Reflecting on Memoir

 

 

There was a lot to think about while I read the excerpts from Becoming and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? The first thing that stuck out to me was about the writing itself—Between the two different texts, there was a wide array of different emotional outputs and plenty of relationships to consider. Ultimately, despite both pieces both being memoir, they are as similar as they are different and represent the scope of the genre.

In Becoming, we focus on the college years of Michelle Obama, namely how she at once felt out of place and included at her undergraduate institution, Princeton. Something that is powerful to me is her ability to capture the complex and personal nature of her identity while maintaining the balancing act between trying to fit into the very homogenous field of academia and remembering (and learning to appreciate) her Black heritage. When viewing the piece through the lens given to us in the piece On Memory and Memoir, one thing that stands out to me first and foremost is Michelle’s confession that her memory, like everyone’s, is imperfect. And that it’s okay that it’s imperfect because what matters most about her story is how she was impacted and what she does hang onto all these years later. It’s nice to see an author be up-front about that.

When I read Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, the first emotion I felt was this sinking sadness—How could a person be so cruel to a child? To beat them, lock them outside in the cold, bark insults at them? It was a lot to take in. I appreciate how the author is able to pull the focus away from lingering on the sadness and instead takes the time to analyze how she remembers her adopted mother; The recollection isn’t perfect, but is descriptive enough to let the audience better understand the type of person she was and how that may have impacted Winterson. Writing and publishing a novel where she transparently talks about the things she has experienced must have been difficult, especially when having to deal with the aftermath. Similar to what I said in regards to Becoming, the idea of crystallized memory vs narrative memory is highlighted here, and it makes it easy for us to understand that while memoir itself is focused on capturing the lived experience of the author, memoir also—as part of creative non-fiction—can be flexible enough for a person to showcase not only the things they are sure of that happened, but also showcase the complex memories that may not be 100% clear.