ABSTRACT
Life writing is a relatively new term that refers to many types of writing based on a person’s life. It has an inherent relationship to traditional autobiography, but it is more inclusive and reflects major shifts in the cultural, critical and geopolitical landscape. Intersections become clearer through conversations about life writing within the context of InterAmerican Studies. Questions about what is exchanged and the nature of social and cultural ties necessarily refer back to the transatlantic slave trade and the resulting ideas about race and racism. Speaking specifically within a US context, Daniel P. Shea argues that autobiography at first had no America, and thus emerged to give focus to the imaginings of Anglo-European settlers. The immigrant pattern of the unfixed, changing self is not quite the same for others who came to define themselves as US citizens. Pablo Neruda was among those writers whose work paralleled the process of their own politicization.
