Memory's Stories: Interdisciplinary Readings Of Multicultural Life Narratives

Memory's Stories is an interdisciplinary analysis of multicultural life narratives. The author created an innovative schema to evaluate classic and contemporary texts, synthesizing theoretical perspectives from psychology, literary theory, feminist and multicultural studies. The schema is based on his fifteen years of teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, such as 'Multicultural Autobiographies' and 'Psychology, Multicultural Narratives, and Religion.' Chapter One introduces the author's schema and explores Saint Augustine's The Confessions. Chapter Two uses Erik Erikson's psychosocial development theory to examine Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain. In Chapter Three, the author evaluates Black Elk Speaks and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, using William James's psychology of religion framework. Feminist literary theorists, like Sidonie Smith, provide the critical tools for Chapter Four and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior. In Chapter Five, with Dan McAdams's life story model of identity, the author analyzes three serial autobiographies by Richard Rodriguez: Hunger of Memory; Days of Obligation; and Brown. Chapter Six synthesizes recent interdisciplinary scholarship on redemption stories, innovative composition strategies, and cognitive science research on autobiographical memory, evaluating James McBride's auto/biography, The Color of Water.

Thomas McGovern is a Professor of Psychology and co-founder of the Department of Integrative Studies at Arizona State University at the West Campus. A Fellow of the American Psychological Association and its Society for the Teaching of Psychology, he was the CASE / Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year in Arizona in 2003.