A Study of Red Scarf Girl and the Narratology of Autobiographies of the Marginalised

Abstract

The works that largely recount the experiences of people are biographies. The different types of biographies- hagiographies, autobiographies, memoirs, journals etc. are all written with the common aim of recounting a particular person’s life and their experiences.The work that this paper chooses towork on is an autobiography. Most early autobiographies were confessional in nature like the autobiographies of St. Augustine and Rousseau. A marked deviation from this confessional mode of narration in autobiographies can be seen in the self- narratives of the marginalised sections in a society like Blacks, women, Dalits etc., where they recount their lived experiences as a story of victimhood rather than as a confession or revelation.

the essay ‘On Confession’ by Rita Felski in the work Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, the writer says that while mostly the autobiographical narratives are written in such a way as to project the subject as someone who has lead an extraordinary life or as someone who has had experiences that distance or mark him as unique from the rest, autobiographical sketches of victimhood, especially women narratives, are written in such a way that they give the impression that they are ordinary people and much relatable to the readers. This paper intends to elaborate this aspect by taking the example of Ji- Li Jiang’s Red Scarf Girl, an English translation of the Chinese work by the author who recounts her harsh and discriminatory experiences during one of the tumultuous times in Chinese history under the Mao regime.