6 th Grade Memoir Unit Ms. Gilmore, Intern WHAT IS A MEMOIR?

“My dear children…you must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If one carries many such memories into life, one is safe to the end of one’s days, and if one has only one good memory left in one’s heart, even that may be the means of saving us.” –from The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky GETTING STARTED

He is talking about a recollected moment in which someone has tasted of life, a moment forceful enough, charged enough, to survive many other moments. Perhaps Dostoevsky is suggesting that an especially vivid memory itself survives as a monument…Without such compelling memories, we are not ourselves, but rather anyone.” –from Robert Coles, The Call of Stories GETTING STARTED

 A memoir is a person’s written account of a memory or experience that takes place in the past.  Memoirs allow people to look back on their lives and reflect on their own significant experiences. How did a certain event make them feel? What did they learn from it? WHAT IS A MEMOIR?

Memoirs usually include :  A significant event or experience  Facts as well as emotional reflections  First person narration  Stories that are true (memoirs are considered non-fiction)  Lots of vivid details so that the reader can understand what the writer felt in the past.  A teachable moment or lesson. This means that the writer is able to show the reader what he/she learned from the experience.  Note: Memoirs sometimes include compacted experiences. For example, sometimes things that happened to the writer in a period of 3 weeks can be condensed into one day for the sake of storytelling. CHARACTERISTICS OF A MEMOIR

 Unlike a biography or an autobiography, a memoir does not have to cover one person’s entire life. It does not have to start from birth and end at death. Instead, a memoir can reflect on one memory from the past or it can be composed of many smaller memories. HOW IS A MEMOIR DIFFERENT FROM A BIOGRAPHY OR AUTOBIOGRAPHY?

 “Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.” –John Jakes, writer  “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” –Joan Didion, author  One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time and in others’ minds.” –Alfred Kazin, writer  “Memoirs are the backstairs of history.” –George Meredith, Victorian poet QUOTES ABOUT WRITING

 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou  The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls  Night by Elie Wiesel  Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam  The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank  Mama Makes Up Her Mind…by Bailey White  Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor  Everything I Needto Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum  Sweet Summer by Bebe Moore Campbell A FEW EXAMPLES OF BOOK LENGTH MEMOIRS