This is the question I will ask on the first day of my Memoir Writing class at the university. My students, who are older people (55+), will have lived lives that probably warrant recording, but why? What have they seen though out American history? What changes and events have they experienced? What makes those changes and events so important?
I'm in the process of planning this class, which starts in mid-April, and I've been thinking about lives that have been written down. I sit amongst stacks of books, borrowed from the library, all filled with tales of other people's lives and ask: Why were these lives so interesting that they were deemed publishable?
As I sift through them, I noticed that these people know about to spin a good yarn about one facet of their lives. They have careers, childhoods, neurosis or travels that are intriguing enough to read about. They write about these events in such a way, the reader is pulled in and forced to see the world through a new lens.Just by reading, you're taken from your bus ride to work to Anthony Bourdain's kitchen in Manhattan, where the sous chef is screaming at a coked out waiter about beef wellington. You're feeling the exhaustion and anxiety of Barbara Ehrenreich's 10 hour day of waitressing for below-minimum-wage. You're in the car with Hunter S. Thompson on an amphetamine addled journey to Las Vegas.
From the most mundane to the frantic, individual lives are so colorful that most must be recorded. Just by reading these books, I think of my own life. All 28 years have been fraught life changing events that need recording. The fear of dogs began when I was eight. I was chased up the block by a yappy dachshund who forced me to jump on the hood of a park car. I blame my mother on that embarrassing day. Her fear of dogs transferred to me and it would be something for me to deal with for years.
I can express this story in a poem, that's my medium. I want to let my students that they can express their stories in different mediums as well. Their stories don't have to be chronological chapter accounts that start at the crib and end today (that's technically an autobiography, anyway). They can write essays, a book of poetry or draw the whole thing like Persepolis. So long as they tell a good story.
I'm really excited to learn from my students as well. They have a lot to share with me about living in Toledo, OH, raising children, fighting in wars. My job will be to teach how to share with the world. I look forward to the task!
