ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the concepts discussed in this book. The book matters to: individuals; cultures and subcultures; and our individual and collective beings as it engage imagination about past, present, and future human experiences. It highlights the life writing projects that have evolved as part of the expanding field of qualitative research approaches and have benefitted from the methodological musings of many scholars. The book discusses the similarities and distinctions between biography, autobiography, auto-ethnography, life history, and oral history approaches to life writing. It directs towards students or novice researchers who have little or some knowledge of qualitative research and would now like to get a grasp of the diversity within life writing methods. Carolyn Heilbrun's contributions to feminist approaches to life writing were ground breaking. In Writing a Woman's Life she communicates with such verisimilitude the social and intellectual impact of centering narratives on men rather than women.
