Visibilità e verità dell'io in «Autobiography of a Face» di Lucy Grealy

The essay is dedicated to Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy. Published in 1994, the American writer’s memoir arises from the confrontation between a compromised body, marked by illness, and the gaze of others, which becomes a constant measure of the self. Although the work contains no images, it is nonetheless deeply connected to visuality and to the problem of exposure to the gaze. On the contrary, Grealy’s disfigured face becomes the focal point of the autobiographical account—the driving force of a narrative that questions the possibility of telling the truth of the self, and that shapes and constructs this self through the act of narration.