Memoir

Your Name

What is a Memoir?What word does Memoir remind you of?

Memory

Memoir

• a record of events written by a person having intimate knowledge of them and based on personal observation

• Usually, memoirs. – an account of one's personal life and experiences;

autobiography. – the published record of the proceedings of a

group or organization, as of a learned society.

Memoir

• Not just an autobiography• captures certain highlights or meaningful

moments in one's past, often including a contemplation of the meaning of that event at the time of the writing of the memoir

• emotional and concerned with capturing particular scenes

Characteristics of the Memoir Form

• focus on a brief period of time or series of related events• Narrative structure, including many of the usual elements of

storytelling such as plot, character, conflict, theme, setting, imagery, foreshadowing and flashback, and irony and symbolism

• The writer's contemplation of the meaning of these events in retrospect

• A fictional quality even though the story is true• Higher emotional level• More personal reconstruction of the events and their impact• Therapeutic experience for the memoirist, especially when the

memoir is of the crisis or survival type of memoir

Good Memoirs are…

• "A good memoir requires two elements--one of art, the other of craft. The first is integrity of intention. . . . Memoir is how we try to make sense of who we are, who we once were, and what values and heritage shaped us. If a writer seriously embarks on that quest, readers will be nourished by the journey, bringing along many associations with quests of their own.

Memoirs must have…

• "The other element is carpentry. Good memoirs are a careful act of construction. We like to think that an interesting life will simply fall into place on the page. It won't. . . . Memoir writers must manufacture a text, imposing narrative order on a jumble of half-remembered events."

Memoirs can be

• Chapter books • Picture books• Articles• Essays• Poems

Examples of Memoirs