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Letter from Joyce Archives
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July 10, 2007
Dear Friends,
For the last couple of months, I've been doing a lot of teaching -- memoir, mostly. This leads me, always, to meditate on why it is that I believe in personal storytelling, and where the meaning and value lies, both for the writer of the story and the one who reads it. As a person who has been criticized an above-average amount, perhaps, for the alleged crime of being "self-involved", I've had to ask myself "Why does anyone need to know what I experienced, or how I felt about it?" More bluntly put: "So what?"
In some quarters, it is not simply irrelevant to examine one's story, but actually, unseemly. I don't feel a big need to convince those of the anti-memoir camp concerning the value of memoir and personal storytelling, but I thought I'd offer a few words about that today. Particularly for anyone out there who's been grappling with guilt or self doubt on the question, or feeling ashamed, even, at being interested in writing about his or her life.
All I can do is give you my response to that one -- based on my own experience of writing writing about my life, and many years of assisting others in writing about theirs. So here goes.
You are the world's expert on one story, and one story only: Your own. I love biography, love history, love good journalism and reporting…but if there is one story that you alone are equipped to convey, it's about the life only you have lived. Tell that one with honesty and courage -- giving up on the idea of coming across as a hero, or concealing the parts of your story that reveal you to be flawed, like the rest of us -- and I believe say you've engaged in a worthwhile endeavor -- one others will care about, relate to, and one that may possibly help them with their own life struggles. For me, this has meant exploring the painful parts of what's gone on over the last fifty years or so (as well as happy ones), and even revisiting some of them many times (my mother's death, for instance, and the reverberatons of my divorce, and the experience of growing up in an alcoholic family). I do this because I am always growing and changing, and gaining new and different perspective on old stories. (An essay I posted here a few months back, called "The Stories We Tell," is a prime example of that. The facts of what happened to us may not change, but our understanding of its meaning often does.)
Clearly there are those who feel no need or desire to share their story on the page, and certainly nobody should feel an obligation to do so. To me, what's essential is not the act of writing or telling our story, but the act of introspection: examining one's experiences in a way that helps us make sense of our attitudes, behavior, our relationships and our life choices. I'm not about to judge a person if she chooses simply to consider the lessons and meaning of her life, without writing them down.
But for some -- and I am in this number -- there is a second part of the process: communicating what we've learned. Perhaps because I grew up feeling I was the only person in the world acquainted with my particular brand of loneliness or sorrow or isolation, all my life I've felt the need to connect with my fellow human beings. I used to picture myself alone on a hilltop, calling out "Here I am." The great gift made possible by my writing has been the sound that echoes back from readers now and then: "Me too."
So, having had the good fortune of getting to tell my story all these years (not just my story of course; also those of other people, thank god, and those I've invented), I take great pleasure in facilitating, for other people, a process that has enriched my own life immensely.
This past week, teaching at the annual Sarah Lawrence writers' workshop, the group included (to name a few): a mother of three sons, who'd set out for Guatemala to adopt the daughter she never had; a volunteer EMT worker, newly divorced after eighteen years of marriage, writing about the experience of caring for a young child whose mother had just been terribly injured in a car wreck; a young woman writing about the unlikely role played in her life by the game show host, Bob Barker, who came to idealize the kind of father she herself never had, in a childhood that included two different stints in foster care. One of the two men in our workshop had come there, to finally tell the story of a mother so brutally abusive that even now, 86 years later, he could remember her words to him, "You'll end up in the electric chair." (I want to add, some people actually tell happy stories in my workshops. There is no requirement, that a person needs to have experienced tragedy to write a good piece of memoir.)
I am not violating a confidence now when I tell you: This particular student was eighty eight years old. He walked with a cane, moving so slowly that accompanying him down the path from the dormitory, as I did most mornings, took a good ten minutes longer than how I would normally have traveled (That meant, I had time to listen to his story. And to take in his words, with care.
I watched the faces on our group, as Ambrose told us in class about the precious box of chalk his mother gave him, when he was seven, and the nun, at his Catholic school, who accused him of stealing it and made him confess, or he'd be sent away till he was sixteen. We were transfixed. More than one of us wept.
When he was seven, the nun had instructed an entire classroom of second graders to point their fingers at this man and call out "Thief." Now, eighty years later, what he got from his fellow students was compassion and recognition. And you know, there is nothing much better than having a person hear your story and tell you, "I understand."
To me, that is the value of memoir. (And of course, doing it well requires not only honesty and courage, but craft. We talked about that plenty last week, too.) What interests me, in the end, are simply small truths about human behavior, relationships, and life on this planet. If the stories written by students in my workshops simply chronicled tragedy, or pain, or grief and loss, they might inspire nothing more than the passing interest we give (guiltily) to a gruesome looking wreck on the highway, or news of some particularly horrendous murder. But in each case, my goal for the writer is not simply reporting a list of misfortunes, but rather, examining how those events changed him or her, what his or her experiences revealed. When that happens, the writer has given readers a gift. And they, by reading, give one back.
I don't want to suggest that every piece of worthwhile writing needs to contain a lesson or moral. But I do believe that good memoir is not simply about telling what happened. It's about recognizing the larger themes and truths that daily live illuminates for us all. Sometimes, we discover those things, and then write about them. And sometimes, the act of writing reveals things we didn't know before. Either way, it‘s a meaningful process, and one I feel happy and proud to be part of. As good as I feel, when I've written something that moves a reader, or conveys what it was like to experience something -- birth, death, love, loss, or maybe just pie making, I feel almost equally happy and proud when a student of mine creates a piece of writing that allows others to know what she experienced, and feel compassion or understanding or recognition. Many times last week, in my workshop, that happened. Those moments are why I teach.
I have mentioned here that I plan to host two week-long workshops in the months ahead, in the village on the shores of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, where I have spent so many of my happiest times in recent years (also the place I finished my last three books): One of these workshops -- November 9-17-- will be devoted to memoir and personal storytelling. Then from February 9-17, 2008, I'll be hosting a second group -- but joined, this time, by two other wonderful writers and teachers: Bob Bausch for fiction, and Jane Hirschfield in poetry.
If you haven't taken a look at the information about these two workshops, now posted on my website, I hope you will. (And read what students from my three earlier Lake Atitlan writing groups had to say about the experience.) Myrna has also posted a terrific slide show of pictures from the workshop. Naturally, I'd love to have you join us there -- and promise, if you do, that it will be a week that transforms your writing, and possibly one that changes your life. (In good ways, incidentally.)
And for those of you in the California area (or those who may be interested in a trip out here), I'll be hosting two of my one-day workshops at my home in Mill Valley, August 18 and September 22. Much as I'd love to work with you in Guatemala, I also understand that is not an option for many of you. One nice thing about the California workshop: I promise to serve my poppy seed cake. And give you the recipe if, like most who sample it, you feel inspired to try it at home.
I also want to let you know (after a few false alarms on this one) that my story about the two week bike trip I took with my son Willy, in Italy, is in the current issue of National Geographic Traveller, now on the stands. Also just out: two collections of essays in which work of mine appears. The first is called Over the Hill and Between The Sheets: Sex, Love and Lust in Middle Age (ed. Gail Belsky, Springboard books). The other is titled Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave (ed. Ellen Sussman, Norton publishers). For those of you who'd like a sample of Ellen's book, I'm sharing my essay, titled "A Good Girl Goes Bad."
And as always, I always enjoy hearing from you. Don't hesitate to send me any questions you have about writing workshops, or simply to share what's on your mind.
With friendship,
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