Queer x Trans Memoir: In Sight of an Embodied History

My Autobiography of Carson McCullers

In My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, author Jenn Shapland first comes across the letters of Carson McCullers while working as “an intern at the Harry Ransom Center, a collection of writers’ and artists’ books on the University of Texas campus in Austin” (6). Shapland instantly resonates with the letters, recognizing her own queerness mirrored within them: “I had received letters like these. I had written letters like these to the woman I’d loved. It was very little to go on, and yet I felt an utter certainty: Carson McCullers had loved women. Or at least, this woman had loved her. Immediately, without articulating a reason, I wanted to know everything about them both” (7). Shapland sees a part of her own queer self mirrored in the letters of Carson McCullers.

Shapland certainly strongly identifies herself with Carson: “Carson’s face—jowly but expressive—reminds me of my own… when I read something, or watch something, and identify with someone, I begin to imagine that I look like them” (120). The parallels between Shapland’s life and McCullers’ are uncanny as well, especially since the two of them both experience severe chronic illness (178). 

Throughout the memoir, Jenn Shapland frequently makes connections between her life and Carson’s, enriching her experience of life in the process. One such example is when Shapland states, “I read Carson and Mary’s love through these objects, and I realize that I do the same with mine and Chelsea’s” (211). Much of the memoir is set while Shapland is on a research residency at Carson’s house in Columbus. As Shapland lives in Carson’s own home, she examines the objects of Carson’s life, and reflects and relates them to her own life. 

The process of writing about Carson is healing for Shapland herself. As Shapland comes to understand Carson’s life, she simultaneously revises her own story in the process: “Carson is changing as I write about her, and so am I” (119). Shapland’s ability to change and construct her own narrative through reading Carson’s is largely a product of her own queerness. She intricately knows what it means to “read like a queer person, like someone who knows what it’s like to be closeted, and who knows how to look for reflections of your own experience in even the most unlikely places” (22). This is the exact journey that Shapland undertakes as she pieces the pieces of Carson’s life together. 

Therefore, the form of this memoir represents a queer journey in itself: a queer person attempting to understand their life by reading about another’s. 

 

This page has paths: