Project 1: Memoir

This unit explores writing about personal experiences from memory -- particular moments from childhood, adolescence, or adulthood that resonates with larger themes around culture such as identity, heritage, community, loss, redemption, alienation, etc. Over the next three weeks, you will be exploring the craft of creative nonfiction by mining your own experiences for stories worth telling. During this time, you will read about writing memoirs in our textbook and you will analyze some amateur and professional writers' memoirs, identifying some of the stylistic techniques they use, observing how they organize their stories, and discussing how their works speak to particular audiences and seek to fulfill specific purposes.

Possible topics include

• a specific memory from childhood around rituals, traditions, or celebrations that illustrate your sense (even a conflicted sense) of your own heritage;
• an incident from childhood that you understand differently as an adult;
• a story that demonstrates how your sense of a specific place from your childhood has helped to shape who you are as an adult;
• a memory of a person from childhood that had a significant impact on your own sense of identity;
• a discussion of a found object from your childhood and a reflection on that object's significance to you;
• a reflection on a childhood photograph, unpacking its social and cultural significance.

• stories about rites of passages into adulthood;
• stories about feeling different, about what it meant to fit in or not fit in with people your own age;
• stories about subcultures or places that had a particular impact on how you see the world;
• stories about specific events that had a significant impact on how you see the world;
• stories about encountering and adapting to cultures alien to your own understanding.

While nostalgia may figure into your story, try to avoid excessive gee-whizery in reflecting on trends, fashions, etc. And recognize that your readers will prefer stories that offer some tension and complex meanings, and they will remember stories that resist a simple moral.

The goal of this unit is to explore techniques for writing about personal experiences from memory. You will be researching your own memories, and your research should be methodical and thorough for this and for every project you submit in this class. In addition to trusting your own memory, do the following:

• Look back at pictures from that time in your life;
• Talk to your family, friends, teachers, and coaches about the events to get their perspectives;
• If possible, go back to the places where your story is set and take a look around;
• Find objects (real or images of them online) that were important to you at the time and reflect on those objects;
• Listen to music from that time and watch the TV shows you watched;
• If they're available, go through your old school notebooks, text messages, and emails from that time.

While all of these things may not figure into your story, as a careful researcher for your memoir, you want to do whatever you can to put yourself back into the story and to discover elements of the story that your own memories may have distorted or ignored.

Finally, think carefully about your own experiences that reveal something about this culture from your particular perspective, cultural background, and social situation. This is your chance to complicate your own history and make meaning out of complex experiences, to explore a memory from complicated points of view and present it to an outside audience.