Reading Margaret Laurence’s Life Writing: Toward a Postcolonial Feminist Subjectivity for a White Female Critic

Abstract

I propose feminist, postcolonial readings of Margaret Laurence’s two book-length autobiographical works: The Prophet’s Camel Bell, memoirs of the year she spent in Somalia in 1951-1952, and Dance on the Earth: A Memoir, the book she completed shortly before her death in 1987. My purpose is to suggest how white female critics, such as myself, can begin to approach their critical tasks in ways that neither slight their own culture’s supportive and positive accomplishments, nor lead them to crit..