Autobiography has steadily attracted attention among general readers and the literary critics in recent years for its special qualities, especially its dual identity in the worlds of literature and social history. As a 'self made out of words' it is a literary construct, a work of art, whose thrust depends directly upon its narrative qualities. But it is also an ideological document, which embodies the writer's philosophy as determined by the dominant historical and material values of his society. Autobiography as Social History: Apartheid and the Rise of the Black Autobiography Tradition in South Africa employs the example of the fourteen pioneer black South African autobiographies published between 1954 and 1985 to demonstrate how their perspectives were shaped not by issues of individuality, but personal ideology and the overwhelming impact of the apartheid cultural environment.