"In Composing Selves, award-winning author Peggy Whitman Prenshaw provides the most comprehensive treatment of autobiographies by women in the American South. This long-anticipated addition to Prenshaw's study of southern literature spans the twentieth century as she provides an in-depth look at the life-writing of eighteen women authors. Composing Selves travels the wide terrain of female life in the South, analyzing various issues that range from...

Discusses the work of Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, Gail Godwin, Beverly Lowry, Shirley Ann Grau, Lisa Alther, Ellen Douglas, Doris Betts, Elizabeth Spencer, Mary Lee Settle, Berry Morgan, Rita Mae Brown, Toni Cade Bambara, Ellen Gilchrist, Lee Smith, Joan Williams, and Bobbie Ann Mason.