The vast majority of assignments in English composition courses are defined within the borders of the nonfiction genre. Memoir is no different. Memoir is, among other things, a personal story based on facts, the raw material of life, and capital-T Truth. The writer Vivian Gornick claims a memoir achieves Truth “not [simply] through a recital of actual events… [but] when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand” (Gornick 91). From the beginning of a memoir to the end, the narrator and first-person I will be shaped by experience, transformed by events, and, hopefully, deliver some wisdom along the way (Gornick 91). Ultimately, the memoirist tells a personal story that resonates far beyond the first-person singular.
Works Cited:
Gornick, Vivian. The Situation and the Story. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
Questions for students:
- What specific events are recounted in the memoir you’ve read?
- What principles and / or assumptions seem to guide the author in choosing those events?
- How does the author develop the events, or make them come to life?
- How do the authors ascribe meaning/significance to these events?
- What moments seem most true, most authentic, in these essays? How do you know? Can you know?
- At what point did you find yourself connecting with the author’s story? Why?
- Based on these readings, what might you conclude about how to organize a memoir?
Student Writing
- Delaney Dunn – One of the Boys
- Tiaya Hubbard – Hide and Seek
- Amy Undieme – Blueberry Pancakes
- Taylor Funk – My Friends, Sally and Bob
- Reagan Ladd – My Hair
- Collette Williamson – Three B’s
- Alexis Hamlin – Paper Ducks
- PJ Gluk – Slow It Down
- JP Schweizer – An Unexpected Moment
- Emily Odom – Lessons from Barkley
Additional Resources
Brief and bullet-pointed, this guide emphasizes key moves (show don’t tell, theme, etc.) and audience awareness. Links to various professionally written memoirs are included.
Sure, it promotes a self-publishing school, but also neatly lays out some excellent tips for process: among them, ‘write your memoir truthfully’ and ‘write a memoir you want to read.’
‘Finding the Inner Story in Memoirs and Personal Essays’ is a compelling overview of the challenge of writing strong memoir.