EMILIA-AMALIA SESSION III:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY/NARRATION
Monday, 25 July 2016, 6–9 PM
Dufferin Grove Park

“Literary texts were treated as we treated our own words, that is, as parts of an enigma to be investigated by taking them apart and putting them back together in different ways along with non-words: places, facts, feelings. The result of this total experimentalism was to wipe out boundaries between life and literature. Women novelists, their biographies, their fictional characters, and we ourselves exchanged roles, giving birth to new, strange novels.” — Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective

Foregrounding the ways that autobiography and memoir function as vital spaces for shaping feminist subjectivities, this session of EMILIA-AMALIA invites participants to think about the various strategies authors use to give language to life experiences. This open-air session will centre on sharing examples of memoir and autobiography from participants’ personal collections, and then practice using these tools to narrate our own life stories.

Text: Hannah Black, “Press for Service,” from Dark Pool Party (2016) — to be read out loud

Conversation: Excerpts from memoirs and autobiographies contributed by group members (Please bring in a text of your choice)

Writing Activity: “New, strange novels,” an experiment in self-narration and autobiography