By Annette FixSimply stated: When you write a memoir, you are recording history. History as experienced by a single human. History that you are living and documenting right now.
The dusty textbooks used in schools relay history, citing the names, dates, and places of significant events, and the major public, social, political, and religious figures considered noteworthy. While all those facts and figures are preserved for posterity, where are the stories from the people who lived through those historical events?
Without the individual stories of people who were there, future generations will be robbed of the humanity beneath the history.
The galvanizing election of the first African American president of the United States, the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Holocaust—these events and countless others—both large and small—are pieces of human history that shouldn’t be reduced to facts and figures.
Which is more compelling and leaves you with a deeper understanding of history: the chapter about WWII in your old high-school textbook or The Diary of Anne Frank? At their core, all memoirs have historical elements woven through the story. There is no way to write a memoir can exist without capturing a moment in history. A memoir is documentation—a narrative record of how a single person functioning within society thinks, behaves, and lives at this very moment in time.
Through his personal story in Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt tells a tale that gives great insight into the Irish socio-economic struggles. His experience is not unlike the experiences of many others at that place and time. McCourt’s story has relevance today in this economic climate. A memoir written by someone affected by the current lending crisis or the stock market crash could provide the human insight behind the facts and figures that will eventually be recorded in history textbooks.
The same can be said about the gender oppression in Middle Eastern culture explored in Reading Lolita in Tehran. And the political debate surrounding right-to-life issues in Two Weeks of Life. History repeats itself and often only the setting, characters, and details change.
What is your story has no connection to anything historical?
Maybe your story is not tied directly to any event that will ever make your name appear in a textbook; that doesn’t mean your experience is less valuable. Your daily trials, concerns, and experiences deserve to be recorded to paint an authentic picture of life at this very moment, at this exact place in the world. What may not seem like history to you now could end up being a study in social anthropology in the future, so don’t be too quick to decide your story is insignificant on a historical level.
As an example, when I began writing my book, The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir, I was working through a devastating relationship break-up that occurred exactly 43 days after the terrorist attack on The World Trade Center—two seemingly unrelated incidents. It wasn’t until a year later that I discovered studies were conducted about the phenomenon. Because Americans were shaken to the core by an attack carried out on U.S. soil, many of them began to question what and who in their lives were most important. People made significant life choices, following the mantra: “life is too short.” Though the specifics of my story are unique to my life, and my voice and the execution of my memoir is intentionally lighter in tone than you would expect, the catalyst for my story is both historical and universal.
Take a look at your life. Think on a micro level—what experience in your life mirrors history on a universal/macro level? What is your personal story connection to history?
Annette Fix is a freelance editor, a publishing industry and single parenting speaker, Senior Editor of WOW! Women On Writing, and the author of The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir.The dusty textbooks used in schools relay history, citing the names, dates, and places of significant events, and the major public, social, political, and religious figures considered noteworthy. While all those facts and figures are preserved for posterity, where are the stories from the people who lived through those historical events?
Without the individual stories of people who were there, future generations will be robbed of the humanity beneath the history.
The galvanizing election of the first African American president of the United States, the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Holocaust—these events and countless others—both large and small—are pieces of human history that shouldn’t be reduced to facts and figures.
Which is more compelling and leaves you with a deeper understanding of history: the chapter about WWII in your old high-school textbook or The Diary of Anne Frank? At their core, all memoirs have historical elements woven through the story. There is no way to write a memoir can exist without capturing a moment in history. A memoir is documentation—a narrative record of how a single person functioning within society thinks, behaves, and lives at this very moment in time.
Through his personal story in Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt tells a tale that gives great insight into the Irish socio-economic struggles. His experience is not unlike the experiences of many others at that place and time. McCourt’s story has relevance today in this economic climate. A memoir written by someone affected by the current lending crisis or the stock market crash could provide the human insight behind the facts and figures that will eventually be recorded in history textbooks.
The same can be said about the gender oppression in Middle Eastern culture explored in Reading Lolita in Tehran. And the political debate surrounding right-to-life issues in Two Weeks of Life. History repeats itself and often only the setting, characters, and details change.
What is your story has no connection to anything historical?
Maybe your story is not tied directly to any event that will ever make your name appear in a textbook; that doesn’t mean your experience is less valuable. Your daily trials, concerns, and experiences deserve to be recorded to paint an authentic picture of life at this very moment, at this exact place in the world. What may not seem like history to you now could end up being a study in social anthropology in the future, so don’t be too quick to decide your story is insignificant on a historical level.
As an example, when I began writing my book, The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir, I was working through a devastating relationship break-up that occurred exactly 43 days after the terrorist attack on The World Trade Center—two seemingly unrelated incidents. It wasn’t until a year later that I discovered studies were conducted about the phenomenon. Because Americans were shaken to the core by an attack carried out on U.S. soil, many of them began to question what and who in their lives were most important. People made significant life choices, following the mantra: “life is too short.” Though the specifics of my story are unique to my life, and my voice and the execution of my memoir is intentionally lighter in tone than you would expect, the catalyst for my story is both historical and universal.
Take a look at your life. Think on a micro level—what experience in your life mirrors history on a universal/macro level? What is your personal story connection to history?
Visit her writing blog at Annette’s Paper Trail. She enjoys hearing from her readers and other writers. You can email her directly at annette[at]annettefix[dot]com.
For the length of her blog tour, Annette will be giving away free digital copies of her memoir. If you’d like a copy, send an email to promo[at]thebreak-updiet[dot]com, please put “The Urban Muse” in the subject line.
You can purchase copies of The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir online and from any independent or chain bookstore.
8 comments:
Susan, thanks for having me as a guest blogger!
I'll stop by throughout the day to answer any questions or respond to comments. =)
Wonderful post! I so agree that history is made up of all of our individual stories. They are all important and help each of us to better understand our world.
Thanks @ Annette & @Anali! I love how Annette makes the point that history does not have to be stuffy, nor does it have to have occurred centuries or even decades ago.
Anali & Susan,
It's funny that we often get caught up thinking of history as something that occurred long ago rather than something we are living right now.
Events like the devastation from Hurricane Katrina and the government's response (or lack of) will be documented in history books, but the facts and analysis of it will never provide as much understanding as stories from the people who lived through it, were abandoned in the aftermath, or returned to rebuild New Orleans.
The lending crisis, the bail-outs--they are the bits of history that will be examined in economics textbooks. But the stories written by our generation about what it is/was like to live in these uncertain financial times show the humanity behind the our shared history.
I never liked history in high school--actually, that's an understatement, I hated it; history was too dry and boring--rote memorization of names and dates and places.
It wasn't until a professor in college gave us a Civil War era assignment to write a diary as if we were slaves on a plantation in the South. Naturally, I embraced the writing assignment like a gift from the creative gods--anything to make a history class less boring.
But working through that assignment finally made history click for me. It wasn't about the details of who, what, where, and when. I was fascinated about finding out what life was like for the people.
What would my life have been like taking off in a wagon train during the Westward Expansion?
Would I have been excited by the possibilities of Roosevelt's New Deal (like I am about Obama's promises of change)?
Would I have been a war protester in the 60's and what stories would I have to tell?
Just short of figuring out how to time travel, the only way I could "experience" those moments in history would be to read a memoir written by someone who lived through them.
And that makes history a lot more interesting--and meaningful for the reader.
Hi Annette,
You really gave me a new twist to my perception. Often I struggle with a felling that my experiences really don't count. They aren't so great and shouldn't matter to be talked about.
But, now, after reading your post, I feel, for that matter, every one, should feel that their life does matter. And they should and must chronicle it. No matter what.
Yet again, I see so many poeple- all establsihed entrepreneurs, writers, businessman/woman all and sundry who are proud about their achievements don't care to write (of course, that would benefit some of us; give useful experience to some extablishing writers like me). I try pushing them to write to not to waste way their precious experiences.
Thanks for the post!
Solomon
Solomon,
I'm glad my post was thought-provoking for you. =) I hope it did encourage you to consider the value of your experiences.
The one thing you can write that no one else can is YOUR place in the time line of history. I'm sure you have stories of a career or travels or lifestyle be it geographic, culture, or economic class that is universal because others have experienced it but also unique to your perception of the experience.
I think everyone has valuable stories to tell. They just need to believe they do and have the desire to record those stories. =)
I love to watch movies from the 1930s on TV with my sons. I point to the items in the rooms, the clothing, the mannerisms, the slang speech. The people making those movies weren't trying to record history, but they did.
Dwayne,
Exactly! Film provides a wonderful medium to record the look of tangible/visible bits of history, and the sound of the language (and music) of an era.
I like the idea of memoir capturing and recording the thoughts behind what we can see in still and motion pictures.
Great example!
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