Katherine Anne Porter Book

Intimate Reading takes a feminist approach to memoir, focusing in particular memoirs of the confessional vein, with the author first revealing her own long-held secret. She examines the shift from a culture of secrecy to the current tell-all society, analyzes shame and its ramifications, discusses risks of revelation, examines narratives of sexuality, and explores trauma and struggles with psychiatric illness. Because of its focus on secrets, trauma, etc., most of the chapters are not particularly pertinent to my research. The most useful chapters for my purposes are the final ones where she discusses who a secret (story) belongs to and what truth means.