I’m doing a presentation Tuesday evening 7:30-9:30 sponsored by the San Mateo Public Libraries that I’m rather excited about.
It is a two-part presentation/discussion. The first part is about the history of the Memoir and how and why it is such a popular genre today.
The second part is about actually creating one, whether for yourself or encouraging a loved one, perhaps a parent or grandparent, to share their story before it’s too late.
As a preview, I thought I’d write a little about the Memoir.
First of all, a memoir is different from an autobiography, but the two genres definitely overlap. People ask me the distinction all the time.
An autobiography generally tells the story of the author’s life chronologically. The person shares the “facts” of their lives in their own words. It is written generally in first person (I, me). The purpose of an autobiography is to portray the life experiences and achievements of the author.
A memoir dives deep into the author’s most intimate memories, exploring emotional truths and the way these make them feel. It is usually in service of a larger theme or idea. It may focus on one particular part or aspect of their life. It is also almost always written in first person (I, me).
A memoir can be chronological, a coming of age story, like an autobiography. And a good autobiography often includes the kinds of reflections and emotions that characterize a memoir.
But a memoir offers some very special experiences for readers that might help explain its rise to one of the most popular and best-selling genres in literature in the 21st Century.
As it as existed for the last thirty years, the memoir is, in a way, an entirely new form. But it does have ancestors, with scattered examples through the ages.
The first “memoirs” date back to ancient China and to the 4th Century in Europe. An early example is The Confessions by St. Augustine, written in Latin between AD 397 and 400. In it, Augustine outlines his sinful youth and conversion to Christianity. He makes the pragmatic plea to God: “Grant me chastity and continence—but not yet!’’ Scandalous stuff.
My favorite line is: “For I was afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon [God], and too soon cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished.”
That is an honest portrayal of the sexuality of young adulthood. You go, Augustine!
Up until the 20th century, most memoirs were spiritual confessions ending in redemption, the leading occupational category of American memoirists, according to library studies, being clergy/religious; the second was criminal/deviant.
There were exceptions. There were war memoirs from the British and American Civil War and others.
The French were well into the memoir genre in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially popular were accounts my members of King Louie’s court (several of the King Louies!). Rousseau’s Confessions stands out as one of the most personal and emotional of the age.
Henry David Thoreau’s On Walden Pond opened the pathway for more personal and reflective works in the United States.
Then you had the rise of the newspaper and print media, the telegraph, the telephone, vinyl records leading into radio, movies and television.
Photo by Nicolas Hoizey on Unsplash
Along the way, came Sigmund Freud (and others) and the study of modern psychology. Psychotherapy. We became more aware of our internal lives. We started to have a vocabulary to articulate our feelings. There was a process for us of self-examination and change.
With the wide popularity of Roots by Alex Haley (1976), the study of genealogy took on new popularity.
Put together these elements (and many others) with the civil rights movement, the world getting smaller, other cultures seen and read about and experienced through the all-mighty internet, the sharing of stories (often very surface) through social media. We developed a greater need to be understood and valued in an ever-growing population with fewer community outlets, less family structure. Then add other technology—the advent of what was then called “desktop publishing,” in the 1990s, with design tools at your fingertips and digital publishing, and the memoir revolution took hold. (Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club and more!)
Now, thousands pour off the world's presses every year.
The total sales in the categories of Personal Memoirs, Childhood Memoirs, and Parental Memoirs increased more than 400 percent between 2004 and 2008.
In 2007, more memoirs were accepted by publishers than debut novels.
Currently, memoir is the top non-fiction genre sold in the U.S. and U.K. 31 percent of Americans said biographies and memoir was their preferred type of book.
In 2019, the sales of memoirs in the UK surged 42% to 2.5 million, according to Nielsen Book Research.
Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash
Why do we love them?
The best ones live in raw honesty, emotional truth. They don’t have to be about famous people at all. It turns out that a memoir is by far the best way to find out what it’s like to be someone else. A memoir can take us beyond our own experiences, far beyond our comfort zones.
We read as people discover themselves, leave dysfunctional relationships, become sober, fix their broken lives, find true love, learn to live with a disability, overcome illness, deal with death of a loved one, become their true selves, fight for change, invent new ways of living, function in a new culture, survive war, go to space, govern a country.
Memoirs allow us to get first-hand perspectives. They give a voice to people who are often overlooked. They connect us to each other. We find someone to relate to, which makes us feel less crazy, less alone, more okay in our own less-than-perfect lives. We can better understand our own humanity and the humanity of others. We can practice compassion and gratitude, learn new perspectives. Open our hearts and minds. We are often inspired. Gotta love dem MEMOIRS!
