Memoirs are a flexible medium. There is more than one way to tell your story, or as the old saying goes, ‘there are many ways to skin a cat’ – or, less violently – ‘to peel an orange.’ The following three memoirs are distinct in their styles, and demonstrate some of the approaches to telling your unique story in a captivating way.
There is no one singular way to tell your story.
Recently I read Maggie O’Farrell’s I AM I AM I AM: Seventeen Brushes with Death]. It’s stylistically unconventional in that its seventeen chapters each chronicle momentous near-death experiences that informed the author’s life. These riveting events aren’t presented chronologically, but jump around in time, depicting different facets of O’Farrell’s personality at different times of her life. We see her perspective as a child, a student, a single woman, a wife and a mother. One event in particular, a childhood encounter with a life-altering disease, is the next-to-last chapter but explains so many of the whys about O’Farrell’s fearless – sometimes dangerous – approach to life revealed in the previous chapters.
Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming is an award-winning memoir describing the life of an African-American girl growing up during the civil rights movement in 1960s USA. The book, geared towards adolescents, is also a beautiful read for adults, and is written in verse… that’s right, verse. It is poetry as memoir, and received the National Book Award, the Newberry Medal, and was a New York Times Best Seller.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson, is written in a hurried, note-like manner. This style creates a sense of urgency in the author’s search through the written word – and in life – to find happiness in the face of trauma. Winterson is writing her way out of a daunting and abusive childhood as an adoptee in an unhappy household, seeking to find answers, and peace, through locating her biological mother.
Sparks Fly Retreats is hosting a Memoir Writing Workshop in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Come and join Allegra Huston for her Imaginative Storm Workshop in May of 2023. Allegra’s approach emphasizes creating a nurturing, non-judgmental environment that will help you identify your story and overcome your fear of telling it.