Biography, vol. 20, no. 4 (Fall 1997)

Editor’s Note, p. iii

ARTICLES

Suicide and Literary Biography, pp. 405-436
Richard K. Sanderson and Rena Sanderson
A writer’s suicide confronts his or her biographers with special problems and opportunities. Drawing primarily on biographies of Ernest Hemingway for its examples, this article examines the narrative and rhetorical strategies often employed to present literary lives that end in suicide.

Nation, Family, and Language in Victor Perera’s Rites and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, pp. 437-461
Steven V. Hunsaker
Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Victor Perera’s Rites: A Guatemalan Boyhood present personal identity in terms of belonging to a national community different from that of one’s parents. Immigrant parents complicate the creation of identity by compelling their children to create space between themselves and tradition in order to move into the nation. Rather than a sense of shared community, it is in both cases a power to exclude others that defines national identity.

SKETCHES FROM LIFE

Broadcasting Biography, pp. 462-471
David King Dunaway
Scholars and authors sometimes lament that broadcast versions of written biographies are inaccurate or simplistic. This essay considers the intellectual dilemmas of presenting lives in broadcast formats, particularly radio, focusing on audience, function, and representation. How much fiddling with facts and milieu is permissible in the adaptive process? How can writers ensure integrity of their material when broadcast?

REVIEWS, pp. 472-497

REVIEWED ELSEWHERE, pp. 498-529

LIFELINES, pp. 530-532

INDEX TO VOLUME 20, pp. 533-534

CONTRIBUTORS, pp. 535-536

Annual Bibliography of Works About Life-Writing, pp. 537-569
Phyllis Wachter

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

Biography: The First Twenty Years, pp. 571-633
Mark Panek and Damon Chong
An author, title, and subject index, including reviews, for Biography 1.1 to Biography 20.4