Memoir genre thoughts

from Relling Westfall

Events in our everyday lives trigger our memories. William Capers’ brother is getting an MA, which reminds him of his brother’s nearly disastrous, almost failed graduation from high school. Bobby Thomson dies, which reminds Bob Herbert of the World Series in 1951. Simple as this sequence is, Writing Everyday fails to mention that some of the best, most immediate memoir writing comes as a response to daily events. For some of our students, who become deer-in-the-headlights in response to a memoir assignment, this connection may be a helpful spur.

Bob Herbert’s column this past Tuesday, “A Hero Named Bobby,” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/opinion/24herbert.html?emc=eta1) also demonstrates the impact memoirs can have, how they can undercut our prevailing ideas of what things were like. Most Americans today tend to think of the 1960’s as that great revolutionary moment, when progress in equality began in this country. The 1950’s, in contrast, become that shadowy and distant past when people behaved nastily. As Bob Herbert describes his kindergarten self, his hero worship, and his family, a very different picture of the 1950’s emerges. I think it is no accident that Herbert wrote this column a month after career civil servant Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign, as a result of the editing of a right-wing blogger. Such equality, such progress… Good memoirs complicate our understanding of life and history.