I Have Been So Many People: A Study of Lee Smith's Fiction

Smith’s body of work examines the influence of significant factors—

such as place, memory, art, tradition, social expectation, media,

religion, history, and story—on personal identity. Enriching her

treatment of the subject, she explores this issue always with a

consciousness of the self’s ultimate indeterminability. In twelve

novels and four collections of short stories, Smith draws us into

a rigorous exploration of the self, the location and essence of

which are often sought in a landscape of shifting and imagined

markers.