perspectives as women Custom Essay

All of the authors we will study write from their perspectives as women because they must. Being a woman is part of their identity. You are going to write a brief

memoir—more on the assignment as it comes up—where you write from your own identity and experience as a woman. Or, as the men in this class have already guessed, you

write from your knowledge of a particular woman—perhaps your mother, grandmother, sister, sweetheart or friend—and try to understand a little of her motivation as well

as her search for independence and fulfillment. This is an important assignment. None of us will equal Brontë this semester. But I want you to see that there is no

magic in writing about the concerns of women. We write to recover and reinvent our identity, or to understand. The need is there for all of us.

Audience: Think of your audience as a group of people who are not necessarily seeing you as a student, and who are not expecting an “academic” presentation. They also

are not afraid of realistic or honest presentations of events or persons. In fact, they encourage and appreciate realism and honesty. They know, for instance, that

families are particular and peculiar. They know, for instance, that life is a struggle: we are rarely heroic and rarely certain about anything. Think of your audience

as a sympathetic group of readers, but know that you need not share your memoir with anyone other than the teacher unless you want to.

Your Purpose: Your purpose is to recover a real event or series of events that demonstrates something important about your identity as a woman. Or demonstrates

something worth relaying about a woman in your life. Your memoir, or memoirs, will supply the language, describe the scene, relay the story—all in concrete detail.

Format: Although you will be writing in standard double-spaced "academic" form, please do not ruin your opportunity for telling a compelling memoir or

memoirs by making your written presentation academic. Do not write a standard introduction with a thesis statement—unless you decide that your memoir, or memoirs,

absolutely needs one. Often memoirs are better introduced by a concrete dislocation, for instance, “Grandma used to tell me I was beautiful in Italian. It used to

scare me when she’d pinch my cheek. One day . . . .” Then see where the narrative goes. Remember that to be concrete you should be writing from your senses—seeing,

hearing, tasting, touching and smelling—and not from your mind that supplies generalities. Trust your reader to follow with you: instead of an introduction and thesis,

let your memoir take us right out of the present and pop us right into the times and places that you remember so compellingly.

Likewise, be wary of conclusions that introduce a lesson or moral. Let your reader interpret your memoir. What you think about the event (or events) will come through

in your way of telling about it, in every choice you make about language. You don’t need to tell us what you have learned. You don’t even need to know what you have

learned. You don’t need to rope in the possible interpretations. The memoir should simply focus on an event that could only happen to you as a girl or woman. Or could

only happen to an important woman in your life.

Writing Process:

1. Brainstorm the concrete events of your life that deal with your identity as a woman. (Or that tell you about the struggles or concerns of an important woman in your

life.) Think in very concrete terms—events or episodes that take less than 24 hours. For instance, a particular high school dance and not necessarily all of them.

Focus on events that you remember in detail without trying to. Events that haunt you make compelling human memoirs to share.

2. List possible events from your own life that will make compelling memoirs. Make most of your listings private—particularly if your event involves others who also

have memories of the events. I suggest not sharing any of your events with family or friends in the beginning.

3. Let your list of possible memoirs gestate for a day or two. Keep your own council. You may want to do some casual "research" to help jog your memory—like

going through photo albums, looking at objects, going to places where events took place—if you can do so.

4. Find a place and time where you are absolutely sure that you cannot be interrupted. Not even by music, the radio, or the phone. Write the first draft of your

stories straight through from memory. I suggest using yellow legal paper, double spaced, and not the computer. Let the story tell itself to you from memory.

5. Let the memoir, or series of memoirs, sit. Then read it to start to make paragraph breaks. (If you have written straight through from memory you may have long long

paragraphs.) Where to break them is pretty much episodic—you can’t go wrong, but if you break them into "normal" length you will possibly get additions that

you remember. If you have several memoirs, you can start up again with a simple transition, “Another time ….” Or, you can even use ellipses (. . . . . . ) across the

page to indicate a break.

6. If you normally work on computer now is the time to transcribe the memoir. Don’t "clean it up" too much when you do. Print it out so you can read it in

hard copy.

7. Look for places to capture the language of your friends and family if you have not already done so. Consider direct dialogue, for instance, “’Shut your face,’ my

grandmother told me,” and not, “My grandmother told me to be quiet.”

8. Start your process of revision, but don’t ask any of your relatives to read it yet—at least not if they would be inclined to share their point of view. Now you can

do some more "casual" research if you want—returning to the place where the story took place, asking for background and stories of friends and relatives—as

long as you are keeping your point of view.

9. Revise, revise. Put it in MLA or APA format with your name on the first page. Proofread it at the end. Spell check. Due March 13th.

Please Note: I will be offering you an additional editing checklist the week before you turn the paper in. Please study that document carefully when you get it.