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The Communal "I": Exclusion And Belonging In American Autobiography, Melissa Coss Aquino
The Communal "I": Exclusion And Belonging In American Autobiography, Melissa Coss Aquino
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
The Communal “I” in American autobiography emerges as an aesthetic response to the pressure of using “the master’s tools” to write from a community on the margins to disclose identity in the conflicts of exclusion and belonging. In this case “the master’s tools” to refer to several distinct elements the communal “I” is tasked with navigating: the use of what we have come to identify as standard English, the form and function of European autobiography as a celebration of individual exceptionalism, and the contradictory pressures on these autobiographies to both elevate and protect the communities in question from further marginalization. …