Battlegrounds of Memory by Clay Lewis, and: Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball (Review)

Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998)

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Battlegrounds of Memory by Clay Lewis, and: Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball (Review)

by Fred Hobson
Southern Cultures, Vol. 6, No. 2: Summer 2000

University of Georgia Press, 1998; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998

From the 1940s until the presentand particularly in the past two decadesautobiography and memoir have been, without doubt, among the most popular forms of southern literary expression. Men and women, black and white, privileged and poor, straight and gay, southerners of all descriptions have taken to the typewriter and computer and tried to make sense of livestheir ownwhich are both sui generis and, at the same time, representative of other lives in particular times and places. Memoir, by its nature, is self-indulgent, even narcissistic, but it is also valuable as social and cultural history. At its bestgiven a carefully constructed persona, a narrative sense, an awareness of irony and ambiguityit is also among the most satisfying forms of literature.

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