The serial autobiographies of Mary McCarthy, Kate Millett, Julia Alvarez, and Jamaica Kincaid

The Serial Autobiographies of Mary McCarthy, Kate Millett, Julia Alvarez, and Jamaica Kincaid explores the writings of four authors, each of whom wrote multiple autobiographical works. It argues that the serial autobiographer depends on her relationship with her reading audience and that the reader is an essential component of the long-term autobiographical project. In each case, the autobiographer uses her audience as a mirror in which to view herself as who she is changes over time.;The four authors discussed in this dissertation provide particularly illuminating examples of the autobiographical self-in-process, as they all write their autobiographies with the explicitly stated purpose of figuring out who they are. McCarthy writes as an orphan who yearns to know who she is and where she came from but does not have the aid of the "family memory" that comes with having parents. Millett struggles with the identity of "lesbian feminist," a term that described two incompatible camps within political activism when she was writing in the 1970's; she also writes as a means of coping with severe depression and mental illness as well as the loss of self that she felt occurred after her doctoral dissertation, published as Sexual Politics, made her famous. Alvarez and Kincaid both use writing to grapple with racial/national identities that represent complex positions. In Alvarez's case, she is expected to be both Dominican and American---identities which are incompatible in many ways---and Kincaid, as a colonial subject in Antigua, was raised with the notion that she must try to be British but, at the same time, could never be British enough. As each author attempts to figure out who she is and communicate that self through autobiography, she draws the audience into the process as she revisits and in many cases revises her life story.;In addition to offering the opportunity to view the relationship between the autobiographer and her reading audience long-term, the serial autobiographies studied here provide unique glimpses into the various ways in which the autobiographer's attitude toward truth affects the structure of an autobiographical project. In each case, the author's stance on the issue of truth---combined with the above-mentioned relationship with the reading audience---has a direct impact on the overall structure that the project takes. By following these projects over a period of many years, we are able to watch the ways in which the authors' attitudes toward truth change over time and how these attitudes directly contribute to the construction of the long-term project itself.