Jung Chang
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
(Difference between revisions)
| Revision as of 17:54, 8 February 2010 Jahsonic (Talk | contribs) ← Previous diff |
Current revision Jahsonic (Talk | contribs) |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| {{Template}} | {{Template}} | ||
| - | :''[[fake memoirs]], [[erotic memoir]]'' | ||
| - | As a [[literary genre]], a '''memoir''' (from the [[Latin]] ''memoria'', meaning "[[memory]]") forms a subclass of [[autobiography]], although it is an older form of writing. Memoirs may appear less structured and less encompassing than formal autobiographical works as they are usually about part of a life rather than the chronological telling of a life from childhood to adulthood/old age. Like most autobiographies, memoirs are generally written from the first person point of view. | ||
| - | [[Gore Vidal]], in his own memoir ''[[Palimpsest]]'', writes that "a memoir is how one remembers one's own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked." It is more about what can be gleaned from a section of one's life than about the outcome of the life as a whole. | + | '''Jung Chang''', born March 25, 1952 in [[Yibin]], [[Sichuan]]) is a [[China|Chinese]]-born [[United Kingdom|British]] writer now living in [[London]], best known for her family [[autobiography]] ''[[Wild Swans]]'', selling over 10 million copies worldwide but [[censorship in the People's Republic of China|banned]] in [[mainland China]]. |
| - | ==History== | + | Her 832-page biography of [[Mao Zedong]], ''[[Mao: The Unknown Story]]'', written with her husband, the British historian [[Jon Halliday]], was published in June 2005 and is a highly critical description of Mao Zedong's life and work. |
| - | Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. In the eighteenth century, "scandalous memoirs" were written (mostly anonymously) by [[prostitutes]] or [[libertine]]s: these were widely read in France for their vulgar details and gossip. In another vein, the pagan rhetor [[Libanius]] framed his life memoir as one of his [[oration]]s, not the public kind, but the literary kind that would be read aloud in the privacy of one's study. This kind of memoir refers to the idea in [[ancient Greece]] and [[ancient Rome|Rome]], that memoirs were like "memos," pieces of unfinished and unpublished writing which a writer might use as a memory aid to make a more finished document later on. | + | |
| - | The term "memoir" has begun to replace "autobiography" in its popular use. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Women writers have been in the forefront of combining the memoir form with historical non-fiction writing, which can be seen in [[Helen Epstein]]'s Czech-based ''Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for her Mother's History'' and [[Jung Chang]]'s [[Wild Swans| Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China]]. [[Maxine Hong Kingston]]'s well known book ''[[The Woman Warrior|The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts]]'' is also an example of a memoir that combines factual material with fictional material as it tells the author's story and the story of her family. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Another category of memoir is the eyewitness account to history by private citizens; Slave narratives fall into this category as do Holocaust memoirs, such as by [[Primo Levi]], Heda Kovaly, and [[Elie Wiesel]]. | ||
| - | ==Types of memoir== | ||
| - | Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. In the eighteenth century, "scandalous memoirs", allegedly factual but largely invented, were written (mostly anonymously) by [[prostitutes]] or [[libertine]]s: these were widely read in [[France]] for their vulgar details and gossip. In another vein, the [[rhetor]] [[Libanius]] framed his life memoir as one of his [[oration]]s, not the public kind, but the literary kind that would be read aloud in the privacy of one's study. This kind of memoir refers to the idea in [[ancient Greece]] and [[ancient Rome|Rome]], that memoirs were like "memos," pieces of unfinished and unpublished writing which a writer might use as a memory aid to make a more finished document later on. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Women writers have been prominent amongst those combining the memoir form with historical non-fiction writing. Examples include [[Jung Chang]]'s ''[[Wild Swans]]'',[[Heda Margolius Kovaly]]'s ''Under a Cruel Star'' and [[Helen Epstein]]'s ''Where She Came From''. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Some professional contemporary writers such as [[David Sedaris]] and [[Augusten Burroughs]] have specialised in writing amusing essays in the form of memoirs. To some extent this is an extension of the tradition of newspaper [[columnist]]s' regular accounts of their lives. (Cf. the work of [[James Thurber]] which often has a strong memoir-like content). | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | ==Famous authors of memoirs (listed alphabetically)== | ||
| - | *[[Martin Amis]] | ||
| - | *[[Samuel R. Delaney]] | ||
| - | *[[Karen Blixen|Isak Dinesen]] ([[Karen Blixen]]) | ||
| - | *[[Bob Dylan]] | ||
| - | *[[Fanny Hill]] by [[John Cleland]] | ||
| - | *[[Primo Levi]] | ||
| - | *[[Vladimir Nabokov]] | ||
| - | *[[George Orwell]] | ||
| - | *[[Sylvia Plath]] | ||
| - | *[[Pyrrhus of Epirus]] (''[[On the Art of War]]'') | ||
| - | *[[Albert Speer]] (''[[Inside the Third Reich]]'') | ||
| - | *[[Elie Wiesel]] | ||
| {{GFDL}} | {{GFDL}} | ||
Current revision
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Jung Chang, born March 25, 1952 in Yibin, Sichuan) is a Chinese-born British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in mainland China.
Her 832-page biography of Mao Zedong, Mao: The Unknown Story, written with her husband, the British historian Jon Halliday, was published in June 2005 and is a highly critical description of Mao Zedong's life and work.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Jung Chang" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
