University of Pennsylvania
ScholarlyCommons GSE Publications
Graduate School of Education
January 2001
Narrating the Self Stanton Wortham University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected]
Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs Recommended Citation Wortham, S. (2001). Narrating the Self. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/121
Reprinted by permission of the Publisher. From Stanton Wortham, Narratives in Action: A Strategy for Research and Analysis, New York: Teachers College Press, © 2001 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/121 For more information, please contact
[email protected].
Narrating the Self Abstract
Telling a story about oneself can sometimes transform that self. Sitting with friends and describing recent experiences, a narrator often reinforces and sometimes re-creates what sort of person he or she is. Sitting with a therapist and narrating their life's experiences, clients can sometimes realize who they are and who they want to be. Noting such transformative acts of narration, many have proposed that autobiographical stories do more than describe a preexisting self. Sometimes narrators can change who they are, in part, by telling stories about themselves. Comments
Reprinted by permission of the Publisher. From Stanton Wortham, Narratives in Action: A Strategy for Research and Analysis, New York: Teachers College Press, © 2001 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.
This book chapter is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/121
