AutobibliographyParticipatory curation + exhibitionAB Gallery, Portland, Oregon2022
“Autobibliography” is a word blended from autobiography and bibliography to describe books that shape and inform a person’s life. This collection of books exhibited in the Art Building Gallery at Portland State University were the collected autobibliography of a workshop I co-facilitate at Columbia River Correctional Institute (CRCI), a prison for men in Portland, Oregon. The participants read autobiographies and write their own as part of a collaborative writing and publishing project that I co-lead with artist Harrell Fletcher.
During the week participants work on their writing and in class on Fridays, they read aloud what they wrote. Together with the guys and visiting writers and artists like Miranda July, Chris Johanson, and Constance DebrĂ©, we respond with feedback, questions, and suggestions. Other books are often mentioned during these discussions. I noted and compiled them into this collection, along with autobiographies suggested by Harrell, visitors, and me.Â
When participants finish writing, we edit, design, and publish their autobiographies through our small press, splitting the royalty profits equally with the author. The books in this collection donated by Belmont Books and Oregon State University Press and were distributed to the writers after the exhibit.
Autobibliography collection:
You Can’t Win by Jack Black
Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Alaska by James Michener
Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
Swann’s Way, volume one of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Paradise Lost by John Milton (not displayed)
The Divine Comedy Volume 1: Inferno by Dante Alighieri
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Elsewhere by Dean Koontz
Billy Summers by Stephen King
The Shining by Stephen King
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems by Gary Snyder
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot DĂaz
I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell by Tucker Max
Finding Fish: A Memoir by Antwone Fisher
Boy by Roald Dahl
Going Solo by Roald Dahl
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography
of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South by Anne Moody
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
Brown by Richard Rodriguez
Days of Obligation by Richard Rodriguez
This is Not for You by Richard Brown (not displayed)
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (not displayed)
These titles were contributed by Arron, Brandon, Ivan, Marvin, Messiah, Michael, Quinton, Ramon, Santino, T.J., and Zach as well as from visiting artists Caryn Aasness, Dr. Kiara Hill, Morgan Hornsby, and Harrell Fletcher and me.