Shepland, however, is interested in two more specific questions: how does a biographer’s perspective shape how the subject of the biography is understood, and how does the process of researching and writing a biography affect how a biographer thinks about herself. McCullers, the mid-twentieth-century white southern writer who explored themes of isolation, alienation, and otherness in novels such as The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding, has been the subject of such studies before, including the biographies written by Virginia Spencer Carr and Josyane Savigneau. Unlike most researchers who have written about Carson McCullers, Shapland is not trying to write a traditional or comprehensive biography. The title of Jenn Shapland’s first book, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, cleverly shows her goal of creating a genre-bending book, a combination of memoir and biography.
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