This week saw the release of Paul Auster’s second memoir, Winter Journal, wherein he turns his eye from the portrait of fatherhood he explored in The Invention of Solitude to his mother’s life, and her death, and the ever encroaching inevitability of his own death. Inspired by this new and deeply affecting work by one of our greatest contemporary authors, we started thinking about our favorite literary memoirs, from the contemporary to the classic, those that suck us in and leave us gasping for breath as well or better than any novel. Click through to see the books we chose, and if we’ve missed your own favorite, make a case for it in the comments — we can always use another book to read!
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
- Literacy Memoir. The literacy memoir paper shows my background life of communication in reading and writing throughout my life. Not knowing English in elementary school was a challenge for my education, but with some time and effort I became a success.
- My Literacy Memoir By: Julie Kelley Writing My experiences in the past have definitely affected my present. I am who I am today whether it be from negative or positive experiences. I wish I had been more exposed to some things in the past, but I can learn from these experiences.
Literacy Narrative I like to think of my literacy narrative as a journey through the world of language. From the time I came out of the womb and opened my eyes to the world, language has been a versatile constant in my life. As a small child, it had the power to put me to sleep.
Nabokov’s memoir is an account of his childhood and the years before his emigration to the United States in 1940 — but that’s not quite right. More importantly, the book is an account of Nabokov’s art as much as it is an example of it, a study of the themes and symbols that make up his mind as they make up the book. As ever, Nabokov’s prose is unimpeachable, brilliant, devastating, and his almost petulant, playful manner makes even lists of relatives seem fascinating.
The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr
Karr’s funny, terrifying, scalpel-sharp first book was one of the first to open the contemporary memoir floodgates: yes, the public screamed, wept, whispered. Yes, we want more of this. You will feel the same way as this incomparable firebrand leads you through her swampy childhood. Lucky for you, if you’re a first time reader, you’ll have two more of Karr’s memoirs to go when you’re through. They could have made this list too, but we’ve got to give other writers a fighting chance, you know?
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
In this heartbreaking memoir, Official National Treasure Joan Didion writes about the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and the “magical thinking” that followed: “We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss,” she writes. “We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes.” Already a master of writing about loss, this memoir is an essential addition to Didion’s oeuvre.
Maus, Art Spiegelman
Though there are many deeply affecting and wonderful Holocaust memoirs that might have made this list, our favorite will forever be Maus, with its harrowing story wrapped in Spiegelman’s pitch-perfect illustrations. You’d think that imagining the characters as animals would make the horrors of the story seem less intense, more palatable, but in fact it’s the opposite — in true Understanding Comics style, the iconic, blank faces of the mice only allow us to put ourselves in their shoes that much more easily.
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
In this beautiful, bitter memoir, Kingston blends traditional Chinese folk tales — her mother’s “talk-stories” — with her often difficult experiences growing up Chinese American in Stockton, California. What is a ghost? What is a woman’s worth? Who is she? Kingston’s prose burns on the page as she investigates.
A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
Published posthumously in 1964, this memoir is made up of Hemingway’s collected accounts of his time as an expat writer in the 1920s, largely in Paris, hanging out with Gertrude Stein, the Fitzgeralds, Ezra Pound, and a host of other characters, all engaged with padding their now-fat legacies. As spare and simply lovely as his novels, it’s enough to make any aspiring writer want to pack up and move to the city of light.
Darkness Visible, William Styron
One of the books that led the memoir charge, Styron’s candid, elegant 1990 memoir of his serious depression — and recovery — is both an extremely personal story of exploring the depths of despair and a meditation on depression in a wider cultural context. It’s still one of the best things we’ve ever read on the topic.
This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff
In Wolff’s elegantly rendered, captivating memoir, he describes a childhood spent wandering the country with his itinerant mother, on the run from an abusive ex-boyfriend — until she meets and marries an equally unsuitable man, with whom the teenaged Wolff engages in furious battle. But he’s also fighting his own battle of self-invention. Darkly comic, deeply piercing and as satisfying as any novel, This Boy’s Life is an irrefutable classic.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
This memoir, the first in six volumes of autobiography, is a time-honored classic for a reason. Poetic and incredibly inspiring, the reader watches Angelou develop from a victim to a confident, capable young woman as she learns to process and deal with the racism of the world around her. With her younger self often referred to as “a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America,” Angelou has undoubtedly changed many lives with this book.
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
Orwell’s gripping account of his time in the Spanish Civil War, told with his trademark journalist’s wink, is one of his best. Unflinching and honest, Orwell approaches his experience without agenda, recording things as he sees them. As Philip Mairet once said, “It shows us the heart of innocence that lies in revolution; also the miasma of lying that, far more than the cruelty, takes the heart out of it.”
“Literacy Memoir”
Assignment Guidelines
Remember, read the criteria for assignments carefully.
Overview
The first project of the semester will allow you to examine yourself as a reader and writer.These are skills that you have been fine-tuning throughout your academic career, but you have a long-standing relationship with them.
Objectives
This assignment will allow students to demonstrate their individual and initial grasp of the writing process.Students will be exploring their literacy history and how that directly applies to their personal success in this course, Composition.
Final Paper Scope:
Literacy Narrative Vs Memoir
- 2-3 pages double-spaced
- Essay form (Intro, body, conclusion; topic sentence for each paragraph)
- Follows proper paper format (refer to class expectations for details)
- Creative Title
- Correct MUGs (mechanics, usage, and grammar)
Assignment Guidelines
You read and write all the time.It must, at times, feel as if you have always done these tasks without having to think that much about them.When you were very young, you didn’t know how to perform these literacy tasks, although you had managed one that precedes these two: talking.
In this paper, write about your recollections of your earliest memories of literacy, focusing on reading, writing, or both.There is no magical age or ages at which it should have happened.Also, some of you may have different or better memories than others.Whether you write about something that happened at three, or five, or eight-years-old, focus on how you felt as you entered the world of literate humans.You might want to look at old children’s books or perhaps at the assignments and papers from your earliest attempts at writing.Parents often double as archivists.You might talk to your parents also.They may remember what you have forgotten or might possibly job your memory as well.
This is not an analytic essay.It is a piece of writing which focuses on memory and reflection, on past experiences seen through the prism of the present.You are free to use stories and examples of how you developed your understanding and use of literacy.Of course you can use first person; of course you can use narrative.
Literacy Memoir
Audience: Your primary audience for your Literacy Memoir is your instructor and classmates, but also other possible readers of your work who you choose to share with.