The language of the self : translating autobiographical identity

Autobiography involves the rewriting of the self into textual fonn, and in this form, language plays a vital role in the construction of the self. In many of the memoirs written in the twentieth century, particularly those by multilingual individuals, language is not only the medium through which the textual self is fashioned, it also provides a starting point from which to explore and reflect on how language itself facilitates changes in the self. In this type of memoir, language is 'the central motif from which the autobiographer explores the cultural world that language constructs around each community of speakers, and in tum, the ramifications of that constructed world on the individual autobiographer. This thesis focuses on two autobiographies, Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (1990) and Alice Kaplan's French Lessons: A Memoir (1994), in an exploration of how these authors, as bilingual women, reflect on and use language in order to construct an understanding of the self through time-a time that spans differing cultures and languages. Both Hoffman and Kaplan include a multitude of stories-­ personal, familial, ancestral, etc.-in their textual representation of their lived experience. But each author must fashion her own integral narrative of personal identity within the context of a new and unfamiliar culture encountered during adolescence and adulthood. Each writer must translate her story of self into a new language.