Cerritos College

Many people have written about how they have overcome obstacles in their lives. By reading these narratives you get an insight into the authors’ psyche and you learn about events that took place during their lives which helped shape their personalities and beliefs. Your search for personal narratives and biographies about the authors who wrote them can include books, periodical articles, online databases, and authoritative Internet resources.

Use the Cerritos College Library Catalog to find personal narratives, autobiographies and biographies. You can search by author, title, subject, or keyword. For books by an author, type the last name first and choose Author Search. Find biographical and critical material by doing a Subject Search. Also type the last name first.  For example:

The reference books listed below can be used to gather biographical and critical information about authors and their works. Use these books, as well as the database GaleNet Literature Resource Center, as a starting point for your research. By using these sources you will become better acquainted with your author and work. You will then be ready to conduct more comprehensive literary research by using the online catalog, journal and magazine databases, and authoritative Internet sites.

Magazines and newspapers often include personal narratives and biographical articles about famous individuals. To find articles about or by a person, use one of the databases listed below.

Use subject headings similar to those used to locate books such as the person’s name or the words "personal narrative" or "first person narrative".

EbscoHost
GaleNet Literature Resource Center
GaleNet Discovering Collection
ProjectMUSE

In addition, the database In the First Person provides a searchable index with links to full-text, audio, and video of letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies within scholarly materials freely available on the Web. Links provide access to thousands of personal narratives in English from a large selection of archives and repositories.

The Internet can be a valuable source for supplementing the information you have gathered from books and periodicals. It is important that you evaluate the information you get from the Internet to determine if it is reliable and useful to your research. A few Internet sites that may be useful are listed here.

Sixties Personal Narrative Project
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Narrative.html
 

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/ncuhtml/fpnashome.html
 

The Narrative Essay

A Brief Guide to Writing Narrative Essays (Roane State Community College OWL)

Narrative Essays (St. Cloud State University)