Telling Political Lives: The Rhetorical Autobiographies of Women Leaders in the United States

This book investigates the autobiographical writings of Barbara Jordan, Patricia Schroeder, Geraldine Ferraro, Elizabeth Dole, Wilma Mankiller, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Christine Todd Whitman. These eight women represent the diversity that permeates the cultural backgrounds, life adventures, and ideologies women bring to the political table. From differences in race, class, and geographic location, to variations in personal and family experiences, religious beliefs, and political ideology, these women illustrate many of the divergent standpoints from which women craft their lives in the United States. Each essay focuses on the autobiographical text as political discourse and therefore, as an appropriate site for the rhetorical construction of a personal and civic self situated within local and national political communities.

The collection examines issues such as the intersection between the "politicization of the private and the personalization of the public

Brenda DeVore Marshall is professor of theatre and communication arts at Linfield College in Oregon. Molly A. Mayhead is professor of speech communication at Western Oregon University.