ABSTRACT
Both autobiography and travel writing are notoriously fuzzy, hybrid, complex genres, which tend to resist simple definition —– and drawing them together may create further difficulties of interpretation. This is probably why we tend to stick to a single-genre assignation, even when the same work has clearly been read, and different critics may have discussed it, as both a travelogue and an autobiography. Gender also becomes part of the traveller's performance: Estella Canziani foregrounds her female identity in order to gain access to women and to the sphere of private life; but she also strives to project a masculine persona, marked by endurance of hardship and professional determination. The chapter looks at the profile of Estella's individual and cultural identity as it is performed in all her interconnected self-portraits.
