biography—History and criticism.
| Biography as a literary form.
Classification: LCC PS366.A88 B77 2017 | DDC 810.9/492—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014712
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To
and
Jeff Max
For

Marjorie Buddenhagen
1924–2011
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
1 Keeping It Real: “Fraud” Memoirs and Representations
of Ethnic Authenticity 17
2 Learning to Live Again: Contemporary U.S. Memoir as
Biopolitical Self-Care Guide 34
3 Memoirs of Empire: Encountering Difference in the Global
Marketplace 50
4 Babies, Blow Jobs, and Bombs: The Bromoir and/as
Anxiety 65
5 Selling Subjectivity: Business Memoirs as Biopolitical
Management 86
6 The Memoir as Provocation: A Case for “Me Studies”
in Undergraduate Classes 99
Afterword 117
Notes 121
Bibliography 137
Index 145

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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Drake University Center for the Humanities for its financial
support of this project. The center’s grant afforded me the time to finish the
manuscript, and the center itself has long provided a welcoming space for
scholars in Drake’s College of Arts and Sciences to share their work and to learn
from each other. Thanks, too, to Drake’s Department of English and the Joanne
Brown Endowment for assistance with permissions and indexing costs.
Publishing a book is a wonderful but challenging experience, and I thank the
University of Wisconsin Press staff for their kindness, enthusiasm, support, and
guidance throughout the process. My gratitude goes to Series Editor William L.
Andrews, Executive Editor Raphael Kadushin, Senior Editor Sheila McMahon,
Managing Editor Adam Mehring, Acquisitions Assistant Amber Rose, Com-
munications Director Sheila Leary, and Associate Production Manager Carla
Marolt. Also, thanks to Margie Towery for her expert indexing work.
I value the many ways in which my colleagues in the Department of English
have enriched my work and my life. Soon after I arrived at Drake, Joseph
Lenz, then chair of the department and now interim provost of the university,
encouraged me—a junior scholar fresh out of graduate school and most accus-
tomed to instructing business writing classes—to try teaching the upper-level
Reading and Writing Autobiography course. Without his encouragement, I
suspect that my scholarship would have taken a different turn, and without his
kindness, I might not have developed the confidence to start exploring this field
of study.
My dear friend Darcie Vandegrift had the great idea of scheduling a
weekly, unbreakable date to spend time writing together—this small gesture had
a huge impact, as has Darcie’s generous spirit and camaraderie. Another friend
and colleague, Renee Cramer, helped me by talking through (and thereby clari-
fying) some of my introduction’s connections between memoir and the post-
9/11 era. With Darcie, Renee, and many others, I treasure the opportunity to
have conversations across disciplines.

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