Frank Mathis, the author of the article “Writing a Memoir”; the Involvement of Art with Craft,” talks a little about his experience through World War II and also gives some advice on writing a memoir. I personally believe that the most important issue that Mathis brings up is the fact that to write a successful memoir you have to both be a creative, artistic writer, you also have to be a historian on what you’re writing about. Mathis also talks about how rewarding writing a memoir is.
“Our Own Words” is a collection of memoirs written by students from Florida State University. I didn’t get a chance to read all of the articles but the few that I read were very interesting. In “Knocked Up,” Nicole Filmore uses a very reader friendly style to reach her readers. Also in “Sing With Me somehow,” Alison Slusarczyk talks about how both composing music and playing the music on her piano made her life more bearable to deal with.
In “Similar to Our Own Words,” which was written by college students at Clemson University, these students talk about their experiences through Hurricane Katrina and also the solution for education in New Orleans in post Hurricane Katrina. This collection of stories also talks about these student’s personal stories of pain and suffering in their experience with this horrible tragedy.
My favorite of these three writings was “Writing a Memoir,” simply because of his idea of combining both historian and creative craft skills to write a proper memoir. Mathis also talks about how rewarding it is to complete a well written memoir, which is something that all of these Clemson and Florida State students experienced after writing their memoirs. The Florida State student’s articles kept me very interested because of both their creative style of writing and their use of slang and profanity in their writings. I think that even something simple as these students use of profanity makes a memoir a lot more reader friendly. The narratives from the Clemson students is interesting as well, however, they don’t use enough of the creative writing techniques and reader friendly approaches that the Florida State students used. It was a lot harder to stay focused while reading the articles from the Clemson students than it was during the Florida State students.
Even after reading these unnecessarily long readings, I still have three questions. First of all, what are Mathis's most vivid memories about his experience in World War II first hand, and what did he have to sacrifice in order to fight in the war? Also, what does Nicole Filmore experience present day with both being an aunt and being the sister of a new mother? And lastly, how was it for Maria Hernandez to spend six days in a Superdome?
2 comments:
I like that you mention that the language i.e. slang caught your attention. I think that using proper and audience-related language is an important factor to think about when writing.
As I read your blog, some of the things you mentioned, I honestly didn’t think to write about in mine. I liked the way Frank Mathias associated a memoir writer with a historian. I found it humorous how you mentioned that the memoirs were “un-necessarily long,” I totally agree. I also agree with your question concerning what exactly were Mathias’s memories because I don’t remember him specifically describing one. Your blog seemed to be very interesting and is very well written. I hope to comment on more of your blogs in the future. I wonder what the next reading assignment is going to be?
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