Shameful Autobiographies: Shame in Contemporary Australian Autobiographies and Culture

Writing autobiography is a risky business. What is shameful can be inadvertently rather than deliberately revealed. Yet reading autobiography can also be risky, as it may lead to the confrontation of shame in ourselves.

Perhaps it is this element of risk, together with the magnetism of another person's confession of shameful experience, that make us such avid readers of autobiography.

Rosamund Dalziell proposes that shame is the driving force in many Australian autobiographies. Indeed, she ...