We Love Memoirs Day

Sunday, August 31 is  We Love Memoirs Day.   Memoirs are not autobiographies.  Memoirs are more emotional based, although the feelings are as factual as dates. Marion Roach Smith observes, “People have written about themselves since people could write.”  Without the memoir genre, “We would not know about the lives of the disenfranchised. That awareness alone is worth real study.”  In memoirs, we read about slavery, holocaust survivors, rags to riches and riches to rags stories.  Many link the memoir boom to the Frank McCourt’s 1999 publication Angela’s Ashes. The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner gave a subliminal call to write about difficult childhoods.
Memoirs are one person’s recollection of events that shaped their lives. The reason to write a memoir is as varied as people themselves.  The answer to one defining question spurs a memoir writer.
What story within me must be told and why?
This answer MUST cause any human to write the story.  What happens to it afterwards is your decision.
Memoir is not  my favorite genre but I have read several recently and found a few worth mention.
      The Astronaut’s Wife: How Launching My Husband into Outer Space Changed the Way I Live on Earth   Stacey Morgan   Morgan’s memoir of her life with three kids on earth during Covid collides with her husband’s life on the space station.  An honest, believable story that will not taint your stereotype of astronauts, but shed truth on the families struggles and victories.
Being Henry  The Fonz and Beyond     Henry Winkler   MY FAVORITE
Henry Winkler (the Fonz) memoir chronicles the difficulty of a real man who fought himself out of the shadow of a beloved television character. His honesty about the ensuing years struggling to make a living in media and the final successes drove me to binge watch his work later in life.   Winkler’s story of being typecast for the majority of his career is all our stories, albeit less public.
   Do Not Cry When I Die: A Holocaust Memoir of a Mother and Daughter’s Survival In Jewish Ghettos, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen   Renee Salt  Renee Salt is not famous,  nor is her mother who repeatedly told her “do not cry when I die”,  the title of her memoir. Renee and her mother were marched from their home in Poland when Renee was ten years old.  For the next six years she and her mother defied the odds and survived the murders of the ghetto,  the gas chambers of Auschwitz and the labor camp of Bergen-Belson.  Renee is certain she would have never survived without the courage and love of her mother.
Try a memoir this month and let me know how you  liked it!