A Southern Daugher's Search for Selfhood: Finding Identity Through Writing Memoir as Seen in Mary Karr's The Liars' Club & Patricia Foster's All the Lost Girls

Abstract

The genre of memoir serves as an avenue for self-discovery. Particularly, Southern women have used this literary form as a mode for realization about the true nature of a daughter's relationship to her mother and her own selfhood.

Mary Karr in her memoir The Liars' Club and Patricia Foster in her memoir all the lost girls explore their intense bond with their mothers as a way to recognize their need to protect their mothers. After the recognition of the desire to keep their mothers safe, these women then understand that in order to find their own identities, they must separate from their mothers and differentiate themselves. In their third and final step on the road to true selfhood, Karr and Foster work through the guilt they feel for not affirming and validating the roles their mothers have chosen to play in their own lives. By doing so, these daughters are able to live lives free of guilt and to nurture their own beings outside of their roles as daughter.