As a teacher and a scholar, I have two seemingly unrelated interests. In my research, I look at the ways that people talk about agriculture in colonial-era French West Africa, and how talking about farming was a way for people to claim power in the colonial system. In the Engagements program, though, I am teaching a course on “The Art of the Autobiography”. On the surface, autobiographies and discourse on agriculture seem to have little in common. Yet at their core, I believe that the authors of these works are doing something similar. They use language and stories to tell us some “truth” about the world. By questioning our assumptions about nonfiction works that claim to tell the truth, I believe that we can start to better understand others and ourselves.