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Literary lies

No. 8 (2019): Lying

Lies that Tell the Truth: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Submitted
May 5, 2024
Published
2019-07-12

Abstract

This paper aims at showing the different forms that an autobiographical, and more generally speaking, a life writing text, can take. Through the analysis of Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, published in 1976, and the numerous reactions it triggered, the definition of the autobiographical genre will be called into question, especially in regard to the presence of lies in autobiographical texts. This paper will eventually suggest a renewal and a more adapted definition of the life writing genre.