Résumé:
Abstract
Autobiography as a literary genre isan account of a person's life
written by him. obviously an autobiography runs the danger of being
highly subjective since it is confined to the author’s life, experiences, and
world view. In autobiography, the author often finds an opportunity to
express his own thought that can be radical.The first purpose of the
article is to treat the radical thought through four American
autobiographies: Frederick Douglass The Life of F. Douglass, Richard
Wright’s Black Boy, Mary Grow Dog’s Lakota Women, and Henry David
Thoreau’s Walden. The other objective is to shed light on how these
writers tried, by narrating their lives, to convey to the reader of their
radical views of society and therefore, sought to foster social reform.
Frederick Douglas and Richard Wright wrote to defend and argue for
abolitionism, Mary Grow Dog wrote to ask for a better place for the
American Indian women in the American society, while Henry David
Thoreau defended environmentalism as a philosophy of life.