"This Stubborn Self: Texas Autobiographies"

A. C. Greene claimed he wrote his autobiographical A Personal Country “to find out, from one life in one region, if all of us are not gifted from the soil whence we sprang, seeded by the people, and watered by the times.”Bert Almon suggests that Texas autobiography reveals as much about the state as it does the writer, recording geography and history, and economic, social, and religious practices. A sense of place distinguishes Texas autobiographical writing, for it springs from a state considered unique by its citizens and the world in general. Texas’ history—migrations, war with Mexico, brief nationhood, slavery, Indian Wars, the Civil War, the Mexican diaspora of the twentieth century—these all contribute to what Almon calls Texas’ “exceptionalism.”Early writers in this collection—Matthews, Lomax, Beasley, Dobie, Stillwell, and others—recall a traditional Anglo Texas, a world of small towns, farms, and ranches. But these writers record, sometimes with anticipation, the approach of t