Soap opera story, the only mass-public form of continuing narrative today, is oral culture for our electronic era. Carol Williams' It's Time for My Story is an examination of soap opera sources, structure, and response, particularly from the critical viewpoints of psychology, both archetypal and empirical, and popular culture, specifically narratology and feminism, that uncover the true nature of the genre.

First, Williams traces the development of soap opera from its immediate source in radio and television as well as from its fundamental source in age-old myth and storytelling. Then...