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Stories of Our Lives
Frank de Caro
6 x 9, 220 pages
published: 2013

ISBN 978-0-87421-893-0
paper $26.95s (July 2013)

ISBN 978-0-87421-894-7
e-book $22.00 (August 2013)

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Frank de Caro is Professor Emeritus of English at Louisiana State University and editor of The Folklore Muse and An Anthology of American Folktales and Legends.

Stories of Our Lives

Memory, History, Narrative

Frank de Caro

Also by de Caro - The Folklore Muse

The social importance of personal narratives, family saga, and communal legends are well-established in ethnographic and folkloristic literature, but their value for individual self-knowledge is less often demonstrated. Both a memoir and a research project, Stories of Our Lives considers the stories from Frank de Caro's personal life, as well as the stories he has collected in his years of field research as he explores how the stories we tell, listen to, and learn play an integral role in constructing our temporal selves.

De Caro uses his own memories and stories as specimens to call attention to the centrality of oral narration in his life, providing the recollections that all memoirs provide while additionally considering what those stories have meant to his life and sense of self. In doing so, he demonstrates the way in which stories infuse an individual life—expressing, contextualizing, and creating one's sense of self—and how the larger life narrative in turn provides a context for the stories that shape it.