Survived social unrest or family trauma or war how it is depicted in real life/history books/what you are taught in school.
A genre is a literary form. There are many genres that are autobiographical in nature. In other words, the writer writes about his or her own life. Here are some of the various genres that are considered to be autobiographical. autobiography, confessional, credo, diary, journal, letter, log, memoir, personal essay
Examples of Memoirs Night- Elie Wiesel Chinese Cinderella- Adeline Yen Mah A Long Way Gone A Child Called It- Dave Pelzer
A memoir is a piece of autobiographical writing, usually shorter in nature than a comprehensive autobiography. The memoir, especially as it is being used in publishing today, often tries to capture certain highlights or meaningful moments in one's past, often including a contemplation of the meaning of that event at the time of the writing of the memoir. The memoir may be more emotional and concerned with capturing particular scenes, or a series of events, rather than documenting every fact of a person's life (Zuwiyya, N. 2000). For example, Homer Hickam, Jr. has written several memoirs about his life, including October Sky (formerly Rocket Boys) and The Coalwood Way. Both cover his high school days in Coalwood, West Virginia. They are full length books, but the scope of time is brief compared to Hickam's entire life and all the events of his life.
Characteristics of the Memoir Form ... Focus on a brief period of time or series of related events ... Narrative structure, including many of the usual elements of storytelling such as setting, plot development, imagery, conflict, characterization, foreshadowing and flashback, and irony and symbolism ... The writer's contemplation of the meaning of these events in retrospect ... A fictional quality even though the story is true ... Higher emotional level ... More personal reconstruction of the events and their impact ... Therapeutic experience for the memoirist, especially when the memoir is of the crisis or survival type of memoir
Characteristics of the memoir form: another perspective ... explores an event or series of related events that remain lodged in memory ... describes the events and then shows, either directly or indirectly, why they are significant -- or in short, why you continue to remember them ... is focused in time; doesn't cover a great span of years (that would be an autobiography) ... centers on a problem or focuses on a conflict and its resolution and on the understanding of why and how the resolution is significant in your life
Do memoirs tell the truth? According to J. A. Cuddon, "An autobiography may be largely fictional. Few can recall clear details of their early life and are therefore dependent on other people's impressions, of necessity equally unreliable. Morever, everyone tends to remember what he wants to remember. Disagreeable facts are sometimes glossed over or repressed ...." Cuddon, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 1991. The English novelist Anthony Powell said, "Memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that."
A memoir (from the French: mémoire from the Latinmemoria, meaning "memory", or a reminiscence), is a lieterary genre forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable in modern parlance. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below. The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist
Differences from autobiographies: Memoirs are structured differently from formal autobiographies which tend to encompass the writer's entire life span, focusing on the development of his or her personality. The chronological scope of a memoir is determined by the work's context and is therefore more focused and flexible than the traditional arc of birth to childhood to old age as found in an autobiography. Memoirs tended to be written by politicians or people in court society, later joined by military leaders and businessmen, and often dealt exclusively with the writer's careers rather than their private life. Historically, memoirs have dealt with public matters, rather than personal. Many older memoirs contain little or no information about the writer, and are almost entirely concerned with other people. Modern expectations have changed this, even for heads of government. Like most autobiographies, memoirs are generally written from the first person point of view. Gore Vidal, in his own memoir Palimpsest, gave a personal definition: "a memoir is how one remembers one's own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked." It is more about what can be gleaned from a section of one's life than about the outcome of the life as a whole. Humorist Will Rogers put it a little more pithily: "Memoirs means when you put down the good things you ought to have done and leave out the bad ones you did do."
Child Abuse/Family troubles http://www.suite101.com/content/what-is-a-memoir-a50315 The word memoir conjures up ideas of tales about exotic travel and overcoming personal tragedy but what is a memoir and does it really have to be exciting?
It is often said that along with the 15 minutes of fame we all have to look forward to we also all have a book in us. In essence that is true as every single one of us, no matter how boring we feel our life is, have an autobiography in us. The age of the autobiography has left us for the moment however to make room for a more aspirational book. The memoir.
What is a Memoir?
Memoir comes from the Latin word "memoria" meaning memory. A memoir is an evolution of the autobiography. An autobiography is a story written by yourself about your life. Your life story so far. A memoir, in the style which the publishing market are flooded with at the moment, tends to deal with a more specific period or theme in your life. Despite their seemingly new modern popularity the memoir has been around for as long as man has felt the need to write about himself.Although true memoirs will sometimes seem fictional due to their emotionally charged story like quality. Despite what common reading trends lead us to believe a memoir does not need to be a blockbuster written for the whole world to read. A memoir is written for your own reasons and for whatever result you want.
What Sort of Events are in a Memoir?
Anything and everything can be in a memoir and they can be in any emotional range however the most saleable style in 2007 and 2008 so far has been the inspirational memoir and the Mis Lit (Misery Literature) memoir, with memoirs of war survivors and adults who were abused as a child flying off the shelves.
You feel you have an important story to tell. Maybe you are the sole survivor of a disaster or have been treated badly by a big company. Maybe you have been misrepresented in the press or worked for a famous recluse. Whatever the story if you feel that a particular part of your life is an interesting story then write it in a memoir.
For future generations. Maybe you are struggling through a divorce and want your children to understand in their adulthood what had happened. Maybe you want your grandchildren to know you better. Maybe you have emigrated and you want future generations to know what their heritage is. A memoir can be like a piece of you reaching out to your descendants long after you have gone.
To document your success. Your rags to riches struggle. Your journey from crackpot inventor to innovative millionaire. Your struggles as a freelance writer leading eventually to that one best seller. Both inspirational and interesting everyone likes to read how people triumph in the face of adversity.
To document how you handle an illness. Whether you have an illness which will reduce your mobility, sight or attention span or have been diagnosed with a degenerative disease a memoir can be a good way to document your illness and treatment for others in a similar situation to read or to help their relatives understand how they may be feeling.
As therapy. Writing or talking about your feelings and past events can be an excellent way to work through them in your head and find some peace or resolution.
To remember. Writing a memoir can help to unlock memories you had forgotten you had and as a result can help you to understand yourself better
CHILD ABUSE MEMOIRS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHIES One might ask, "Why would anyone want to read about another person's horrible childhood?" Yet, these so-called "misery memoirs" are abundantly written and read.
Why do people read, or write, unhappy autobiographies and memoirs? A simple answer to both questions is therapy, or more accurately, bibliotherapy. Bibliotherapy is a word that describes the act of reading selected works for the purpose of healing a personal issue, such as a history of child abuse.
Therapeutic Reading
The sharing of stories has long served as a medium for transmitting hard-learned lessons and wisdom from one person to another. Recipients of such stories share the storyteller's experiences while at the same time benefiting from the teller's retrospect, something people cannot do in the midst of their own experiences. In the best of cases, recipients of good storytelling can put the author's lessons to use and spare themselves from repeating destructive coping strategies. In other cases, readers may recognize errors in the author's behaviors, which they had not previously been able to recognize in their own behaviors. HealingStory.org, a special interest group of The National Storytelling Network, promotes the use of storytelling as a tool for healing. The website includes stories for children in crisis, as well as book reviews and articles on a variety of relevant topics.
Therapeutic Writing
The writing and telling of an unhappy childhood story provides the author with a means to symbolically release the accumulated weight of painful past experiences. It can also serve as a way to reach out to others who have similar histories, giving the author a sense of purpose and the satisfaction of deriving something positive from something painful. SilenceSpeaks.org, an international digital storytelling initiative, offers a supportive space for telling stories which might otherwise remain unspoken. The website includes stories and case studies, as well as links to related resources.
Memoirs and Autobiography Resources
Squidoo's Memoirs and Autobiography lens provides a variety of resources and links about memoir and autobiography writing and published works, including discussion groups, book clubs, related lenses, and writers' resources. Helium's Memoirs and Biographies Zone presents autobiographical works of all kinds, as well as a variety of links to resources for memoir and biography writers and readers, including book clubs, discussion groups, and articles. Featured autobiographical essays, short stories, and poetry topics include childbirth, pregnancy, and parenting, family history, death and grief, and child abuse. Both reading and writing personal histories involving child abuse can provide significant therapeutic benefits. Writers share stories, releasing emotional burdens, while readers share experiences, gaining life lessons and wisdom. In this way, writers and readers of memoirs and autobiographies both gain a healing sense of connection to others who have had similar experiences.
Dave Pelzer, author of one of the best-selling memoirs of all time, 'A Child Called "It"' Survived one of the worst cases of child abuse in CA history.
Dave Pelzer, today one of the bestselling nonfiction writers in America, is recognized and revered as much for his literary accomplishments as for surviving one of the worst cases of child abuse ever documented in California. He is, to date, the author of seven books; the first of which (also the first installment in a three-volume memoir called My Story), A Child Called “It”, has remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over five years. It is commonly taught in middle and high school English courses, sometimes accompanied by the second volume, The Lost Boy. In both books, though primarily the first, Pelzer describes in harrowing detail the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, who – like his father – was an alcoholic. Though the audience diminished for each successive installment in the series, both the third volume (A Man Named Dave) and the second have earned tremendous acclaim and inspired warm response from readers. Hundreds of customer reviews on Amazon.com award the latter two books in the series an average review of nearly five stars.
The first volume, however, remains the most popular by far. Amazon.com catalogues over two thousand customer reviews, all culminating – as with the rest of the trilogy – to nearly a five-star rating. The success of the first book may fairly be attributed to the fact that it focuses, more than its successors, on the dynamic between Dave and his mother, and graphically depicts the abuse she inflicted regularly. Although these depictions are expanded upon in the ensuing books, the most violent and torturous are documented here: how she forces him to eat feces from his little brother’s diaper, to ingest cleaning chemicals and soak in a freezing bathtub, even stabs him. "I know some folks want to hear all the gory details about what happened to me as a child. But I refer to specific childhood situations to qualify my message. I want them to realize the person standing in front of them is there because of persistence, personal responsibility, and by the grace of God," Pelzer said in a 2003 interview with BookBrowse.com. And while the drama of his conflicts with his mother may be one of the book’s most endearing aspects, and the violence is likely the primary incentive for having high school students read it (something visceral enough to hold the attention of even the most grudging reader, something sincere enough to move them), Pelzer’s intentions seem to have been realized. Most of the Amazon reviews speak not only to the book’s intrigue and readability, but to its inspirational qualities as well. It’s no surprise that, before he got into writing, Pelzer was an inspirational speaker. He was in the Air Force before that, serving during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Dave Pelzer’s most recent books, Help Yourself for Teens, is a follow up 2001 self-help book Help Yourself.
Topic: Memoirs
How are they different from autobiographies and are they true? Are they too influenced by the view of the narrator of the story to be factual? How are stories/events portrayed in history books versus in memoirs? Are history books more censored? What can memoirs about child abuse/family troubles and struggles teach?
more stuff about therapeutic writing from professionals
http://www.recreativeresources.com/programming-therapeutic-writing.htm
http://www.articlesbase.com/psychology-articles/the-healing-power-of-therapeutic-writing-and-poetry-904091.html
from authors and common people
http://www.wellsphere.com/complementary-alternative-medicine-article/healing-through-writing/325893
an author
http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/interview-diana-raab/
Survived social unrest or family trauma or war how it is depicted in real life/history books/what you are taught in school.
A genre is a literary form. There are many genres that are autobiographical in nature. In other words, the writer writes about his or her own life. Here are some of the various genres that are considered to be autobiographical.
autobiography, confessional, credo, diary, journal, letter, log, memoir, personal essay
Examples of Memoirs
Night- Elie Wiesel
Chinese Cinderella- Adeline Yen Mah
A Long Way Gone
A Child Called It- Dave Pelzer
A memoir is a piece of autobiographical writing, usually shorter in nature than a comprehensive autobiography. The memoir, especially as it is being used in publishing today, often tries to capture certain highlights or meaningful moments in one's past, often including a contemplation of the meaning of that event at the time of the writing of the memoir. The memoir may be more emotional and concerned with capturing particular scenes, or a series of events, rather than documenting every fact of a person's life (Zuwiyya, N. 2000). For example, Homer Hickam, Jr. has written several memoirs about his life, including October Sky (formerly Rocket Boys) and The Coalwood Way. Both cover his high school days in Coalwood, West Virginia. They are full length books, but the scope of time is brief compared to Hickam's entire life and all the events of his life.
Characteristics of the Memoir Form
... Focus on a brief period of time or series of related events
... Narrative structure, including many of the usual elements of storytelling such as setting, plot development, imagery, conflict, characterization, foreshadowing and flashback, and irony and symbolism
... The writer's contemplation of the meaning of these events in retrospect
... A fictional quality even though the story is true
... Higher emotional level
... More personal reconstruction of the events and their impact
... Therapeutic experience for the memoirist, especially when the memoir is of the crisis or survival type of memoir
Characteristics of the memoir form: another perspective
... explores an event or series of related events that remain lodged in memory
... describes the events and then shows, either directly or indirectly, why they are significant
-- or in short, why you continue to remember them
... is focused in time; doesn't cover a great span of years (that would be an autobiography)
... centers on a problem or focuses on a conflict and its resolution and on the understanding
of why and how the resolution is significant in your life
Do memoirs tell the truth?
According to J. A. Cuddon, "An autobiography may be largely fictional. Few can recall clear details of their early life and are therefore dependent on other people's impressions, of necessity equally unreliable. Morever, everyone tends to remember what he wants to remember. Disagreeable facts are sometimes glossed over or repressed ...." Cuddon, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 1991. The English novelist Anthony Powell said, "Memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that."
http://inkspell.homestead.com/memoir.html
A memoir (from the French: mémoire from the Latin memoria, meaning "memory", or a reminiscence), is a lieterary genre forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable in modern parlance. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below. The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist
Differences from autobiographies: Memoirs are structured differently from formal autobiographies which tend to encompass the writer's entire life span, focusing on the development of his or her personality. The chronological scope of a memoir is determined by the work's context and is therefore more focused and flexible than the traditional arc of birth to childhood to old age as found in an autobiography.
Memoirs tended to be written by politicians or people in court society, later joined by military leaders and businessmen, and often dealt exclusively with the writer's careers rather than their private life. Historically, memoirs have dealt with public matters, rather than personal. Many older memoirs contain little or no information about the writer, and are almost entirely concerned with other people. Modern expectations have changed this, even for heads of government. Like most autobiographies, memoirs are generally written from the first person point of view.
Gore Vidal, in his own memoir Palimpsest, gave a personal definition: "a memoir is how one remembers one's own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked." It is more about what can be gleaned from a section of one's life than about the outcome of the life as a whole.
Humorist Will Rogers put it a little more pithily: "Memoirs means when you put down the good things you ought to have done and leave out the bad ones you did do."
Child Abuse/Family troubles
http://www.suite101.com/content/what-is-a-memoir-a50315
The word memoir conjures up ideas of tales about exotic travel and overcoming personal tragedy but what is a memoir and does it really have to be exciting?
It is often said that along with the 15 minutes of fame we all have to look forward to we also all have a book in us. In essence that is true as every single one of us, no matter how boring we feel our life is, have an autobiography in us. The age of the autobiography has left us for the moment however to make room for a more aspirational book. The memoir.
What is a Memoir?
Memoir comes from the Latin word "memoria" meaning memory. A memoir is an evolution of the autobiography. An autobiography is a story written by yourself about your life. Your life story so far. A memoir, in the style which the publishing market are flooded with at the moment, tends to deal with a more specific period or theme in your life.Despite their seemingly new modern popularity the memoir has been around for as long as man has felt the need to write about himself.Although true memoirs will sometimes seem fictional due to their emotionally charged story like quality. Despite what common reading trends lead us to believe a memoir does not need to be a blockbuster written for the whole world to read. A memoir is written for your own reasons and for whatever result you want.
What Sort of Events are in a Memoir?
Anything and everything can be in a memoir and they can be in any emotional range however the most saleable style in 2007 and 2008 so far has been the inspirational memoir and the Mis Lit (Misery Literature) memoir, with memoirs of war survivors and adults who were abused as a child flying off the shelves.Read on
Why Write a Memoir?
Some reasons to write a memoir are:CHILD ABUSE MEMOIRS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
One might ask, "Why would anyone want to read about another person's horrible childhood?" Yet, these so-called "misery memoirs" are abundantly written and read.
Why do people read, or write, unhappy autobiographies and memoirs? A simple answer to both questions is therapy, or more accurately, bibliotherapy. Bibliotherapy is a word that describes the act of reading selected works for the purpose of healing a personal issue, such as a history of child abuse.
Therapeutic Reading
The sharing of stories has long served as a medium for transmitting hard-learned lessons and wisdom from one person to another. Recipients of such stories share the storyteller's experiences while at the same time benefiting from the teller's retrospect, something people cannot do in the midst of their own experiences. In the best of cases, recipients of good storytelling can put the author's lessons to use and spare themselves from repeating destructive coping strategies. In other cases, readers may recognize errors in the author's behaviors, which they had not previously been able to recognize in their own behaviors.HealingStory.org, a special interest group of The National Storytelling Network, promotes the use of storytelling as a tool for healing. The website includes stories for children in crisis, as well as book reviews and articles on a variety of relevant topics.
Therapeutic Writing
The writing and telling of an unhappy childhood story provides the author with a means to symbolically release the accumulated weight of painful past experiences. It can also serve as a way to reach out to others who have similar histories, giving the author a sense of purpose and the satisfaction of deriving something positive from something painful.SilenceSpeaks.org, an international digital storytelling initiative, offers a supportive space for telling stories which might otherwise remain unspoken. The website includes stories and case studies, as well as links to related resources.
Memoirs and Autobiography Resources
Squidoo's Memoirs and Autobiography lens provides a variety of resources and links about memoir and autobiography writing and published works, including discussion groups, book clubs, related lenses, and writers' resources.Helium's Memoirs and Biographies Zone presents autobiographical works of all kinds, as well as a variety of links to resources for memoir and biography writers and readers, including book clubs, discussion groups, and articles. Featured autobiographical essays, short stories, and poetry topics include childbirth, pregnancy, and parenting, family history, death and grief, and child abuse.
Both reading and writing personal histories involving child abuse can provide significant therapeutic benefits. Writers share stories, releasing emotional burdens, while readers share experiences, gaining life lessons and wisdom. In this way, writers and readers of memoirs and autobiographies both gain a healing sense of connection to others who have had similar experiences.
Read more at Suite101: Child Abuse Memoirs and Autobiographies: Why People Read and Write About Childhood Abuse http://www.suite101.com/content/child-abuse-memoirs-and-autobiographies-a106927#ixzz1Cu7O3zuS
Dave Pelzer, author of one of the best-selling memoirs of all time, 'A Child Called "It"' Survived one of the worst cases of child abuse in CA history.
Dave Pelzer, today one of the bestselling nonfiction writers in America, is recognized and revered as much for his literary accomplishments as for surviving one of the worst cases of child abuse ever documented in California. He is, to date, the author of seven books; the first of which (also the first installment in a three-volume memoir called My Story), A Child Called “It”, has remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over five years.
It is commonly taught in middle and high school English courses, sometimes accompanied by the second volume, The Lost Boy. In both books, though primarily the first, Pelzer describes in harrowing detail the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, who – like his father – was an alcoholic.
Though the audience diminished for each successive installment in the series, both the third volume (A Man Named Dave) and the second have earned tremendous acclaim and inspired warm response from readers. Hundreds of customer reviews on Amazon.com award the latter two books in the series an average review of nearly five stars.
The first volume, however, remains the most popular by far. Amazon.com catalogues over two thousand customer reviews, all culminating – as with the rest of the trilogy – to nearly a five-star rating. The success of the first book may fairly be attributed to the fact that it focuses, more than its successors, on the dynamic between Dave and his mother, and graphically depicts the abuse she inflicted regularly.
Although these depictions are expanded upon in the ensuing books, the most violent and torturous are documented here: how she forces him to eat feces from his little brother’s diaper, to ingest cleaning chemicals and soak in a freezing bathtub, even stabs him.
"I know some folks want to hear all the gory details about what happened to me as a child. But I refer to specific childhood situations to qualify my message. I want them to realize the person standing in front of them is there because of persistence, personal responsibility, and by the grace of God," Pelzer said in a 2003 interview with BookBrowse.com.
And while the drama of his conflicts with his mother may be one of the book’s most endearing aspects, and the violence is likely the primary incentive for having high school students read it (something visceral enough to hold the attention of even the most grudging reader, something sincere enough to move them), Pelzer’s intentions seem to have been realized. Most of the Amazon reviews speak not only to the book’s intrigue and readability, but to its inspirational qualities as well.
It’s no surprise that, before he got into writing, Pelzer was an inspirational speaker. He was in the Air Force before that, serving during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Dave Pelzer’s most recent books, Help Yourself for Teens, is a follow up 2001 self-help book Help Yourself.