Remembering memoir

Of all the things that memoir can be: travelogue, coming-of-age story, humorous romp through time, etc., the genre's main focus as I now see it is to shape a life's story into events and perspectives that can help others learn. I suppose I've always known this, always being for as long as I've though actively about memoir, anyway.

After my stroke I spent lots of time hunting down books that told stories like mine. I wanted to know that despite the dung heap my life had become, things would get better. While none of the stories were like mine-- 'My Stroke of Luck" came out after I was over my misery-- I still found some comfort in what I read. At that time I never read for sensationalism, shock value or to make myself feel better because of someone's sorrows. The elements of memoirs that I read that spoke to me were just the ways in which the authors had assembled events to help me see their points of growth. Unfortunately, I think that many authors today use the adage that sex (or drugs, etc) sells, so these things are used in books to carry the whole story. It works, but frankly, I can't wait until we as a culture are bored with this tired old trick. In today's pop culture world, we can't help turning on the TV and seeing some sordid real-life TV show about how crappy someone's life is; there's Hoarders and Intervention and Wife Swap and all sorts of other shows like this; I can't wait till they are old news.

So what I've enjoyed the most about the class has to do with the ways in which I was asked to consider memoir as a literary form. It can certainly be that; however, I wonder if it's very nature imposes some limits on where it can go. If cultural trends are cyclical, as think we've all seen evidence of in some ways, then hopefully memoir can move into a place of substance, rather than just substance abuse/physical abuse, etc.

For example, I think back to our discussion on Langston Hughes, and the piece we read for that week. "Salvation" had some real depth to it, and although I'm not saying our other pieces didn't, it was so refreshing to read a piece that didn't involve the same story rehashed to another person's life/era. I know that all subject areas probably have memoir-writers in them, so maybe the onus is on me to find memoirs that fulfill me in a more "real" way.

So as I consider my own tale or stroke recovery, all of these considerations make me rethink the way I'd started that book; the inclusion of my own sordid stories and all the things I have come to dislike about the genre. How can I avoid them and write something that I'd like to see out there?

Again I turn to Hughes, who wrote, as the voice of an English teacher, in "Theme for English B,"

"go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page be out of you--
Then it will be true."