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| Hard-working mother in college |
Memoir isn’t a
life story. That is autobiography. Memoir is one particular period in a person’s
life, one instance or one experience in which the memoirist has come to an
epiphany or several epiphanies from that experience and wishes to share that
insight with the reader. Memoir provides
insight not merely facts of the experience.
It is not necessary to include
everything that happened in the particular period which the memoirist wishes to
share and elucidate to the reader. The
memoir would be too long and rambling if I included every class taken. After taking over 40 college courses, I decided to write about my experiences in approximately 25 of them. Of course that’s not all I wrote about.
I focused on the trials and tribulations of raising a family of five
children while attending college for ten years, ten of my children’s growing-up
years, ten years of assisting my special needs child to achieve her educational
goals.
Memoirs encapsulate the important
moments, the “aha” moments in the slice of life the memoirist decides to
share. The general, the sameness in
experience has no place in memoir. Memoir
needs to be poignant and full of meaning, and in my case, humorous. For that was a way to cope in the daily grind
of going to college as a mother of five.
Has anyone read a good memoir
lately that I could add to my reading list?
I like the "slice of life" aspect you talk about when describing memoir. I haven't read one in a while. A few have stuck with me over the years.
ReplyDeleteThank you for visiting my blog, Theresa. A slice of life is the only way I can think of to describe memoir as it is not autobiography. If a memoir sticks with you over the years, that's a good thing. Which memoirs stuck with you or who were they about?
DeleteThanks again, Theresa, for reading my blog post. Please stop by again.
I give you a lot of credit for taking on so many tasks and completing them! You deserve an award!!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Michelle. Wouldn't an award be nice. We must remember that anything worth having is worth all the trouble to obtain it, in my case all the work involved with family and college duties.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for visiting my blog. Please stop by again.
Hi Victoria,
ReplyDeleteSomething which stuck to me was Ann Best's In The Mirror, A Memoir of Shattered Secrets. I cried and laughed with Ann while reading it.
I follow Ann and have read her posts. I'll check out In The Mirror, A Memoir of Shattered Secrets. This is a great title for a memoir.
DeleteThanks so much, Nas, for visiting my Adventures in Writing blog. Please stop by again.