The New Midlife Self-Writing

In The New Midlife Self-Writing, Wittman treats recent self-writing by Rachel Cusk, Roxane Gay, Sarah Manguso, and Maggie Nelson, carefully situating these vital midlife works within the history of self-writing. She argues that they renew and redirect the autobiographical trajectories characteristic of earlier self-writing by switching their orientation to face the future and by celebrating midlife as a growing season, a time of Bildung. In each chapter, writer-by-writer, she demonstrates h...