THE GENRE OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE XX <sup>th</sup> CENTURY
The object of the research is the genre of autobiography in American literature of the beginning of the XX <sup>th</sup> century. The work is based on the comparative and contrastive-comparative methods of studying. The article gives the definitions of this genre represented by American and European researchers as well as those of Russia. The author gives examples of different views on the types of autobiography within the genre. Special attention is paid to those features and trends of self-writing that are characteristic of the American literature of the beginning of last century. R. Wright's "Black Boy", J. Reed's "Almost Thirty" andG. Stein's "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" are analyzed as the examples of Afro-American, socialist and modernism autobiographies respectively. This way the author tries to show the flexibility of the genre of autobiography which shows political, racial and literary problems and issues that arose in the beginning of the XX" <sup>1</sup> century in the USA.