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Welcome to White Snake Diary: Exploring Self-Inscribers, where author and ethnographer Jane P. Perry asks: What is a diary and why do we keep them? Why do diarists feel compelled to record life, to collect memories and reflections? What happens when snapshots found in a junk store not only spark childhood memories but drive the creation of a diary?

White Snake Diary explores the diary as a literary genre: what it looks like and what it can tell us about life and self-inscribers. Uniquely, White Snake Diary is also a diary, offering a timely #MeToo profile of growing up female. White Snake Diary capitalizes on the fascination of diaries either as precursors to our social media culture or as mirrors of our intimate absorption.

Perry pulls on the allure of the repurposed with found photos, childhood school assignments, diary entries, cereal box text, letters, a newspaper clipping, doodles, essays, and professional reports. Perry writes with humor and attention to the little moments most people miss.

Jane P. Perry is a retired Researcher and Teacher from the University of California, Berkeley’s Harold E. Jones Child Study Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Education from U.C. Berkeley and has written on the importance of play in early childhood, Occupy Oakland, and familyhood. Take a journey with White Snake Diary: Exploring Self-Inscribers.