Turning points: Autobiography and the anthology in the late twentieth century United States

This dissertation examines the parallel structures of the turning point in autobiography, the excerpt in the anthology, and the production of single categories of identity used by identity politics to argue that these three constructions mask the contradictions of experience in the late twentieth century United States. By focusing on life's “turning points,” or by using excerpts to stand in for a larger whole, the writing practices that shape autobiographies and anthologies reflect and reinforce the deployment of singular identity categories to capture a range of cultural and historical experience. Looking at anthologies of autobiographical excerpts organized around categories like “race,” “ethnicity,” and “sexuality,” this project argues that anthologies have become a kind of technology that produces identity in the late twentieth century United States. Individual chapters examine the Avon Press “Growing Up” series of anthologies, anthologies of coming out stories, as well as other autobiographies and anthologies. Linking the pedagogical uses of anthologies, the rhetorical practices of autobiography, and the political methods of identity politics, Turning Points argues that too often such modes frame identity-production in terms of a developmental model according to which particular cultural groups, as well as individuals within them, “come of age.” This erases the history of each group and neglects the fact that often what has actually “come of age” are not the groups themselves, but white or mainstream acceptance of them. Arguing that the anthology should not be treated as a table of contents, but as a genre in its own right, this dissertation demonstrates the editor's role in shaping cultural identity. However, I also argue that it is not inevitable that anthologies will homogenize cultural experience. Rather, the anthology form can not only model the fissures and diversity within identity categories, but also the kinds of collaborative scholarship often taken up by interdisciplinary programs that engage with minority cultural identities.