Writing Autobiography (ENG3WAB)
Semester 1 / 2016

Texts

Running in the Family, Ondaatje
y separately published work icon Boy, Lost : A Family Memoir Kristina Olsson , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2013 Z1923431 2013 single work biography (taught in 2 units)

'Kristina Olsson's mother lost her infant son, Peter, when he was snatched from her arms as she boarded a train in the hot summer of 1950. She was young and frightened, trying to escape a brutal marriage, but despite the violence and cruelty she'd endured, she was not prepared for this final blow, this breathtaking punishment. Yvonne would not see her son again for nearly 40 years.

'Kristina was the first child of her mother's subsequent, much gentler marriage and, like her siblings, grew up unaware of the reasons behind her mother's sorrow, though Peter's absence resounded through the family, marking each one. Yvonne dreamt of her son by day and by night, while Peter grew up a thousand miles and a lifetime away, dreaming of his missing mother.

'Boy, Lost tells how their lives proceeded from that shattering moment, the grief and shame that stalked them, what they lost and what they salvaged. But it is also the story of a family, the cascade of grief and guilt through generations, and the endurance of memory and faith.' (Publisher's blurb)

y separately published work icon Bad Behaviour : A Memoir of Bullying and Boarding School Rebecca Starford , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2015 8338276 2015 single work autobiography (taught in 2 units)

'It is night. They move with such stealth they could be almost floating along the road. I can't see faces, just the outline of their movement. But when the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, bathing the road in an urgent sort of light, I see how they're all gazing up towards me.

''They're coming back,' I murmur. I turn to Kendall, and she puts her sewing aside, eyes on me. They never waiver.

'It was supposed to be a place where teenagers would learn resilience, confidence and independence, where long hikes and runs in the bush would make their bodies strong and foster a connection with the natural world. Living in bare wooden huts, cut off from the outside world, the students would experience a very different kind of schooling, one intended to have a strong influence over the kind of adults they would eventually become.

'Fourteen-year-old Rebecca Starford spent a year at this school in the bush. In her boarding house sixteen girls were left largely unsupervised, a combination of the worst behaved students and some of the most socially vulnerable. As everyone tried to fit in and cope with their feelings of isolation and homesickness, Rebecca found herself joining ranks with the powerful girls, becoming both a participant–and later a victim–of various forms of bullying and aggression.

'Bad Behaviour tells the story of that year, a time of friendship and joy, but also of shame and fear. It explores how those crucial experiences affected Rebecca as an adult and shaped her future relationships, and asks courageous questions about the nature of female friendship.

'Moving, wise and painfully honest, this extraordinary memoir shows how bad behaviour from childhood, in all its forms, can be so often and so easily repeated throughout our adult lives.' (Publication summary)

Description

In Writing Autobiography, we conduct interlinked experiments in writing and, importantly, reading memoir. Students read and interrogate a range of texts (some explicitly autobiographical and others testing the genre's boundaries). They are encouraged to engage critically with ideas about autobiography, including: the author's relationship to the autobiographical narrative and narrator; ideas about authenticity and the rhetoric of authenticity; ideas about the relationships between gender, voice, bodies, places and identity; forms and genres; self and memory; pasts and presents. Students will write both creative pieces of memoir and reflections on the nature of memoir and personal narrative arising from readings in theoretical and creative texts.

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