Famous Figures

His positioning of his own personality as his primary artistic medium, and his refusal to suppress that personality under social pressure even at the cost of prosecution and imprisonment, reflect an Identity orientation in which self-expression is non-negotiable.

Her insistence on maintaining her cultural identity as a Southern Black woman in her literary work, resisting both the demand for protest literature and the expectation of assimilation, reflects an Identity orientation sustained against multiple simultaneous pressures.

Her literary project of developing an authentic subjective voice and her essays on the conditions necessary for female identity to develop fully, including A Room of One's Own, reflect an Identity orientation applied to both literary form and feminist argument.

Nin's documented project - the decades-long diary as a medium for constructing a self she could inhabit - and her explicit belief that self-knowledge is the precondition for all genuine relationship, reflect an Identity orientation applied to both the literary and personal dimensions of her life simultaneously.