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Abstract
Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House (2019) and Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection The Collected Schizophrenias (2019) are examples of autobiographical writing that incorporate and analyze speculative fiction as part of their retellings of difficult realities. Machado’s memoir of domestic abuse and Wang’s essays about her mental health show that speculative fiction can facilitate the navigation of traumatic events that resist narration. Both texts highlight how autobiographical writing becomes speculative as the author attempts to frame their lived experiences for a broader public, especially when their agencies within their own stories are questioned, either by a gaslighting abuser or by a public stigma against people with schizophrenia. By framing Machado’s memoir and Wang’s essays as speculative autobiographical writings, one can better understand the horrors, fantasies, dreams, and hallucinations that must be told to fully glimpse another’s reality. References to speculative fiction and the narrating of realities that seem unreal highlight speculation’s role in processing, narrating, and surviving trauma.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Machado, In the Dream House, 127.
2 Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias, 4.
3 Oziewicz, “Speculative Fiction.”
4 Cheney et al., “Adding Monsters.”
5 Machado, In the Dream House, 6.
6 Skov Nielsen, Phelan, and Walsh, “Ten Theses about Fictionality,” 62.
7 Delaney, Starboard Wine, 13.
8 Skov Nielsen, Phelan and Walsh, “Ten Theses about Fictionality,” 63.
9 de Man, “Autobiography as De-Facement,” 922.
10 McDonald, “Days of Past Futures,” 74–75.
11 de Man, “Autobiography as De-Facement,” 920.
12 Di Summa-Knoop, “Critical Autobiography,” 7.
13 Jensen, “Post-Traumatic Memory Projects,” 714.
14 Allegranti, Embodied Performances, 116.
15 Eades, “Queer Wounds,” 184.
16 Ibid.
17 Machado, In the Dream House, 143.
18 Ibid., 223.
19 Ibid., 134.
20 Stephens, “Queer Memoir,” 35.
21 Machado, In the Dream House, 223.
22 Ibid., 4–5.
23 Ibid., 4.
24 Ibid., 5.
25 Wiese, “Representational Intelligibility,” 206.
26 Stefanakou, “The (Un)Reality of Abuse,” 119.
27 Niesz and Holland, “Interactive Fiction,” 112.
28 Ibid., 123.
29 Machado, In the Dream House, 176.
30 Wong, “Your Choice and Negative Affect,” 48.
31 Machado, In the Dream House, 72.
32 Ibid., 125.
33 Jesussek, “The Tales of Bluebeard’s Wives,” 339.
34 Machado, In the Dream House, 190.
35 Ibid., 239.
36 Ibid., 186.
37 Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias, 98.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid., 141.
41 Callanan, “Legible, visible, conspicuous,” 84.
42 Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias, 29.
43 Prendergast, “The Unexceptional Schizophrenic,” 237.
44 Bruce, How to Lose Your Mind, 13.
45 Ibid., 3.
46 Goldberg, “The Disordered Ordinary,” 1310.
47 Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias, 35.
48 Couser, “Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation,” 458.
49 Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias, 145.
50 Ibid., 151.
51 Glyde, “Clarity in chaos,” 375.
52 Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias, 5.
53 Ibid., 11.
54 Ibid., 29.
55 Ibid., 40.
56 Ibid., 56.
57 Ibid., 127.
58 Ibid., 126.
59 Ibid., 141.
60 Ibid., 143.
61 Ibid., 17.
62 Ibid., 39.
63 Ibid., 32.
64 Machado, In the Dream House, 133.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Samuel Ginsburg
Samuel Ginsburg is Assistant Professor of American Studies, Comparative Ethnic Studies, and Spanish at Washington State University’s School of Languages, Cultures, and Race. His research focuses on representations of technology and bodies in Latin American, Caribbean, and US Latinx speculative fiction. His work can be found in Latin American Research Review, Latin American Literary Review, American Studies, Voces del Caribe, Mitologías Hoy, and Alambique. His first book, The Cyborg Caribbean: Techno-Dominance in Twenty-First Century Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican Science Fiction, was published in 2023 by Rutgers University Press.