Chapter 23 - Can Cups Be Books? Or, Other Ways to Recognize African American Autobiography

Summary

Foster argues for an expansion of the designation autobiography so that it signifies a consciously composed narrative of one’s own life experiences or a portion of one’s experiences. Foster observes when institutions collect the personal papers of ordinary people, the bus drivers and butlers, clerks, factory workers, farmers, nurses and nannies, even their own staff, in addition to those accumulated by the celebrated and the notorious, they find themselves in possession of scrapbooks, diaries, and other printed stories previously unknown. Still, such autobiographical works are more readily found in attics than in archives. They often are consciously compiled, handmade, homemade, spiral bound, tied, glued or artfully bound in specially purchased “albums,” “memory books,” “conference proceedings,” souvenir programs, organization minutes, and so forth. An expanded definition of African American autobiography that includes these texts provides a richer, more complex and textured view of what African American lived experience has been across time.