Biography, vol. 20, no. 2 (Spring 1997)

Editor's Note, p. iii

ARTICLES

Deafness and Deftness in CODA Autobiography: Ruth Sidransky's In Silence and Lou Ann Walker's A Loss for Words, pp. 141-155
Timothy Dow Adams
This essay discusses two autobiographies by CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults) in which issues of language, naming, translation, and identity call into question some of autobiography's most basic questions. Parallels with native American autobiography, captivity narratives, and métissage help situate these narratives within a larger generic framework.

The Will of Katherine Maynwaring: An Autobiographical Reading, pp. 156-180
Joanne Lafler
Katherine Maynwaring wrote her will in 1764, adding fourteen codicils over the next fifteen years. The result is a narrative of the last years in the life of a woman who would probably not have written her memoirs. The analysis argues that women's wills should be included among non-traditional autobiographical texts.

M. F. K. Fisher and the Embodiment of Desire: A Study in Autobiography and Food as Metaphor, pp. 181-202
Julie D. Campbell
Drawing on Kristeva's theory of the foreigner as other, this article explores how M. F. K. Fisher's exposure to European culture helped to form her tastes, desires, and views of the United States. An examination of her culinary metaphors reveals the way that food, symbolic of culture and personal taste, creates Barthes's "system of communication," signifying the symbiotic relationship between Fisher's writing about food and writing her life.

SKETCHES FROM LIFE

God Bless Kitty Kelly, Or, Biography High and Low, pp. 203-208
Carl Rollyson
At the Biography Seminar on the New York University Campus, biographers debate the claim that there is little difference between the high and low of biography, between Richard Ellmann and Kitty Kelley. But there is much to be said for Kelley and a school of biography that is as reckless and dynamic as our greatest novelists.

REVlEWS, pp. 209-227
Reviews of new books.

REVIEWED ELSEWHERE, pp. 228-256
Excerpts from recent reviews of current biographies, autobiographies, and other works of interest.

LIFELINES, p. 257
Upcoming events, calls for papers, and news from the field.