Franklin, Antoinette, and Iriel Franklin. "Hurricane Katrina Victims Memoir." StoryCorps. 2008. 30 June 2008
These two stories are both about ways of dealing with and also overcoming past struggles and experiences in life. The writing by Jerry Waxler talks about how we can improve our feelings by describing them, therefore writing them down, or talking about them, like the two Hurricane Katrina victims did in their audio memoir. Waxler quotes Louise DeSalvo in his writing, saying “By finding certain words deep within our minds and writing or describing them, we explain long forgotten events that have never been clearly thought through. And then we share these words with people, telling our story to others, we open ourselves to the healing effects of social connection.” This is in a way what Antoinette and Iriel Franklin did by telling their memoir of their experience with Hurricane Katrina.
I felt a keen sense of reality by while both reading the writing and listening to the audio memoir. I feel as if writing down your problems (or speaking them) allows you to look at your past in a retrospect way, which people don’t get a lot of chances to do now a days because of all the modern distractions and empty things we use to try and fill ourselves with to ignore the truth and the past. Waxler wrote about how DeSalvo views the healing of social connection, which I strongly believe is true. I think that when we write our problems down or allow other people to listen to our struggles in life or our past, we are putting ourselves out there in the open to connect with. I think that to have someone socially connect with you by discussing your life or past is the greatest therapy in the world. In some cases, pain lets us know we’re alive, it reminds us everyday. Therefore when you feel someone else’s pain by listening to them or their memoir, you have somewhat of a sense of life and meaning fill you up, same goes to the person who is describing their life or writing their memoir.
1. How is Jerry Waxler’s life doing present day?
2. Have the Franklins moved out of Houston and moved on?
3. Is writing a memoir necessarily writing an autobiography or can it just be about one thing in your life?
3 comments:
I like the question about autobiography and memoir. I think that sometimes we think we have to have the whole story, when the most interesting parts are the sections or components that make up the story.
In response to this posting, Alex makes several noteworthy points that I absolutely agree with. First, I strongly concur that people nowadays do not get many chances to take time and sit down to reflect on their past experiences because of modern day distractions. Perhaps if this was done more, people would be exposed to a new kind of therapy that would be extremely beneficial to them. This said, I agree with Alex that writing memoirs is very stress relieving because it enables us to open up and share our feelings thus making a connection with others. I also like the question Alex posed to author Jerry Waxler - "how is Jerry Waxler’s life doing present day?" If we had the answer to this question, we would know if writing memoirs indeed helped the author to achieve his goal of emotional well being.
I think you have a good usage of quotes in there. Reading your blog helped me to remember certain things that I read before and brought a deeper connection to the article. It makes sense when you said that writing down your problems allows you to look at your past and that many people don’t get the chance to do this because of all the modern distractions and the “empty things we use to try and fill ourselves with to ignore the truth and the past.” I also like the line when you said that pain lets us know we are alive.
Post a Comment