Benjamin Franklin's autobiography gave the readers a small insight of society into the eighteenth century versus how society is viewed today as a whole. Throughout the entire autobiography he chronologically orders events from the time that he was a small boy growing into the age of a man. Thus...

A River Runs Through It, by Norman MacLean, is totally unlike most autobiographies. Most autobiographies are similar to excerpts form an encyclopedia. They are factual and straightforward, but that is all that they are. They do not possess a depth. Norman MacLean makes his autobiography unlike most ...

Lauren BeckEnglish 106Analytical vs. FactualA River Runs Through It, by Norman MacLean, is totally unlike most autobiographies. Most autobiographies are similar to excerpts form an encyclopedia. They are factual and straightforward, but that is all that they are. They do not possess a depth. Norman ...

The Book Immigrant Voices by Thomas Dublin is focused on giving readers a close view of what things were like for immigrants between the years of 1773-1986. It contains diaries, letters, autobiographies, and interviews of actual immigrants during this time period. The book tells many facts a...

I Make My Own Rules, An Autobiography by L.L. Cool J.I Make My Own Rules, was written by L.L. Cool J. He is better known as L.L. However, his birth name is James Todd Smith. L.L. was born on January 14, 1968 at Southside Hospital in Bayshore, New York. Today he is a thirty-year-old successful sing...

Black Boy, Richard Wright's autobiography, covers his childhood and early adulthood. It opens with four-year-old Richard's rebellion against authority. At the time, Richard was restless and resentful of his mother's demand of silence. Richard accidentally burned down his grandparents' house in his a...

Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first novel. This book was published by Dell Publishing, in 1952. This novel relies heavily on autobiography as its structure. Like the central character, John Grimes, Baldwin grew up in Harlem under the supervision of a religious stepfather. David Bald...

In V.S. Naipaul's novel, Literary Occasions, he discusses how he came to be an author and what attracted him to this profession. As a result of choosing this occupation, he needed to find out more information on his heritage and his own personal identity. In the section "Prologue to an Autobiography...

Richard Wright's Black Boy is a social critique as well as an autobiography. Part I of his novel seems to be an indictment of the South while Part II, an indictment of the North. Richard Wright gives a vivid portrayal of the hardships in the South. Ella struggles to raise her children in Memph...

Angela's Ashes The autobiography Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt tells the life of the McCourt family while living in poverty in Limmerick, Ireland during the 1930's and 1940's. Frank McCourt relates his difficult childhood to the reader up until the time he leaves for America at the age ...

The Childhood, Education and Achievements of Richard Wright Richard Wright was the son of an illiterate sharecropper. He was brought up in a dysfunctional home where he suffered poverty and abandonment. He became an essential figure in the development of African American literature, and has ...

One can hardly imagine the reaction of the young bride Shidzue Ishimoto (later Kato) when she first arrived at the small mining town in Western Japan soon after her marriage to Baron Ishimoto, an engineer with ideals of social reform. Descended from the Samurai origins, Shidzue was born into ra...

Strength through Suffering The world is not fair; people get stuck at traffic lights, there are accidents and good people die. There are so many complexities in life that prove that the world is impartial. In the autobiography, The Color of Water, by James McBride, Ruth McBride is a prime example ...

Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman Nisa is the autobiography of a !Kung woman, edited and commented on by Marjorie Shostak. Shostak (the author) cleverly combines both an emic perspective quoted from Nisa and an etic perspective observed by herself. This enables the author to convey info...

In "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", Maya Angelou's explains her mad childhood and how she survived it. For her to sit in silence for years because of certain experiences that have affected you shows character but it takes a lot of heart to tell the truth about what really happened i...

Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson. She had an older brother named Bailey Jr. whom she loved dearly. Her family moved to California when she was an infant and at the age of three and a half her parents divorced. Maya and her brother were sent to liv...

\"My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all humankind,\" said Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote this statement in 1967, explaining what he had tried to do throughout his long writing career\" (Berry 5). James M. Langston Hughes overcame numero...

Rosa Parks Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama as Rosa Louise-Lee Parks. She was raised in her grandparent's house in Pine Level, Montgomery. Her mother's name was Leona Edwards and her father's name was James McCauley, they met in an African Methodi...

Mahatma Gandhi is well known and recognized for the leadership he provided for the Indian state to peacefully relinquish English oversight by withdrawing from British institutions, denying British awards, and, most important, by learning the art of self-reliance. Yet Gandhi's thoughts on family...

Poetry is a form of writing that usually gives a reader some type of story that has a much deeper meaning than what is simply stated in the text. Most poetry reflects on the author's own personal feeling and experiences. In some cases, an author may take on the persona of another person so a...

Leila Ahmed grew up in the 1940's and 50's in a respected and wealthy family in Cairo, Egypt. Her father, an engineer and her mother, a passionate housewife, had shaped her life form the very beginning of her childhood. Her father was a responsible government servant and politically active...

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou, who was born Marguerite Johnson, recounts her experiences as an African-American youth in the United States during the 1930's and 1940's. She candidly explores the complexities of racism, family life, and growing up. The thirty-six chapters of Angelo...

Gluckel of Hameln was a seventeenth century Jewish woman from Hamburg who wrote a lengthy memoir in Yiddish. While she was not a famous person in her time, Gluckel's memoir has been regarded as one of the most important documents for European Jewish history, of the late seventeenth and early eighte...

A Character Analysis of "A Death In The Family" James Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1909. Agee wrote the novel "A Death In The Family" in New York City, in 1955. This novel is a remembrance of events within a family. It is about marital love and loss and the n...

When Love Surpasses Confucian Rules In Shen Fu's, "Six Records from a Floating Life" he writes an autobiography of his life, everything from the love affair with his wife to the trials and tribulations that he experienced throughout his time. He writes in a very candid style not particularly s...