Textual Intimacy: Autobiography and Religious Identities

Given its affinity with questions of identity, autobiography offers a way into the interior space between author and reader, especially when writers define themselves in terms of religion. In his exploration of this "textual intimacy," Wesley Kort begins with a theorization of what it means to say who one is and how one's self-account as a religious person stands in relation to other forms of self-identification. He then provides a critical analysis of autobiographical texts by nine contemporary American writers―including Maya Angelou, Philip Roth, and Anne Lamott―who give religion a positive place in their accounts of who they are. Finally, in disclosing his own religious identity, Kort concludes with a meditation on several meanings of the word assumption.

Wesley A. Kort, Professor of Religion at Duke University, is the author of Place and Space in Modern Fiction.