Memior: Blog Topic #3

Question: Why do people write memoirs? What power is there in telling our own stories?

I believe that people write memoirs because they feel that they have important stories or events that are worth telling to other people. Memoirs that we read in school usually has an important lesson behind it or some important event in history that is worth noting. But memoirs go deeper than just a story they tell more about the characters and their lives. They describe what life was like there and then, and it kind of makes you think of how good or bad you have it. Do you read memoirs about some rock in the middle of the Amazon and how it has bird droppings all over it, NO, you read about some story with an important life lesson in it. Like stealing is bad, or racism is bad, or things of that nature.

But memoirs also have a lot of power. They can even change the way we think. When we read books for school like Black Boy or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, did you feel that they had an significant points that you wrote about? Yes they did, and the curriculum pounds in the rights and wrongs. We also learn about the power of past events from different perspectives, like from WW2 there are many memoirs written by people who served or who were a jew in Europe at that time. It gives us a sense of accomplishment, what we have done, and what we hope to be able to do. This also gives people hope for the future, memoirs influence our lives more than we think.