Modern American Memoirs by Annie Dillard

Modern American Memoirs by Annie Dillard

In Modern American Memoirs, two very discerning writers and readers have selected samples from 35 of the finest memoirs written in this century, including contributions by such diverse writers as Margaret Mead, Malcolm X, Maxine Hong Kingston, Loren Eisely, and Zora Neale Hurston. Chosen for their value as excellent examples of the art of biography as well as for their superb writing, the excerpts present a broad range of American life, and offer vivid insight into the real-life events that shaped their authors. Here, readers can learn about the time when Harry Crews, playing as a boy, fell into a vat of boiling water with a dead hog; Chris Offutt joined the circus and watched a tattooed woman swallow a fluorescent light; and Frank Conroy practiced yo-yo tricks.

Annie Dillard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, as well as a number of other nonfiction books such as An American Childhood and For the Time Being. The Living and The Maytrees are two of her most recent works.