Accessibility features of the web version of this resource<\/p>\n
The web version of Who Teaches Writing has been designed with accessibility in mind. It is our goal to optimize the resource for people using screen-reader technology. Content should be navigable using a keyboard, and links, headings, and tables should be formatted to work with screen readers. All images considered essential include alt-tags. Information is not conveyed by color alone, and there is an option to increase font size. (See tab on top right of screen titled, \u201cIncrease Font Size.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Choosing a Story to Tell<\/p>\n
The word memoir comes from the French m\u00e9moire, meaning \u201cmemory,\u201d or, more specifically, a person\u2019s memory of their own experiences. Perhaps you\u2019ve heard of memoirs as long, narrative books that famous, older people write about their lives, but anyone, of any age, can write a memoir. The memoir\u2019s length can be thousands of pages, focusing on many memories connected by a theme (like the writer\u2019s experience with their dad over twenty years), or it can be a short essay focusing on one clear memory.
\nFor this class, you\u2019ll be writing a narrative essay (not a book!), so it\u2019s easiest to pick one memory for your focus point. While the subject of a memoir can be anything at all, memories that work well for memoir have a few common characteristics:<\/p>\n
In the memoir essay \u201cChop Suey,\u201d Ira Sukrungruang 1 tells a story of a visit to a bowling alley with his mother that happened when he was a child, long before he crafted the essay. In the memoir essay \u201cDogged,\u201d Barrie Jean Borich 2 describes a dog she saw running across the highway when she was a young woman, twenty-five years before she wrote the piece. But there\u2019s no set amount of time that needs to have passed, as long as you\u2019ve been able to gain perspective on that memory. Perspective, in a memoir, means the ability to see the memory with more complexity than you could see it at the time, and the ability to put the memory in context of the world around you and other events in your life. The memory also needs to have taken place long enough ago for you to take advantage of your brain\u2019s natural memory sifting process. When something happened last week, it\u2019s often difficult to decide which parts of the story are worth telling, leading to long, dull passages like packing a suitcase for a trip. Years after the event occurs, you\u2019ll have forgotten the inconsequential details, and you\u2019ll be more able to focus on what, for you, was worth remembering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"