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ISS English 11/12 Memoir Writing

Dr. Renee Chow

SUMMER ASSIGNMENTS Welcome to the Memoir Writing class!

A memoir writer needs to be reflective, introspective, creative, and wield language evocatively as a tool of expression. A suggestion, gleaned from memoirists and writers, is to write down memories and ideas whenever they are unearthed. Start thinking about the encounters, events, and relationships that have shaped your life in transformative, humorous, or painful ways. You may want to recall the milestones in your life, like surmounting a challenge, but it is not always the obvious landmarks of a life that hold the moments of self-revelation and insight. It is those experiences through which we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our world, or the ones which inspire change, that we want to capture. It will not always be easy to identify what these significant experiences are. The key is to keep a journal to write down the seemingly random thoughts, fleeting impressions, snatches of conversations, judgments, and anything else that comes to mind that hints at an insight to be drawn, a story waiting to be written. Make a record of your preoccupations: the things you keep thinking about, objects you just can’t get rid of, memories that resurface, episodes that haunt you, tales you enjoy re-telling, and the people and places that stir your emotions. For some of you, your journals might look like diaries, while for others, they may be a collage of anecdotes, poetry fragments, and doodles. This journal of your unique yet somehow universal - experiences will serve as your treasure trove as you begin to write in the memoir class.

Select a memoir or autobiography to read. Online books are permitted. Below is a list of recommended readings that is by no means exhaustive, nor should it limit your imagination if you elect to read a memoir or autobiography of your own choosing. Be adventurous in your choices and compassionate in your literary encounters. You may find an unexpected affinity and forge surprising connections with the personas. Some of the life stories may be upsetting, but know that it is the traumatic events that have shaped the personas and brought about their acquired insights.

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ISS English 11/12 Memoir Writing

Dr. Renee Chow

As you read, make notations on two aspects of the book. First, look beyond the story being told to the artistry of how the story is being told. Consider how the writing is crafted to transport you to another world to see vividly and feel intimately the experiences of the persona. In what ways has the writer succeeded or failed to captivate your attention and make the characters real and relatable? Secondly, identify the themes underlying the stories being told. Is it loneliness? Forgiveness? Self-hatred? What is the unwavering belief that drives the persona or gives hope? Answering these questions will lead you to the heart of the story. In the course of the fall semester, you will be expected to do a class presentation on your chosen book. So, read voraciously and intentionally. Your summer will not be complete without reading a good book.

Dr. Ren Chow ([email protected])

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem. Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court. 2017. Born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., legendary basketball star, Abdul-Jabbar, reflects on his life, shedding light on the experiences and people who helped shape him into the man he became. From a childhood made difficult by racism and prejudice to a record-smashing career on the basketball court as an adult, his life was packed with “coaches” who guided him along his path to success. The inspiration from those around him and his drive to find his own path in life sparked him to become an activist for social change and advancement. Alifirenka, Caitlin and Martin Ganda with Liz Welch. I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives. 2015. It started with a letter between an American girl and a boy from Zimbabwe. In this compelling dual memoir, Caitlin and Martin recount how they became best friends - and better people through their long-distance exchange. Their story will inspire you to look beyond your own life and wonder about the world at large and your place in it. Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1969. Angelou's influential autobiography is a raw and haunting look at racial prejudice in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Maya's life and self-image are shaped as much by mentors in her life and the love of family members as it is by the cruel racial bigotry she faced and her traumatic rape as a child. Balakian, Peter. Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir. 1997. Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family in New Jersey, immersed in an all-American boyhood. Beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced - the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians in 2

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1915, including many of Balakian's relatives, in the century's first genocide. In moving prose, Balakian charts his growth and personal awakening to the facts of his family's history and the horrifying aftermath of the Turkish government's continued campaign to cover up one of the worst crimes ever committed against humanity. Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. 2007. In this harrowing and critically acclaimed memoir, Beah uses his own story to speak for the thousands of child soldiers whose stories will never be told. Orphaned at twelve, Ishmael walked through a war-ravaged countryside, often starving and always afraid, until at thirteen, he found refuge with government soldiers; soldiers who would turn him into a killer. For the next three years, Ishmael would witness or take part in unimaginable acts of violence that are often graphically described in the book. Bosh, Chris. Letters to a Young Athlete. 2021. Chris Bosh, NBA Hall of Famer, eleven-time All-Star, two-time NBA champion, Olympic gold medalist, and the league’s Global Ambassador, had his playing days cut short at their prime by a freak medical condition. Forced to reckon with how to find meaning to carry forward, he found himself looking back over his path, from a teenager in Dallas to the pinnacle of the NBA and beyond. Reflecting on all he learned from a long list of basketball legends, he saw that his important lessons were not about basketball so much as the inner game of success: right attitude, commitment, and flow within a team. Now he shares that journey in his book, formulated as a series of letters to younger people and to all wisdom seekers. Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. 2007. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book. From Bourdain's first food epiphany tasting cold soup in France, to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown; from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village; from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again; Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable. Bragg, Rick, All Over but the Shoutin’. 1997. Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. This is a moving recollection of his hard-drinking father with a murderous temper and his mother who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes. Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. Broom, Sarah, The Yellow House. 2019. Broom’s National Book Award-winning debut is a sprawling memoir of a mother’s struggle against a house's entropy and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina. This is a memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows. Brown, Daniel James, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. 2013.

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It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories, Brown has created an exhilarating portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest. Carr, Mary, The Liar’s Club: A Memoir. 1995. In this funny, razor-edged memoir, the prize-winning poet and critic, Mary Carr, looks back at her upbringing, in a swampy East Texas refinery town, with a volatile, defiantly loving family. She recalls her painter mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit could tip into psychosis; a fist-swinging father who spun tales with his cronies - dubbed the Liars' Club; and a neighborhood rape when she was eight. An inheritance was squandered, endless bottles emptied, and guns leveled at the deserving and undeserving. It is written with an authenticity stripped of self-pity and a poet's eye for lyrical detail. Colas, Emily. Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive Compulsive, 1999. This raw, darkly comic series of astonishing vignettes is Emily Colas's achingly honest chronicle of her twisted journey through the obsessive-compulsive disorder that came to dominate her world. In the beginning, it was germs and food. By the time she faced the fact that she was really "losing it," Colas had become a slave to her own "hobbies" - from the daily hair cutting to incessant inspections of her children's clothing for bloodstains. A shocking and hilarious account of a young woman struggling to gain control of her life, this is Colas' exposé of a soul tormented, but balanced by a buoyancy of spirit and a piercing sense of humor that may be her saving grace. Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. 2007. Didion is one of America’s most iconic and influential non-fiction writers. Several days before Christmas 2003, Didion and John Gregory Dunne saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later, John suffered a massive and fatal coronary. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through, but two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.” Eggers, Dave. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. 2000. The story is told of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. But this memoir is so much more than its story. Eggers subverts the conventions of the memoir by self-reflexively questioning his memory, motivations, and interpretations so thoroughly that the memoir form itself becomes comic. Despite the layers of literary self-consciousness and ironic hesitation, the reader soon discerns that the emotions informing the book are unspeakably authentic. Engle, Margarita, Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings. 2015. Daughter of a Cuban mother and an American father, Engle relates the struggles of having parents from different cultures, relatives living in poverty, and facing prejudice in America 4

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because of political situations outside of her control. In lyrical poetry, she shares her perspective of feeling torn and divided between two contrasting worlds. Franklin, Benjamin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. 1791. Franklin’s self-entitled memoir is a literary and historical gem. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. Franklin presents a man whose greatness does not keep him from being down-to-earth and approachable, who faces up to the "errata" he has committed in life, and who presents personal success as something within the reach of anyone willing to work hard enough for it. Grant, Richard. Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta. 2015. On a whim, award-winning author, journalist, and television host, Grant, and his girlfriend move from New York City to a fixer-upper plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters on which Grant casts his adept, empathetic journalistic eye, capturing the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, while tracking its utterly bizarre and criminal extremes. Greene, Joshua. Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend. 2021. Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. Deported along with his family to Auschwitz, Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis. On arrival in America, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow after a fierce blizzard. His next job was laboring in toxic sweatshops. From these humble beginnings, he became President, Chairman, and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed oil company and grew a commercial bank to more than $4 billion in assets. Siggi’s ascent from the darkest of yesterdays to the brightest of tomorrows holds sway over the imagination in this riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live life to the fullest. Grimes, Nikki, Ordinary Hazards. 2019. Written in free verse, this memoir follows Grimes as she grows up in 1950s and 1960s America with a mother battling paranoid schizophrenia and alcoholism, and a mostly absent musician father. Shuttled between foster homes, she begins writing in a journal at age six, finding words to be a place she can pour out her anger, fears, and hopes. Grimes celebrates the power of words to inspire, heal, and transform even in the darkest of times. Hamilton, Gabrielle, Blood, Bones & Butter. 2011. Hamilton spent her idyllic childhood on a wild farm in rural Pennsylvania with an exhilarant father - an artist and set builder - and French mother. As she entered her teens, however, her family unexpectedly dissolved. She moved to New York City at 16, living off loose change and eating ketchup packets from McDonald’s; worked 20-hour days at a soulless catering company; and traveled, often half-starved, through Europe. The constant thread running through this

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patchwork tale, which culminates with the opening of her New York City restaurant, Prune, is Hamilton's slow simmering passion for cooking and the comfort it can bring. Hart, Kevin. I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons. 2017. New York Times bestselling author, superstar comedian, and Hollywood box office star Kevin Hart turns his immense talent to the written word in this hilarious but also heartfelt memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself. Heiligman, Deborah, Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers. 2017. The deep and enduring friendship between Vincent and Theo Van Gogh shaped both brothers' lives. Confidant, champion, sympathizer, and friend, Theo supported Vincent as he struggled to find his path in life. Meticulously researched, drawing on the 658 letters Vincent wrote to Theo during his lifetime, Deborah Heiligman weaves a tale of two lives intertwined and the extraordinary love of the Van Gogh brothers. Hoose, Philip, The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club. 2015. At the outset of World War II, Denmark did not resist German occupation. Deeply ashamed of his nation's leaders, fifteen year-old Knud Pedersen resolved with his brother and a handful of schoolmates to take action against the Nazis if the adults would not. Naming their secret club after the fiery British leader, the young patriots in the Churchill Club committed countless acts of sabotage, infuriating the Germans, who eventually had the boys tracked down and arrested. The boys' exploits and eventual imprisonment helped spark a full-blown Danish resistance. Jefferson, Margo. Negroland: A Memoir. 2016. Pulitzer Prize–winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson was born in 1947 into upper-crust black Chicago. Her father was head of pediatrics at Provident Hospital, while her mother was a socialite. Negroland’s pedigree dates back generations, having originated with antebellum free blacks who made their fortunes among the plantations of the South. It evolved into a world of exclusive sororities, fraternities, networks, and clubs - a world in which skin color and hair texture were relentlessly evaluated alongside scholarly and professional achievements, where the Talented Tenth positioned themselves as a third race between whites and “the masses of Negros,” and where the motto was “Achievement. Invulnerability. Comportment.” Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions, while reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments: the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, and the falsehood of post-racial America. Kingston, Maxine Hong, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. 1976. Kingston created a new form - an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis - in her portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities: immigrant, female, Chinese, and American. As a girl, Kingston lived in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother’s tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston’s sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family’s past and her own present. 6

ISS English 11/12 Memoir Writing

Dr. Renee Chow

Lapera, Amanda. Losing Dad: Paranoid Schizophrenia: A Family’s Search for Hope. 2013. Silver Award recipient of IBPA's prestigious Benjamin Franklin book award in the category of psychology, Losing Dad is the compelling true story of a family's struggle with the sudden onset of their father's severe mental illness. Lacking an understanding of his condition, the family is left to deal with his upsetting transformation. The perspectives of his three children, his spouse, and his own distorted reality combine to offer readers a glimpse of a world that will either feel hauntingly familiar or mind-boggling. Losing Dad poignantly shows the effects of inadequate treatment for those living with a severe mental illness in America. Lewis, C. S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of my Early Life. 1955. This r...