Tag Archives: identity

A Memoir of a Girl’s Urgent Need to Find Identity

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by Jerry Waxler

Author of Memoir Revolution: a guide to memoirs, including yours.

Karen Levy grew up alternating between the United States and Israel, never sure of which one she belonged to. The story of her Coming of Age, as told in the memoir, My Father’s Gardens, shows how her split identity created challenges on many fronts. Wherever she went, she felt like an outsider. Friendship was made more difficult because she kept leaving them behind. Her first job involved her in military intrigue, as a result of mandatory conscription in Israel. And relationships were made almost impossible by her overly protective mother, who demanded her daughter’s undivided loyalty.

In the end, she resolved her own challenge to grow up by choosing a country, settling down with a man and writing for a living. The resolution with her parents was more problematic, lending a sad note to her difficult choices.

Even before I read the first page I was hooked on the story of a woman who had to constantly find herself. Search for identity is one of my favorite themes in a memoir. On the surface, such an introspective search might not seem important enough to motivate me to read and enjoy a whole book. And yet, when I think back on the problems of growing up, my own search for identity drove me almost mad.

My grandparents left Ukraine to escape religious persecution. When they settled in the U.S. they stuck together with their own kind, as immigrants tended to do. My enclave of Jews in an ethnic neighborhood in Philadelphia kept me feeling safe and whole as long as I stayed home. But once I moved to the Midwest, I struggled to find a balance between my heritage and the desire to be accepted as an American. To find this new, blended identity, I attempted the peculiar, and as it turned out, maddening exercise of reshaping my self-image. This psychologically-demanding task I imposed on myself at the age of 18 sent me careening through a series of experiments that complicated the already challenging process of growing up.

As a young man, trying to mix into the “Melting Pot” of United States culture, I was trapped in a long journey of assimilation. As I grew older, I discovered that the entire country consists of people who surrender some of their ancestral identity in order to enter a shared one.

As the great mixing of modernity extends across the globe with massive migrations and blending cultures, people all over the world are attempting to let go of parts of their traditional culture in order to find psychological wholeness among the modern mix.

The Memoir Revolution is a wonderful tool to help us achieve our new identities as citizens of the modern world. Memoirs let writers and readers apply the power of story to the important task of being healthy, whole human beings.

Karen Levy’s attempt to connect with her own country became more difficult than most because she was torn between two, never sure of which one reflected her true identity. As a result of her unusual situation, and her deep, sophisticated story about her experience, the memoir offers a rich, complex look at the whole process of steering between cultures in order to find Self.

Other memoirs that explore self-identity torn between cultures

For another look at this tearing between two cultural identities, read the powerful page-turner Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham. In it, the young man returned to his birth country, Vietnam, only to find that he was angrily rejected by his former countrymen because he grew up in the U.S. Ultimately he had to face the fact that he needed to find his identity within himself.

In Rebecca Walker’s memoir Black, White, and Jewish, the author lives half her life with her white lawyer father in his upper class neighborhood, and the other half with her famous black author mother, Alice, in a lower middle class neighborhood. For a deeper look at people who straddled the fence between two races read the oral history by Lise Funderberg called Black, White, and Other about kids with mixed-race parents. By straddling the fence between races, they had special challenges that highlighted the universal journey of finding the story of self.

Notes

Here is a link to My Father’s Garden by Karen Levy.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my book Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

If Not Conflict, What Fierce Determination Drives a Memoir?

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by Jerry Waxler

Author of Memoir Revolution: Write Your Story, Change the World and How to Become a Heroic Writer

In the memoir, Anatolian Days and Nights: A Love Affair with Turkey, Land of Dervishes, Goddesses, and Saints, Joy Stocke and Angie Brenner, travel to Turkey to help a friend manage a small inn. It seems like a pleasant getaway that combines travel, friendship, and an entrepreneurial spirit. As they visit museums and historical sites, try new cuisines, befriend locals, and in Angie’s case, have romances with them, the women become increasingly smitten with the place. By the end, they fulfill the book’s sub-title, clearly communicating their love for the country.

Turkey has played a crucial role in world religion and commerce for millennia, and yet I grew up learning hardly anything about its history. Through the eyes of these two American women, I gain a fascinating glimpse into this crossroads of Moslem and Christian traditions, and even delve into pre-Christian goddess power. I also gain another glimpse of the expat experience.

In my younger years I read about macho Americans like Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway consuming their way across Europe, sucking in unlimited quantities of alcohol, food, and women. By contrast, Anatolian Days and Nights is almost a sendup of those excesses. Stocke and Brenner have modest appetites, spiced with a delicate mix of curiosity and compassion.

In fact, the women behave so nicely, it makes me ask a fundamental question: “Don’t all satisfying stories need conflict?” Ever since Ulysses traveled through the Greek and Turkish isles, threatened by monsters, imprisoned by sex goddesses, and fighting to the death with his wife’s suitors, readers have demonstrated their gluttony for conflict. Fiction writers satisfy this desire by inventing all sorts of exaggerated dangers and setbacks. Memoir writers, on the other hand, extract tension from the desire, fear, and courage enmeshed in a lifetime of memories.

So what tension in Anatolian Days and Nights keeps me reading? Were the two women at risk, traveling alone in a male-dominated world? Were they afraid? Actually, apparently not. If anything, the locals seem eager to protect them. If it wasn’t driven by the desperation to stay alive, or the gluttony to consume, what is the fierce determination that propels them to the end of their journey and me reading to the last page?

The Importance of Character Arc as a Driving Force in Memoirs

To engage me in a story, the author must convince me something in their character is missing or under-developed. The rest of the story leads me on a treasure hunt to work through the tension and choices of life. By the end, the character convinces me they have achieved this thing. This important payoff to a story is often thoroughly obvious in fiction. But in memoirs it can be more difficult to point out, and after I’ve read a satisfying story I go back to see what the character has learned.

For example, by the end of Accidental Lessons, David Berner is oriented to serving humanity rather than merely having a good job. At the end of Seven Wheelchairs, Gary Presley has wrapped his mind around the destiny of living on wheels instead of legs. At the end of Dope Fiend, Tim Elhajj has traveled beyond his minimum goal of abstaining from heroin. He has also figured out how to be a father to his son.

However, when I looked for a hard-fought character arc in Anatolian Days and Night , at first I couldn’t find it. Since both women were gentle, curious, and generous at the beginning, I did not feel any urgent pressure for them to grow along these lines. Their main goal seemed to be to understand Turkey, rather than themselves. And yet, I still closed the book feeling satisfied. What had the authors done for me and for themselves that made me turn pages?

Search for Identity as an Important Type of Character Arc

In memoirs, there is a special type of character arc — the search for identity. In this type of story, the missing ingredient that provides the impetus for forward momentum is the protagonist’s desire for a clearer sense of who they are. By the end, the character finds their true self and satisfies their quest.

This need to “know thyself” has been responsible for some of the blockbuster memoirs of our era. In fact, the modern memoir movement was started largely by the success of Coming of Age memoirs like This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff, Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, and Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. In each of these books, the young character must figure out “who am I?” The answer to this question is, of course, not simple.

Coming of Age stories are driven by a variety of questions that must be answered on the journey from child to adult, including issues of sexuality, career, family, spirituality. And one of the most fascinating struggles is one of the most abstract — the fierce determination of a young person to find identity. By the end of a satisfying memoir, the character must find enough of a sense of self to know how to steer themselves in the coming years, or at least suggest that they are heading toward such a clear identity.

This journey to find identity is not limited to Coming of Age. By lining up my collection of memoirs in the order of the life-period they describe, it becomes apparent that people of all ages try to figure out who they are. The first Coming of Age stage, finishes around say 18 years old. But there is a second stage of this transition to adulthood that is also crucial. Many memoirs are about the struggles during this second period, say from around 18 to 26 years old, when we have to make important adjustments to our identity so we can survive in the world.

For example, at the beginning of Japan Took The JAP Out of Me, Lisa Fineberg Cook is a newly-wed party-girl. By the end, she is less self indulgent and more oriented to work and service. At the beginning of Wild, Cheryl Strayed is a dysfunctional young adult, with no direction, quick to try a new guy or a new drug. She walks 100s of miles across wilderness trails to find a new vision of herself and ends with the moral strength to establish herself in the adult world. Similarly, at the beginning of Slow Motion, Dani Shapiro is almost ready to become a young woman when she falls into a trap of drugs and sex. By the end, she outgrows her fascination with the power of her own beauty, and enters the adult world of personal responsibility.

Adopted kids have a particular challenge, as evidenced in two memoirs about girls who are just about to launch into the world when they are contacted by their birth mothers. In Mei Ling Hopgood’s Lucky Girl a Chinese American adoptee travels to China to learn about her birth family. In Mistress’s Daughter, AM Homes conducts an intense investigation, trying to understand her birth family in order to understand herself.

Sometimes, a person much later in life begins to ask pressing questions about who they are. These later searches for identity can also make compelling stories. For example in the memoir Catfish and Mandala Andrew X. Pham realizes he can never be happy until he makes peace with his Vietnamese origins. He quits his engineering job in California and rides through Vietnam on a bicycle, trying to understand his roots. In My Ruby Slippers, Tracy Seeley, an English professor in San Francisco, ejected from her comfort zone by cancer, travels to Kansas to try to understand her roots. Both authors become seekers for their own identity, and they both use the notion of place in order to help them learn more.

Why is the Search for Identity So Important?

In thrillers, the compelling force is obvious. Stop the assassin. By comparison, finding your identity seems woefully abstract. Despite the apparent vagueness of this propelling force, in memoir after memoir, authors uproot their lives in order to understand their identity. Their fierce determination to answer the question “who am I?” drags readers along for the ride. Perhaps this need for identity is more visceral and fundamental than we think. For those of us interested in the psychological journey of human experience, the longing for identity appears to be every bit as life-affirming and page-turning as stopping an assassination.

Anatolian Days and Nights is good evidence of the importance of this quest. Like the hero in Somerset Maughm’s The Razor’s Edge, who left home in order to find his truth, Joy Stocke and Angie Brenner left their familiar lives and traveled east. They were seekers, looking for whatever wisdom Turkey could offer them about themselves.

By diving into Turkey, they fulfilled a sublime search not just for that country’s identity but for their own. It was a search that was important enough to drive them half-way around the world, and significant enough to keep me reading, and then to recommend their story to anyone looking for a satisfying experience.

Notes

Anatolian Days and Nights: A Love Affair with Turkey, Land of Dervishes, Goddesses, and Saints by Joy Stocke and Angie BrennerClick here for Amazon Page
Click here for Anatolian Days and Nights Home Page

There’s a word for that! I thought I understood the meaning of the word “mandala” as a sort of symbolic geometric shape. But I couldn’t figure out why Andrew X. Pham used the word in his title. I looked it up the in the dictionary and find that it means: In Jungian psychology, a symbol representing the effort to reunify the self. Perfect!

For more about the desire that drives a memoir, see my essay:
What does Dani Shapiro, or any of us, really want?

Although this is the first memoir I’ve read about love for a culture, it adds to my collection of the subgenre about friendship. Gail Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home, is a tribute to her friendship with Carolyn Knapp. And Father Joe by Tony Hendra, is a paean to his spiritual mentor.

More Expats: Recently I read the memoir San Miguel D’Allende, about Rick Skwiot’s attempts to find himself in Mexico. And in Native State, Tony Cohan describes his attempts to settle into the jazz and drug scene in northern Africa. Both follow the Anatolian Nights model of searching for self in a foreign land.

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on this blog, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

To order my self-help workbook for developing habits, overcoming self-doubts, and reaching readers, read my book How to Become a Heroic Writer.

Recovering Self-concept after Addiction

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by Jerry Waxler

As teenagers, our first buzz expands options and reveals mysteries. Grateful for these gifts, we shift our priorities, leading to bad decisions and frayed relationships. The substance siphons off the precious energy that could have been fueling the climb toward our dreams.

Addiction exposes this edgy limitation of the human experience: we need to be in control, and yet, we often are not. Consider a comedian whose pratfall turns his body into a sack of potatoes. There’s hardly a surer way to get a laugh. However, what is funny in comedy is shameful in real life. If we stumble, we pretend it didn’t happen. Addicts do the same thing, collapsing toward the substance while claiming they are in complete control. By hiding and lying, addicts push away helping hands.

Beneath the surface, though, some higher instinct compels an upward gaze. With help and struggle, many who have fallen down, get up, glad to march forward, as long as we don’t look back.

Long after recovery, regrets exert a backward pull. “Did I really have all of that and throw it away?” We try to ignore those glimpses in our rearview mirror of screwed up parts of our lives, betrayals not only of other people but of our own ideals.

According to the Twelve Step programs, instead of ignoring the past, we must make peace with it. The Fourth Step, the moral inventory, fearlessly focuses our attention on the things we would rather forget. The Fourth Step collects the fragments and helps us pull them together, reclaiming an appreciation for a whole self, including the years devoted in service to the addictive substance or behavior. Through authentic self-exploration and sharing, the members of Alcoholics or Narcotics or Gamblers Anonymous reach toward each other for support.

However, because of the shame associated with the loss of control, they continue to shield themselves from the public. Perhaps that is changing. In the memoir age, such walls of secrecy and shame are breaking down. Memoirs give addicted individuals a voice, turning the sorrow of their fall into a more complete story which celebrates the courage of return. In the twenty first century, memoirs shine the light of wisdom on such behavior, empowering more of us to help each other or be helped sooner.

Examples

Susan Cheever, “My Life in a Bottle.” The daughter of a famous writer hits the bottle and shows how the seduction of alcohol can drain the inner person while the outer one appears competent.

Dani Shapiro, “Slow Motion.” A daughter in a privileged New York family lets drugs, alcohol, and sex consume her life.

Nic Sheff, “Tweak.” Nic Sheff, a talented young man with a promising future, loses himself in methamphetamines. Then he slowly and fitfully climbs out.

Gail Caldwell, “Let’s Take the Long Way Home.” A writer, dog lover, and best friend, recounts her complex journey from alcohol to life. It has some of the best Alcoholics Anonymous scenes I’ve read. Gail Caldwell’s best friend is Caroline Knapp, author of “Drinking, A Love Story,” an intimate personal account of the journey out of denial and back to sobriety. “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” pays homage to their friendship as well as their return from addiction.

Mary Karr, “Lit.” Famous for her first memoir “Liar’s Club,” in this sequel Mary Karr recounts her long bleary journey through the world of inebriation and then step by step back towards society and God.

My relationship to substances
By my second year in college, I smoked dope most days. Before I knew what was happening, my self-concept became murky and confused. The decisions I made during those years dismantled my original dream of becoming a doctor. When I finally stopped taking drugs, I faced a long climb. Returning to health wasn’t the hardest part. Now that I had thrown away my goals, I had to work for decades to replace my original mission with a new one. Eventually, it worked out okay. But how does such an interrupted and resurrected lifetime make sense? By writing my memoir, I see the way each decision led to the next. I no longer need to pick and choose the good parts and try to throw away the bad. The self-concept that arises through the memoir is every bit as whole as the one I originally envisioned, and in many respects far more interesting and multi-dimensional.

Writing Prompt
What was your relationship to addiction, whether substances or behavior? If you have never admitted these experiences to anyone and are afraid to put them on paper, be ready to delete them or burn them. To help you adjust to these human foibles, speak to a therapist or share your writing in a supportive critique group.
Link to other articles in this series

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

Self-concept and memoir – launching problems and identifying with a group

Recovering self-concept after trauma

Self Concept and Memoirs: The Power of Purpose

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Self-concept and memoirs: The power of purpose

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by Jerry Waxler

Read my book, Memoir Revolution, about how turning your life into a story can change the world.

This is the fourth article in my series about using memoir reading and writing to deepen your understanding of your own self-concept. To start from the beginning, click here. Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity,

In his memoir, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” psychologist Viktor Frankl observed that a person who lacks purpose is susceptible to a variety of ills. According to Frankl’s theory, we live to the fullest only when we pursue a goal greater than ourselves. Abraham Maslow offers a slightly different slant on the issue of desire. His famous Hierarchy of Needs describes how our sense of purpose evolves from the most basic physical requirements for food and shelter, up through safety, pride, and recognition. At the very top of the hierarchy are transcendent goals like creativity, spirituality and service.

In many memoirs, and certainly the ones I enjoy the most, these energizing psychological principles leap off the pages. In the beginning of each memoir, the protagonist burns with some sort of desire, and then through the course of events, the character matures and begins to develop a deeper understanding of purpose.

To make your memoir as compelling as possible, search for your central mission. What drove you from day to day? When you find it, you will be giving yourself as well as your readers a gift. The wind in your sails that has propelled you through the years, also propels your reader through the pages.

Examples
Viktor Frankl, “Man’s search for meaning.” Frankl keeps himself alive during internment in Nazi death camps by helping fellow prisoners. He also dreams of someday helping people in the world. For the rest of his life, he follows this dream, promoting his system of Logotherapy, based on the notion that finding your true purpose is the antidote to modern ills.

Davis, Jenkins, and Hunt, “The Pact.” Three boys in northern New Jersey band together to overcome the influences of their tough urban environment. They help each other become doctors. Then they return to their community to inspire other struggling young men to follow the same path.

Greg Mortenson, “Three Cups of Tea.” As a young man interested only in climbing mountains, Mortenson finds his true calling when he stumbles into a village where poor people save his life and offer him a place in their homes. He vows to build a school for their children, and his work evolves into an international charity that builds schools for poor children in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Purpose interrupted

In any good story, as in any full-featured life, there are ups and downs. When our sense of purpose stalls or derails, it can feel not only like the death of a dream, but like a small death of the self. How do we get back into the game of life when our best effort failed? The story of resurrecting self after such setbacks reveals the courage and resilience of the human spirit. Many of the memoirs on my bookshelf tell about such complex journeys. These examples may help you discover how purpose played out in your own story.

Dani Shapiro, “Slow Motion.” This author entered a prestigious college, a powerful first step that would set the stage for her life as a writer. Then she hit a snag. A seducer showered her with flattery, gifts, and drugs, and she almost lost everything. The climb back to purpose shows her resilience. In fact, in a sense, it was this call to higher purpose that pulled her out of the abyss.

Janice Erlbaum, “Have you found her?” The author was homeless as a young girl. As an adult she returned to a shelter to help homeless kids. When her good intentions missed their mark, she shows her vulnerability and also gives us the chance to learn about human nature along with her. Her experience makes me wonder about the profound suffering possible in life, the desire to help, the limits of that help, and the degree to which you have to grow wiser yourself in order to heal others.

David Berner, “Accidental Lessons.” The author was a successful radio newscaster who, in mid-life, realized his career had only satisfied him externally. Internally he was drying up. Berner found deeper meaning by spending a year teaching in an inner city school. His memoir offers an example of discovering a deeper calling the second time around.

How did I find my purpose?

Like Dani Shapiro, my life presents an example, of a failure to launch. When my original goal of becoming a doctor fell apart, I fell into a spiritual void. With no reason to do anything, I lost interest in turning the pages of my own life. Stumbling in the dark, I came upon a belief system that prevented my spiritual demise, and I gradually built myself back to mental health. And like David Berner, in my fifties I began searching for a career that would allow me more opportunities to work with people. Eventually I found my calling to people find their story. This mission is providing me more enthusiasm about life than I experienced since I was a teen.

Writing Prompt
Write a scene which shows what you longed for. Did  you find fulfillment at your paid job, or a volunteer job, a hobby, or with your family, or community service. Look for places when your life connected with a larger social purpose.

Link to other articles in this series

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

Self-concept and memoir – launching problems and identifying with a group

Recovering self-concept after trauma

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Recovering Self-concept after Trauma

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by Jerry Waxler

This is the third article in my series about using memoir reading and writing to deepen your understanding of your own self-concept. To start from the beginning, click here. Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity,

Identity ought to be a stable thing. Once you find it, you should be set for life. But in reality, your ideas about yourself undergo continuous adaptation. We all adapt to the slow changes that unfold over years. And sometimes, our peaceful self-image is threatened by assaults so deep and swift they shake the foundations of sanity. Betrayal, divorce, job loss, combat trauma,  crime, abuse, disease, or death of a loved one can rip apart our trust that we know how to live in the world. We hang on using prayer, social supports, or counseling. Even as we shrink away from the parts of our life that hurt, we try to return to our routines. Eventually, the past slides into the past while often leaving behind a sticky residue.

One way to gain power over the bitterness and confusion that have been left behind by trauma is to write about it. Write the entire period, from your initial sense of safety, to the coming storm, then the actual experience. Then comes the most important part. Continue your story through the long journey to recovery.

One problem with events that assaulted you is that you feel trapped, as if the memory has become a prison. The power of the unexpected event feels like a life sentence. By writing the whole experience, you can form a more intimate familiarity with the journey back to safety.

By becoming a storyteller of your own life, you gain control over the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, finding the words that help you integrate the turn of events into your understanding of how you fit into the world. And by shaping the experience into a form that can be shared with others, you turn private sorrow into social compassion.

Memoirs that provide examples of facing and recovering from trauma

Alice Sebold, “Lucky.” She explicitly describes the rape that stole her innocence. Then for the rest of her life she attempts to reclaim her ability to once again believe she is a good person in a safe world. For my essay about Alice Sebold’s Lucky, click here

Jim McGarrah, “Temporary Sort of Peace.”Altered forever by his devastating experience as a combat soldier in Vietnam, McGarrah turned to writing, and looked for himself amidst the rubble of his own story. For my interview with author Jim McGarrah, click here

David Manchester, “Goodbye Darkness.” This veteran heals his nightmares by visiting the Pacific islands where he fought in World War II. In addition to providing a powerful historical account, he also searches for identity and tries to put his demons to rest. For my essay about combat trauma, click here.

Jill Bolte Taylor, “My Stroke of Insight.” After a stroke destroys the left-half of her brain, she must make do with only the right half. Then she takes an 8 year journey of rehabilitation, becoming whole and learning profound lessons about her brain and self. For my essay about My Stroke of Insight, click here.

Gary Presley “Seven Wheelchairs.” Presley, an athletic teenager is stricken with polio and then spends decades coming to terms with life in a wheelchair. His recovery is not of body but of spirit, and inspires me to think about the nobility of the long road of life. For my essay about Gary Presley’s memoir, click here.

My shakeup and subsequent re-discovery

I entered college with advanced placement scores in math, majored in physics and was sure I would be a doctor. After five years of anti-war protests, marijuana, and nihilistic beliefs, I was living in a garage, not talking to anyone for weeks at a time, striving to escape civilization. I suffered what might have been called a “nervous breakdown” if anyone had focused enough on me to give it a label. I unraveled my sense of self, and became story-less, a man without a workable self-concept, reducing myself to raw nerves and meaninglessness. I was a living laboratory experiment demonstrating that a healthy story is a minimum requirement for life. Looking back, I see that I spent much of my adult life recovering from the disruption. Writing my memoir has helped me gain an overview of this lifetime journey.

Writing Prompt

Write about unexpected suffering that made you feel like your previous sense of self no longer made sense. To help you see the whole experience, start with an outline from before the event when you felt safe until after, when you reclaimed your poise. Let your writing carry you forward from the quicksand back onto solid ground. If writing a dismal portion pulls you down, balance that feeling by writing scenes of hope and healing.

Notes
This method applies to trauma that you can look back on. Writing such a story can help you grow to a place where you can find wisdom about past suffering. If you are currently experiencing trauma or out-of-control feelings, please seek social support from a compassionate caregiver.

Link to other articles in this series

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

Self-concept and memoir – launching problems and identifying with a group

Recovering self-concept after trauma

Self Concept and Memoirs: The Power of Purpose

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Self-concept and memoir – launching problems and identifying with a group

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by Jerry Waxler

This is the second article in my series about using memoir reading and writing to help you understand the notion of “Self-concept” in general, and your own self-concept in particular. In a previous entry, I spoke about the initial formation of self-concept during Coming of Age. In today’s entry, I list more aspects of identity, showing how these two things, story and self-concept, merge in the pages of memoirs you read or write.

Collecting the pieces of a chaotic launch

In an ideal world, by the time we leave home, or “launch” into the world, we have a coherent sense of purpose. But many of us must try to find our place in the world armed only with a blurred picture or even a damaged one. When the story that we developed during Coming of Age doesn’t lead us towards satisfaction, we must evolve. Some authors recount long struggles to replace their confusing or misleading original self-image with a more coherent one.

Examples:
A.M. Homes, “Mistress’s Daughter.” She was comfortable with her identity, until her biological mother contacts her and throws her identity into confusion. She obsessively researches this new definition of herself, trying to decide if the “real” her is the daughter of this woman she is meeting for the first time, or the daughter of the adoptive parents who raised her.

Linda Joy Myers, “Don’t Call Me Mother.” Rejected by her mother, she strives to define herself. Early in her life, she reaches out to her extended family and later, she turns back to try to knit all the pieces together in her memoir. Today, the author has moved far beyond that fractured self. As a therapist and memoir teacher, she helps other people knit together the pieces of their lives. Link to Linda Joy’s blog, Link to my article about “Don’t Call Me Mother.”

Barack Obama, “Dreams from our Fathers” He was born in the American melting pot with a white mother and a black African father. The memoir recounts his search for his true identity and proves that the human spirit is capable of knitting together a coherent whole from fractured parts.

Ashley Rhodes-Courter ,”Three Little Words.” She tries to patch herself together from the crazy-quilt of life in a variety of foster homes, eventually reaching safety in an adopted home with parents who help get her back on track. She made it her mission to return to the foster system and try to heal it.

My own search to pick up the pieces
When I left home, I thought I knew myself. Soon I realized I only knew how to relate to people within my all-Jewish neighborhood. The broader world confused me and I fumbled. By the time I was 24, my grip on life had unraveled. The self I was becoming looked nothing like the self I had intended. I envied those kids who wanted something and then attained it. By failing my initial goal, I was thrown into uncertainty. What had thrown me off course? Was my failure to launch caused, as I first assumed, by the crazy 60s? Or was it more psychological than that? Perhaps I was undermined by the same gene-pool that caused my first cousin to kill himself shortly after earning his credentials as a psychiatrist. Or perhaps I had reached some invisible internal  limitations imposed on me by undiagnosed Asperger’s. Such limits social incompetence was practically invisible in my ultra-nerdy all-boys high school, but inadequate to cope with the social demands on the campus of a large state university. The quest to put the pieces back together has driven me for forty years.

Writing Prompt
What parts of yourself felt unfinished or disconnected when you went out into the world? These desires might run deep, creating a sense of purpose that runs under the surface for many years, and possibly for the rest of your life. Your memoir could help you find closure to these old dreams.

Identifying with a group

Humans are social creatures who group together, and so, when we look for ourselves, we often look for the larger group we’re part of. As Bob Dylan said, “You have to serve somebody.” In almost everyone’s life, there is a series of such attempts to identify with some group, idea, or organization, such as your ethnic group, local sports team, political party, religious affiliation. For many memoir authors, their to serve and identify play a prominent role in the protagonist’s search for self concept.

Examples:
Diane Diekman, “Navy GreenShirt.” The author spent her working life in the Navy. Her memoir is about finding her self, while serving the organization.

Ji Chaozhu, “Man on Mao’s Right.” One of Chairman Mao’s chief interpreters finds his identity through devotion to the national interests of China. Read my article about “Man on Mao’s Right.”

Donald Walters, “The Path.” Walters, one of Paramahansa Yogananda’s assistants, tells about life in the service of an Indian spiritual teacher.  My article about “The Path.”

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, “The Sky Begins at your Feet.” She shows how people in groups serve each other. From ecology groups, to writing groups, to groups of friends, the people in her life arrange themselves along lines of mutual support and striving. My interview with author Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

Who did I identify with or serve?
I have always been conflicted about my group allegiances. I first saw myself as Jewish and then poly-religious, first as an American then a citizen of the world, first an aspiring doctor, then a computer guy, a therapist, and a writer. Along the way, I have served many groups: writing groups, technical groups, spiritual groups. But serving one is never enough for me. I see them all connected somehow and try to apply lessons I learn in one to improve the workings of another, hoping somehow to learn how to individually and collectively serve the greatest possible good.

Writing Prompt
Look back through the years, and list the organizations you served. Perhaps there were hobby groups, religious or spiritual group, schools and other community activities, your job, your country, your family. Write a few paragraphs about each one. Then put them in chronological order and comment on how your attitude towards serving organizations changed over time.

Link to other articles in this series

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Who Am I? 10 ways memoir reading and writing helps clarify identity

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by Jerry Waxler

Read Memoir Revolution to use your story to heal, connect and inspire, .

As long as I can remember, I have been trying to figure out who I am. In high school, I thought I had solved my identity problem by falling in love with math. But despite my proficiency in advanced placement calculus, life remained a mystery. In college, I moved to physics, hoping the laws of the material universe held the key, but Newton’s laws and Maxwell’s equations left me ignorant about who I was. I broadened my inquiry to include history, literature, and music. Even then, I still couldn’t answer the simple question, “Who am I?”

In my 20s I turned to spirituality, in my 30s to career, in my 40s to self-help and psychology, and in my 50s I thought I could write my way out of my jam. But like scratching an itch on a phantom limb, no matter how hard I rubbed, I was never able to relieve the pressure. It was only when I began to read memoirs and write my own that I began to find answers to my perennial question.

To write a memoir, I peer into my memory and pull together facts and scenes. Then I watch myself take shape on the pages. Within that story emerge the components of self and identity that have eluded me for so long. Depending on the angle of vision, I discover many dimensions of self, each one offering insight, validation, and a different way to make sense of my journey on earth. Here are ways that memoir reading and writing have helped me discover my self.

“Coming of Age” — the Journey to adulthood

Memoirs about Coming of Age explore the period when a young person tries to understand who they are supposed to become. First they learn about themselves from parents, siblings, neighbors, and friends. Then they crawl, stumble, and race in various directions, until they finally find ground firm enough to support their weight. Here are several Coming of Age memoirs that have shown me how other people did it.

Examples:

Frank McCourt, “Angela’s Ashes.” McCourt grew up in Ireland with a father steeped in alcohol. The book is all about a boy learning who he is and how he is supposed to head out into life.

Jeanette Walls, “Glass Castle.” She went from ragamuffin adventurer child to successful television personality, two extremely different identities. Thanks to great writing, she turns her struggle into a wonderful read, but underneath it all, she is traveling the same road we all must, to go from zero to 20.

Mark Salzman, “Lost in Space.” Salzman shares his obsessive approach to growing up, learning Karate and Chinese language on his journey from boy to man.

Haven Kimmel, “A Girl Named Zippy.” An ordinary girl from a small town proves that growing up, even when uneventful, contains plenty of drama and importance.

My Coming of Age

I had a relatively healthy childhood. I lived with both my parents and regularly visited both sets of grandparents who lived a half hour from my home. Neither of my parents were addicted, or abusive, or suffered from mental illness. We weren’t too poor or too rich. My studious habits and love of science fit perfectly with my upbringing as a pharmacist’s son. By the time I left for college, my self-image had fixated on a specific and well-formed plan. I knew i would become a doctor. My older brother was already in medical school and I thought all I had to do was follow his lead. When my plan fell apart, so did I, sending me on a decade-long journey to find a new plan.

Writing Prompt

Describe your own Coming of Age. When you reached early adulthood, what messages about yourself had you incorporated into the story of who you were and where you were heading?

More ways that reading and writing memoirs help you find your identity:

Melting pot and cultural identity

Many memoirs teach about the power of the Melting Pot – leaving behind your, or your ancestors’ identity and finding one you can share in your new, blended culture.

Write: What was your own journey, and the journey of your parents and grandparents to identify as members of a modern culture?

Shifting sands of time

After you reach adulthood, and embark on the true journey of you, the world keeps changing, the people around you change, and even your body changes. All these developments require modifications and amendments to your story-of-self.

Write: What changes in self-concept have taken place through the course of your adult life?

Spirituality and religion

While the traditional view of “religion” placed you firmly within the definition of your religion of birth, many of us in the 21st century seek our concept of self in a more universal set of beliefs known as “spirituality.” By writing your story and reading others, you can find and define your identity along these lines

Healing and rebuilding from traumas

Writing a memoir offers you an opportunity to change your frame of reference from being the victim of your own life, to becoming its author. By crafting the words that describe your evolution as a person, you can gain control and develop inner strength and wisdom to help you heal and resolve issues from the past.

Write: What events or circumstances in your life do you regret? Instead of trying to erase them from memory, use your creative mind to forge a story of survival, courage, and wholeness.

See my article on the recovery of self-concept after trauma by clicking here.

Re-storying after loss

After you’ve lost someone dear to you, your life must go on without that person. Reconstructing your self-concept in their absence requires deep work, sometimes real convalescence as you reshape your story-of-self.

The identity of geography

While we think our self-concept goes with us wherever we go, many memoirs tease out the profound influence place can have on our image of who we are. In Song of the Plains by Linda Joy Myers, and Ruby Slippers by Tracy Sealey, the authors explore the journey from heartland to coast and back again. In Jew Store by Stella Suberman, the family shifts its identity from urban to rural America.

The evolving relationship to gender and sexuality

In my younger days, sorting out all the variables of gender identity and sexuality seemed like a great puzzle. Through the decades, so many more options and variables have been added. From the tidal wave of sexual liberation in the 60s, to the cultural shift in male-female relations in the second half of the twentieth century, to the great blurring of gender identity in the 21st century, our relationship to these supposedly fixed features keeps changing. And I’ve found yet another shift in my relationship to gender and sexuality in older years. To find the true you  beneath the every changing sands of time, what better way than authoring your story.

Go wider and deeper in your relationship to the “Other”

Your self concept exists in relationship to the people around you. In an community or primitive tribe, you would have defined your Self as “someone who belongs to this group.” In today’s churning, shrinking world, we are challenged to include “outsiders.” Since our group is now diverse, it throws our own identity into question. If “I am a member of this group” I need to understand who these people are. Memoirs take you inside the experience of this enormous diversity and turn your global neighbors from strangers into friends. In the process, your own notion of self-identity expands, extending beyond the cultural constraints of people who look exactly like you.

Deepen your insight into the introspective voice

The only way to know other people’s thoughts is either by what they say, or what we guess. When I was growing up and trying to understand people, I read literature, which unfortunately only gave me insight into the characters invented by fiction writers. By developing a familiarity with the memoir genre, you are ushered into the introspective world of the people around you. And by writing your own memoir, you challenge yourself to become more aware of the narrative you tell yourself.

To read more about the psychological notion of self-concept, read my article on Mental Health Survival Guide

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my short, step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Is memoir a genre? Consider these matched pairs.

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by Jerry Waxler

For more insight into the power and importance of memoirs, read the Memoir Revolution and learn why now is the perfect time to write your own.

I first became aware of matching pairs of memoirs after the publicity campaign last year for the memoir “Beautiful Boy” by David Sheff, whose son Nic was addicted to crystal meth. The dad’s memoir was accompanied by the memoir, “Tweak”, written from Nic Sheff’s point of view, about the nightmarish period of his addiction. The two books created a well-deserved media splash, including the interview I heard on national public radio. I read both books and learned so much, seeing this tragic situation from two different, and yet intimately connected perspectives.

Then, I read a less self-conscious pair of memoirs, Joan Rivers’ “Enter Talking” and Steve Martin’s “Born Standing Up.” Written decades apart, these memoirs describe the journey of the two comedians from anonymity to fame. Despite their overlapping topics, I felt as curious through the second as I was through the first. The two books complemented each other, giving me deeper insight than either would have done alone.

Recently I read the New York Times bestseller “Color of Water” by James McBride, son of a black Christian father and a white Jewish mother. I found the book informative and uplifting. After I finished, I noticed a similar book near the top of my reading pile, “Black, White, and Jewish,” by Rebecca Walker. Previously, I might have rejected it on the premise that one memoir about mixed-race parents was enough. But now, I was eager to learn more.  “Black, White, and Jewish” turned out to be invigorating, another excellent read, and another window into one of my favorite topics, an individual’s search for identity.

Despite the superficial similarities of the two books, they were massively different. Rebecca was trained in literary arts. James was journalist and jazz musician. Rebecca’s mother was Alice Walker, the famous black author of “The Color Purple.” James’ mother was an anonymous white woman, whose only claim to public attention was that she was usually the only white person in the room. Rebecca spent her childhood shuttling back and forth between posh white communities on the east coast and multi-racial communities in San Francisco. James lived exclusively in black urban areas. The differences go on and on.

Each of the books informed me in ways the other had not. By reading memoirs, comparing them, and adding up my experience, I am increasingly convinced these tales of real life are emerging as a full-fledged genre.

What is a genre?

When a reader picks up any detective novel, the expected formula for the book is that someone dies and then the protagonist sleuths to unmask the killer. Of course, within the formula, the author introduces all manner of variations. The murder could be motivated by power, revenge, or greed. The detective could be a grandmother in town for the holiday, a hard-nosed cop, or a burned out private eye.

At first, it may seem impossible to fit memoirs into a well-defined formula. But despite the infinite variations in people’s lives, memoirs all share certain features, and these shared features appear to define a category. While every memoir stretches the “rules” in some way, they have enough in common that I have put together the features of what looks like a genre to me.

A memoir is a story

A memoir is driven by the power of its story, a formula as old as recorded history. In the beginning of a story, the protagonist feels some need, frustration, or desire. Circumstances force the protagonist on a journey, moving past obstacles by making choices. Eventually, a little older and hopefully wiser, the protagonist reaches some conclusion, and the dramatic tension is relieved.

Inside the protagonist’s perspective

Memoirs place our point of view inside the protagonist’s mind. Seeing the world from a real person’s mind generally feels significantly more nuanced and less predictable than what we expect in fiction.

Looking back with greater wisdom

While the bulk of a memoir takes place within a particular period, the reader knows that the author is writing this book after the experience is complete. This is tricky because we know the author has gained wisdom about this experience, but the story starts before the protagonist knew what was coming. A strong memoir will release information slowly and in its own time, stringing us along and building suspense. As a memoir reader, I enjoy this intriguing relationship between author and protagonist, and am always eager to reach the end to learn what lessons the author has discovered.

Character Arc of the protagonist is a valuable aspect of a memoir

The stories we admire most tend to be the ones that allow the protagonist to grow. For example, they gain insight into their moral responsibilities, or achieve emotional closure that convinces us they will be less likely to repeat their mistakes.

Truth

Memory is slippery. Conversations can seldom be remembered word for word even a few hours later, and major events which seem clear in one person’s mind might be remembered differently by a sibling. Memoir writers do their best, and readers expect that the story is told as truthfully as possible through the eyes of a fallible human being.

How will you fit your lifestory into this budding genre?

There is a good chance the main theme of your life has already been covered in someone else’s memoir. There are books about immigration, dysfunctional parents, foster kids, searching for spirituality in an ashram, coming under fire in Vietnam, losing a loved one, or any of dozens of themes that have been written elsewhere.

And yet, despite the similarities between your story and ones that have already been written, yours will be different because this one is about you. It’s written in your voice, through your perspective, with the particular characters in your life, and the beliefs that sustained you or pulled you astray. All the things that make your life unique will make your memoir unique. By telling your own story, and then publishing it so others can read it, you take your place on the shelf amidst the rest of the authentic life story literature of the twenty-first century.

Notes
One of the first memoirs I reviewed for my blog was about the search for identity by another young man with mixed race parents, “Dreams of Our Fathers” by Barack Obama.

Essay about James McBride’s search for identity in “Color of Water”
An essay about Joan Rivers’ tenacity in “Enter Talking”
Essay about Steve Martin’s fame in “Born Standing Up”

Essay about two memoirs by an addicted son and his father, click here.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.

To order my how-to-get-started guide to write your memoir, click here.

Identity moves too in Doreen Orion’s travel memoir

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By Jerry Waxler

Doreen Orion and her husband are psychiatrists, which means they had to complete medical school before they could start studying mental illness. This intense education elevates physicians to the stratosphere, provoking enough curiosity in the rest of us to inspire television shows like ER, Scrubs, Marcus Welby, MASH, and Gray’s Anatomy. Now you can add one more resource to learn who doctors “really are” by reading Doreen Orion’s memoir, “Queen of the Road.”

You will learn a couple of things about doctors. But like everyone else her identity is a moving target. Whether you are a psychiatrist, a CEO, beauty queen, sales person, or factory worker, your title changes depending on whether you’re home, at your parents’ house, or at work. It changes from decade to decade, and it changes when you retire.

I know a couple who moved to a retirement community in Florida where former factory workers and college professors set aside their old titles and in this egalitarian environment they all become good friends. (Some are better at dropping their former role than others.) Doreen and her husband are not yet fully retired, but their year off provides a glimpse of what happens when they shuck the outer skin of their identity.

When sketching your life story, take advantage of Orion’s example. Pay attention to what your various roles feel like. With your kids you were mom or dad, in your parents’ house you were the kid, and at work the boss or worker. Look across decades, and see how your roles evolved. By staying open to the various ways people see you and you see yourself, you will portray your identity not as a static thing, but a thing in motion.

Writing Prompt
Who are you in your main role? What other roles do you have? Write a few anecdotes, calling attention to your roles.

Character Arc – What you have learned, keeps readers interested
It turns out that one of the fundamental principles of story telling is that during the course of the story, the protagonist is supposed to learn something and change in some way. This story element is called Character Arc, and if done well continues to resonate in the reader’s mind after they close the book. If you want people to remember your memoir long enough to recommend it to friends, I recommend you carefully consider the Character Arc.

“Queen of the Road” starts with concern about midlife crisis, and so, once this dramatic tension has been planted in the reader’s mind, it needs to be resolved by the end. That’s a problem because it’s impossible to “solve” midlife. In fact, by the end of the book, the couple was a year older. The resolution of this dramatic tension comes from Character Arc. If she learns and grows, the reader feels satisfied. So what did Orion learn?

Travel and “Stuff”
One of the haunting images of the pioneers of the old west is the sad scene when the wagon train reaches the mountains. With winter approaching and the horses straining to carry their load, the pioneers make a terrible decision. They push the most valuable thing they own, their piano, off the back of the wagon. Freed of this burden they cross the mountain before winter and save their lives.

Unlike the settlers of the American West, Orion stored her stuff during her pilgrimage, but she was inconvenienced in other ways. For example, after purchasing a pair of shoes she came back to the RV and realized there was no where to put them. So she had to drive all the way back to the store and return them.

Religions have been proposing for millennia that since you can’t take it with you, don’t get too attached to your stuff. It doesn’t seem probable that a bus equipped with dishwasher and satellite television will teach Orion a profound lesson about detachment. But it does.

Orion realized her stuff was not as important as she thought. This inner development might seem small. But despite its modest size, she leaves me feeling rewarded. She was wiser at the end of the book than she was at the beginning – Not a bad pay off for a trip, and not a bad payoff for reading a book. It stayed with me long enough to recommend it to you.

The movement of Doreen’s Character Arc is a journey in its own right, showing her character move through the course of a memoir. We thought we knew her, and now we see we were wrong. This is the kind of simple message that builds hope in readers, as well as memoir writers. At the start of our own journey, we thought we knew who we were, and over time we evolve to become wiser about ourselves and the world.

To visit the Amazon Page, click here.
To visit Doreen Orion’s Home Page, click here.
To see the other two articles I wrote about this book, click here and here.

—

Writing Prompt
List the times “stuff” has been important to you. Each time you moved? What about divorce? Splitting up stuff is a huge part of that sad time. Did you have to deal with your parents’ stuff when they died or had to go into assisted living? Did you lose or break something that was important to you?

Writing Prompt
How will your character evolve from the beginning of the book to the end?

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Iranian in America makes love and laughter

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by Jerry Waxler

Read Memoir Revolution to learn why now is the perfect time to write your memoir.

When two countries go to war, their “us” versus “them” mentality make their differences seem irreconcilable. So when I saw Firoozeh Dumas’ memoir, “Funny in Farsi, Growing up Iranian in America” it appealed to me instantly. I wanted to laugh at the differences instead of fight over them. But how can you laugh about something so serious as the differences between Americans and Iranians?

At a meeting of the National Speakers Association in Philadelphia, after an introduction that repeatedly cracked up the audience, Ron Culberson explained that humor happens when your mind sets you up to expect one thing, and then the punch line suddenly shifts the ground you thought you were standing on. That’s what creates the laughter in “Funny in Farsi.” One culture sets up an expectation, and the other culture spins that expectation in a surprising direction.

Firoozeh came to the United States from Iran when she was seven, with a father who believed America was the promised land, a land of infinite wisdom, compassion, and possibilities. That’s a familiar theme for me. Three of my four grandparents moved across the globe from Russia to the melting pot of America. In the early days of their immigration, there was enormous suspicion against them. Their Jewish names and manner and their foreign accents isolated them. But the melting pot blurred the differences especially among the children, and by the second or third generation, the accents were gone, the suspicion eased, and people started to relate to each other as people. The self-effacing humor of Jewish immigrants was an important tool as they struggled to become part of their new home, and helped create a sense of bonding and strength.

So I was prepared to appreciate Firoozeh’s humor. For example, when Firoozeh was a little girl, visiting Disneyland with her family, she became preoccupied by a bright red telephone and when she looked up, her family had moved on. At the lost-and-found for children there was another child who didn’t speak English. The caretaker begged Firoozeh to speak to the little boy. When Firoozeh spoke to him in Farsi, which the boy didn’t understand, he cried even harder. It was comical to think that the American woman assumed that any two foreign children would understand each other’s language.

On Firoozeh’s first day in second grade, her mother went along. The teacher invited them both to the front of the class and then gestured for Firoozeh’s mother to point out their country of origin on the world map. Firoozeh’s mom stood there smiling politely but not moving. The teacher assumed any woman would naturally know where her own country was on the map. She was wrong. What she expected did not match reality.

When I watch a movie or read a book, situations of identity confusion embarrass me so badly, I want to jump up and pace. I was feeling this jumpiness when I read Firoozeh’s memoir, and I wanted to understand how this dramatic tension works. So I pondered other dramatic situations in which identity confusion makes me crazy, and I realized that identity confusion plays a central role throughout Shakespeare’s plays. So I took a closer look at Shakespeare’s comedy “As you like it,” in which Rosalind, was forced into exile, and dressed up as a boy. In this disguise she meets Orlando who was madly in love with her. Taken in by her disguise, he enters into a second relationship with her, now as a friend and confidante. The resulting confusion has been driving audiences crazy for centuries.

Confusion about identity is especially relevant in the great melting pot of modernity, when people cross boundaries, exiled from their own culture and try to enter another. We wonder about each other, “How am I supposed to speak or act towards this person? What parts are the same? What parts are different?” The concern about a person’s identity creates tension, and then when the identity is exposed, we breathe a sigh of relief. “Ah, now I understand.”

While Firoozeh’s neighbors in the United States weren’t sure how to relate to her, I had no such confusion. She took me into her confidence and I saw for myself who she was, thanks to her superb command of the English language, and her clever, ironic insights. “She’s one of us.” I thought. And even better, as a recent entrant into the melting pot, she could share her observations about contrasts between two cultures more clearly than someone limited to seeing things only from within one.

At the end of the play “As You Like It,” just as at the end of all of his comedies, Shakespeare resolves the confusion by marrying the characters. I suppose he figured once they were living and sleeping together, all the masks would be removed. Firoozeh married too, but in her case, the wedding was yet another opportunity for misunderstanding. Her parents wanted the celebration to be the same as in Iran, where animal sacrifice is considered essential. The caterers, who were not experts in the nuances of this ritual, decided to carve the animal first. The carcass they wheeled out, stripped of its meat, was appropriate neither for an Iranian or an American celebration. It switched from being a symbol of joy, to a symbol of foreigners trying to hang on to their old identity in a new land.

The ending of Firoozeh’s memoir differs from a Shakespearean comedy in another way. Her husband is French, so even after they married they can never return together to a single homeland. Instead, they must continue to seek the universal qualities of love and laughter in each other, and in their adopted neighbors or else forever remain foreigners. And that is precisely what provides the lift at the end of Firoozeh’s drama of confusion and mixing. Amidst the differences of people, she offers us this opportunity too, to understand the things we share.

Writing Prompt: List the decades of your life. For each period, list examples of cultural mixing. For example, what neighbor, lover, teacher, or co-worker entered your life from another culture? How did you behave towards that person? Curious? Suspicious? Confused?

Writing Prompt: List vacations or journeys to other countries, regions or neighborhoods where others might have looked at you as a foreigner. What is it about you that people might have thought was different from them? (Color, features, accent, religion.) How did you reach out? What were some of the confusions? What humor or love relieved the tension? What did you learn? What surprised you? What still makes you wonder?

Visit Firoozeh Dumas’ home page.

Funny in Farsi, Growing up Iranian in America

Note: For more information about Ron Culberson, the speaker who got me thinking about humor, see his website. www.funsulting.com

Note: I listened to the audio version of the book, read by Firoozeh herself, so I was treated by her lovely voice and slight accent, along with the authentic pronunciation of the few names and words she mentions in Farsi. This book is available from www.audible.com.

Note:
Here are a few other memoirs in which the mixing of cultures plays a central role. Click the links to read my essay.

The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein
Pursuit of Happyness (the movie) by Chris Gardner
Dreams of my father by Barack Obama

More memoir writing resources

Memoir-lovers in my experience intuitively recognize the potential that this genre has for healing us individually and collectively. My book, Memoir Revolution, backs up these intuitive views with research and examples about how the cultural passion for life stories serves us all.

For brief descriptions and links to all the posts on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order Memoir Revolution about the powerful trend to create, connect, and learn, see the Amazon page for eBook or Paperback.