11/4/2023 0 Comments I write like by memoires![]() Take Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996) for example: he had a horrific childhood and, after reading his book, you truly feel sorry for him, but you don’t pity him. It is also difficult to read a memoir that judges rather than reflects upon the past. In fact, the best revenge is to live a good life. It’s also important why you should not write a memoir and that is for the purpose of revenge. Posing questions is inherent to wanting to understand our past experiences. ![]() Many individuals who write memoirs are also the type of people who like posing questions, and this quality suggested a particular personality trait inherent to writers, especially memoirists. Linda Gray Sexton’s writing is powerful, not because she uses the written word as a vehicle to express revenge or anger, but because she uses it as a way to release and come to terms with her own demons. Having a family member who has committed suicide affects your family history in a way that is difficult to shake. ![]() In the latter book, she said that writing helped her to come to terms with her mother’s death and to disentangle herself from the strong tentacles that the suicide had attached to her own life. Writing has also helped her deal with her own emotional demons. Writing her two memoirs, Searching for Memory Street (1994) and Half in Love (2011), has helped her to heal and to reconcile herself to the trauma of her childhood. Writing the memoir for him was a personal mystical and spiritual exploring, and in the process he found himself transforming.įor her entire life Linda Gray Sexton, daughter of celebrated poet Anne Sexton who committed suicide when she was in her forties, has struggled to come to terms with losing a mother in such a way. It was as if a voice inside him gave him this message. He felt a deep desire and need to slow down his life from the fast track. Memoirist Mark Matousek said that his inspiration for writing his first memoir, Sex Death, Enlightenment (1996), stemmed from his transcendent experience of the realization that his life as a busy writer for a large New York magazine was taking a psychological toll on him. Kingston wrote The Woman Warrior as a way to explore these conflicting messages. While her mother wanted her to communicate her stories with the world, Kingston was told to hold on to the secret about her aunt’s suicide. The fact that her aunt was born into and then forgotten by the family grated on Kingston’s psyche for many years. Once when speaking with writer Maxine Hong Kingston regarding her two published memoirs, she said that her inspiration had stemmed from her reflection about what had happened historically to her family as immigrants and about the ghosts from her Chinese past, particularly regarding her aunt’s suicide after her aunt had been ostracized from the community for having an illegitimate child. Someone else might have another version, and years and years later your perception of an incident might eventually change. When you write a memoir, you are writing your version of what you think happened from your own perspective. Writer Andre Aciman believes that people write memoirs because they want a second chance to make another version of their lives. Other reasons to write a memoir include to preserve the family’s legacy, learn more about the family, search for personal identity, gain some insight into the past, or heal from a traumatic experience. ![]() Others might have secrets to share, or maybe they want to write a memoir to study or understand a situation. The memoirists whom I interviewed for my research claimed that they had a story to tell and felt that they were the only one who could tell it. What I usually tell them is that people write memoirs for a multitude of reasons, but typically, they have a burning need to do so. Much of what I will share here is from my forthcoming book, Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life, which will be released in September 2017.Īs the author of two full-length memoirs and many personal essays, as well as being a workshop facilitator for writing for healing, I am often asked why people write memoirs.
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