| Shame is an emotion that has begun to be examined by literary critics and other scholars in the growing cross-disciplinary field of affect studies. Memoirs by authors with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) that demonstrate a common theme of ADHD-related shame provide a valuable and so far unexamined lens through which to further investigate the personal and textual effects of shame. To that end, this literary study analyzes three such works: Bryan L. Hutchinson's One Boy's Struggle: A Memoir: Surviving Life with Undiagnosed ADD (2008), Robert Jergen's The Little Monster: Growing Up with ADHD (2004), and Blake E. S. Taylor's ADHD and Me: What I Learned from Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table (2008). It argues that each of these memoirs not only depicts but also enacts its author moving from a past self marked by shame caused by ruptured relationships with himself and others to a present self characterized by some level of what Brene Brown terms "shame resilience." It further posits that this movement takes the form of a three-stage progression, from trauma to conversion to testimony. This study explores how these works constitute a hybrid genre of memoir and self-help in which the authors write not only to provide witness and testimony to injustice and to help readers but also to connect with their audience as they contribute their voices to the affective archive of ADHD life-writing. It suggests that these authors' strategies of self-reclamation have something useful to offer readers with and without ADHD who attempt to maintain a sense of self unmired in shame within today's rapidly changing, stimulus-intensive society. |
