Taking My Life - Softcover

Rule, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889226733 ISBN 13: 9780889226739

Publisher: Talonbooks, 2011

Synopsis

Discovered in her papers as a handwritten manuscript in 2008, Jane Rule's autobiography is a rich and culturally significant document that follows the first twenty-one years of her life.

In writing about her formative years, she is indeed "taking" the measure of her life, assessing its contours of pleasure and pain, and accounting precisely for how it evolved, with great discretion and consideration for those who might have been affected by being represented in her work. She appreciated the ambiguity of the title she chose, with all its implications of suicide: at the end of her writing life, she was submitting herself as a person, not only to the literary and cultural, but also the moral and ethical critique of her readers.

At turns deeply moving and witty, Taking My Life probes in emotional and intellectual terms the larger philosophical questions that were to preoccupy her throughout her literary career, and showcases the origins and contexts that gave shape to Rule's rich intellectual life. Her autobiography will appeal to avid followers of her work, delighted to discover another of her works that has, until now, remained unpublished.

About this title

About the Author

Jane Rule
Jane Rule was born in New Jersey in 1931 and came to Canada in 1956, where she later taught at the University of British Columbia. Her first novel, Desert of the Heart (1964), in which two women fall in love in 1950s Reno, Nevada, was successful as a 1985 feature film called Desert Hearts.

Rule emerged as one of the most respected writers in Canada with her many novels, essays and collections of short stories, including Theme for Diverse Instruments (1975). She received the Canadian Authors Association best novel and best short story awards, the American Gay Academic Literature Award, the U.S. Fund for Human Dignity Award of Merit, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind's Talking Book of the Year Award and an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of British Columbia.

In 1996, Rule received the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an Outstanding Literary Career in British Columbia. Rule passed away in 2007.

Linda M. Morra
Linda Morra holds a PhD in Canadian literature from the University of Ottawa. She teaches at Bishop's University and lives in Montreal. Morra is currently working on a monograph in which she explores Canadian women writers' self-agency and textual integrity in relation to the publishing industry in Canada.

Edition details

• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0889226733
• ISBN 13: 9780889226739
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288