MEMOIR WORKSHOP: PLACE Voice to Voice November 22, 2014 Co-Leaders: Linda Corman Mary Pat Kane Catherine LeClair Craft Talk Author: Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn 2:00 2:15 PM Sign-in & Welcome 2:15 2:30 PM Opening Lines: A Place of the Past 2:30 3:15 PM Craft Talk: Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn 3:15 3:45 PM Share & Discovery: Place the Place 3:45 3:55 PM Community Announcements, Part I 3:55 4:10 PM Break 4:10 4:20 PM Community Announcements, Part II 4:20 4:50 PM Freewrite: Turn Back the Clock 4:50 5:20 PM Group Reimagining: Future Memories 5:20 5:30 PM Closing Lines: My Favorite Part 247 West 37 Street, Suite 1800, New York, NY 10018 212 336 9330 www.girlswritenow.org
OPENING LINES: A Place of the Past For each of the prompts below, write a place where you have felt the given emotion. Feel free to write down more than one place if you want. For now, don t worry about writing the actual memory or what that place looked like. Answer as many of the prompts as you can. 1. A place where I have felt joyful is... 2. A place where I have felt afraid is... 3. A place where I have felt safe is... 4. A place where I have felt nervous is... 5. A place where I have felt brave is... 6. A place where I have felt older OR younger than my age is... 7. A place where I have felt embarrassed is 8. A place where I have felt great anticipation is... 9. A place where I have felt like the center of attention is 10. A place where I have felt like an outsider is... 2
CRAFT TALK: Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn is a Jamaican-born writer who received her BS in Nutrition from Cornell University, and a Masters of Public Health and Women s Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received her Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College in 2012. Nicole s writing addresses issues of homophobia, classism, complexionism, religiosity, and gender in Jamaica. Her writing digs beneath the surface, uprooting the subtle, yet, sometimes blatant complexities of a post-colonial realm on the bodies of women. She captures both the terror of being an interloper in one's own skin and an interloper in a country internationally deemed as paradise. Such juxtaposition not only captures the Jamaican experience, but the human experience. She is the 2014 Richard and Julie Logsdon Fiction Prize winner and a 2014 Lambda Foundation Emerging Writing Fellow whose writing has earned her a distinguished fellowship from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women Writers, the Vermont Studio Center, and Kimbilio. Her work has been awarded Honorable Mention from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and has appeared in Red Rock Review, Kweli Literary Journal, Mosaic, Ebony.com, and the Feminist Wire. She is the Founder of Stuyvesant Writing Workshop in Brooklyn, and currently teaches Writing at Medgar Evers College, the College of Staten Island, and Manhattan College. Write a question for the author here: 3
SHARE & DISCOVERY: Place the Place Part I. Choose one of the places you wrote about in Opening Lines that has a strong memory associated with it. Answer the following questions. 1. What and where is this place? 2. What memory do you have associated with it? 3. Describe this place without mentioning the actual memory. Instead, allow your memory to influence your description. What details do you remember about it? Pay attention to the senses as you describe this place. What does it look like? What does it smell or sound like? 4
Part II. Share the description of your place with the members of your group. Once everyone has shared, use the questions below to have a discussion. 1. Why do these details stand out to you? 2. What was most challenging about this exercise and what did you do to overcome that challenge? 3. Were you describing the place from your current point of view or from the point of view you had at the time? 5
FREEWRITE: Turn Back the Clock Part I. Now that you ve described the place, tell us what happened. Build out the narrative through character, action, and/or dialogue. Who was there with you? What was the main event, conflict, tension, or emotion in this scene? You can include your descriptions from the previous page to really flesh out the scene. 6
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Part II. Reflect on what your relationship to this memory is today. Are your feelings the same now as they were then? What is different? What is the same? Has time given you insight into this memory? 8
GROUP REIMAGINING: Future Memories Part I. In your group, share a part of your freewrite. Part II. Imagine that you are coming back to this place and memory ten years from now. Would you write about this memory differently? If you felt like you were censoring yourself today, do you think that would change in ten years? Take 5 minutes to write out your thoughts and then share them in your group. 9
CLOSING LINES: My Favorite Part Take a minute to look over your writing from today. Are there any passages or lines that stand out to you? Mark them in your packet and share them with the group! 10
APPENDIX: Exercises and Resources Exercises for Pair Sessions 1. Write a six-word memoir, and publish it on www.smithmag.net/sixwords. Examples: I m sick of these power outages; Early bird who s a bit cuckoo. Bonus: expand your mini-memoir by giving it a setting, context, and details. 2. Write about your favorite piece of furniture. It could the kitchen table where your family eats, a desk at school, your bed where you relax, or anything else you love. 3. Narrate a story a family member that s been passed down. Embellish, if so desired, or contrast the story with what you know to be the true account. http://inside.warren-wilson.edu/~creativewriting/prompts.php 4. Write the map to where you live. Start as close or as far from your home as you wish. http://inside.warren-wilson.edu/~creativewriting/prompts.php Recommended Reading: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou A coming of age account of Maya Angelou s life through age sixteen, this powerful story tells of her experiences growing up during the 1930 s and 40 s. A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bill Bryson This book could be called a nature guide as well as a memoir as Bryson introduces his readers to the ecology and history of the Appalachian trail along with the interesting people he met during his walk. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros In a series of vignettes, The House on Mango Street tells the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago. Brother, I m Dying, Edwidge Danticat Danticat conveys the story of her youth in Haiti and her adolescence in the U.S. It centers around two of the greatest influences in her life, her uncle and father. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion After a year of sudden loss, Didion explores grief and how one can move past the shock of losing someone they love. Wave: Life and Memories After the Tsunami, Sonali Deraniyagala Deraniyagala recounts the story of her life before and after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, and how she deals with the loss of her family. Girl, Interrupted, Susanne Kaysen Kaysen tells the story of being sent to McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital famous for its clientele and progressive methods. She spent most of the next two years in a ward for 11
teenage girls emerging with an unflinching documentary of mental illness and recovery and how we think of them. Orange is the New Black, Piper Kerman Kerman tells her story of being incarcerated in federal prison for a year. It's a fascinating account of the sociology of prisons, and a good read. Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea s Elite, Suki Kim Kim recounts her experience teaching English to the sons of North Korea s ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il s reign. The Woman Warrior: Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston A daughter of Chinese immigrants, Kingston mixes life events with myths and family stories to shape her identity and memoir. Childhood, Nathalie Sarraute Written as a conversation between Sarraute and her memory, this memoir covers the first twelve years of her life. The writer interrogates her memory in search of her own accuracy, intention, and truth. Maus, Art Spiegelman A different kind of memoir, this graphic novel takes place during World War II and conveys the story of the author s father during the Holocaust. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls With an alcoholic father and emotionally absent mother, Walls tells the story of her nomadic childhood and her siblings dreams to get to New York. The Glass Castle is an intense narrative of a strange, but loyal, family. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, Jeannette Winterson The adopted daughter of religious fanatics, Winterson relays her experiences growing up in an English industrial town dealing with her struggles with her mother, sexuality, and religion. 12
APPENDIX: Memoir Terms Difference between memoir and autobiography: An autobiography focuses on the chronology of the author s entire life while a memoir focuses on one aspect of the author s life. If you wanted to start your story with your experiences as a child and write about everything between then and now, you would write an autobiography. If you wanted to write about how you specifically came to be at Girls Write Now, you would write a memoir. Memoir is characterized more by telling emotional truths than recording important events and facts. Closure: the sense that all of the major components of a story have been resolved; may provide a sense of fulfillment or annoyance to the reader. Composite character: a character composed of two or more actual individuals, usually developed to protect privacy or to simplify the narrative. Compressed timeline: depicting true events that happened at different times in a timeline more convenient to the story-telling process. Confessional: a piece of writing that discloses particular sins or faults of the writer. Desire Line: the through line of your memoir that guides the story describing what you (the character) want to achieve. The struggle to achieve the desire drives the book. (From Writer s Digest) Emotional beats: shifts in emotion that are tied to the events you (the character) go through or the actions you take to describe what you go through to achieve your desired conclusion. Epiphany (or revelation): a moment of insight or discovery (often sudden and directed toward the self). First person perspective (vs. second and third person perspective): speaking and conveying thoughts and experiences from the point of view of an I (first person singular) or a we (first person plural). Memoirs are, by their very definition, written in the first person. Pivotal event: a vitally important occurrence that has a major role within a story. Stream of consciousness: a style of writing that is meant to mimic the unedited freeflowing form of the writer s thoughts. Theme: the main idea (topic, subject, or concept) of a text, expressed directly or indirectly. Memoirs generally fall into specific categories, such as adversity, career, coming of age, relationship, travel, etc. Vignette: a short descriptive literary sketch. 13