Analysis Of Telling Women's Lives By Judi Long

This is how Judi Long, the author of Telling Women's Lives: Subject/ Narrator/ Reader/ Text, opines when she refers to Audre Lorde’s (1934-1992) Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, A Biomythography (1982). Long’s comment speaks volumes on the notion of a woman’s autobiography that denies traditional generic approach. Long aptly observes that the women autobiographers such as Toni Morrison (1931-), Maxine Hong Kingston (1940-), Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) and Kate Millett(1934-2017) have denied ‘the leanness of generic autobiography’ and written their autobiographies in ‘the form of fiction’. Hence, ‘Telling women's lives often involves new or mixed genres’, asserts Long, because of the ‘messy accounts’ they have incorporated into

Edward (Ted) Warburton, Assistant Professor, Theater Arts Department, University of California, Santa Cruz in his paper “Movement Research in the New Arts Praxis” defines biomythography. He writes, “Biomythography is the weaving together of myth, history and biography in epic narrative form, a style of composition that represents all the ways in which we perceive the world” (1). Warburton’s definition corresponds to what Long terms "Messiness" in her book. No doubt, this “Messiness” is largely occasioned by “weaving together of myth, history and biography” in a narrative that rejects traditional definition of an autobiography. Secondly, another important point which we find here is that Prof. Warburton considers biomythography as “a style of composition” (emphasis added), a point noted already by Long when she considers “Messiness” as “an element of style’

But at the same time, we are assured that as a creative writer she is “honest”. She is evidently “authentic” in her description. In conversation with Eunice De Souza, she once said, “When you write about your own feelings, it is authentic. I like authenticity” (Das 33). Hence, whether Das’s autobiography is a fiction or not is only a matter of scholarly investigation. But it can vigorously be said that what she has described in her writing is out and out “honest” and “authentic”. Because of her honesty and authenticity in approach, Das is always sincere to her writing which she chose as a vehicle to liberate her oppressed self from the patriarchal