Memoir First Lines–A Contest for Readers of this Blog

At June 27, 2011
By shirleyhs
In contests, Lists, Top Ten Lists, Writing Tips
20

Rooted in the land. Tree near Bellingham, WA.

Recently I had an inquiry from a writer who asked if I had a list of excellent first lines from memoirs. That sounded like something I should have. First words contain the vital “hook” that overcomes the reader’s resistance and skepticism. Think about how you challenge a book to speak to you when you gaze at its cover or open its first pages.

A really great memoir does more than hook the reader in the beginning. The first sentence takes you right to the heart of the matter, announcing one of the themes of the book. Often, the first paragraph in a work of art is like a haiku. It says in one breath what the whole book will say more fully as we follow the red thread of meaning.

Most of the lists of best and most famous opening lines come from novels. I shared some, and readers offered others, here. But what about memoir-specific opening lines?

Here are the first lines of some of the memoirs I selected as favorites in my personal top ten list.

1.”What are you looking at me for

I didn’t come to stay . . .”

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

2. “When everything else has gone from my brain–the President’s name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and then my own name and what it was on earth I sought, and then at length the faces of my friends, and finally the faces of my family–when all this has dissolved, what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.”

An American Childhood, Annie Dillard

3. “Suppose your daughter is engaged to be married and she asks whether you think she ought to have children, given the sorry state of the world.”

Hunting for Hope, Scott Russell Sanders

4.”This book does not claim to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again.”

Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

5. “In our house on North Congress Street in Jackson, Mississippi, where I was born, the eldest of three children, in 1909, we grew up to the striking of clocks.”

One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty

6. “My childhood came to a virtual halt when I was around five years old.”

Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

7. “The western plains of New South Wales are grasslands.”

The Road from Coorain, Jill Kerr Conway

8. “THE HIGH PLAINS, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.”

Dakota, Kathleen Norris

9. Prologue. “If you look at an atlas of the United States, one published around, say, 1940, there is, in the state of Indian, north of New Castle and east of the Epileptic Village, a small town called Mooreland.”

First Chapter. Baby Book. “The following was recorded by my mother in my baby book, under the heading MILESTONES:

FIRST STEPS: Nine months! Precocious!”

Zippy, Haven Kimmel

10. “Having just died, I shouldn’t be starting my afterlife with a chicken sandwich, no matter what, especially one served up by nuns.”

Learning to Die in Miami, Carlos Eire

11. “Any way I tell this story is a lie, so I ask you to disconnect the device in your head that repeats at intervals how ancient and addled I am.”

Lit, by Mary Karr (preface is an open letter to her son)

What do you notice about this list? One thing that pops out at me is that many of the women’s memoirs I love most are about the land under the life. The land represents the “beyond,” the spiritual dimension that words can evoke but cannot create or destroy.

What about your favorite memoirs? Go to your shelf and pull them down. Please contribute at least one first sentence to this list. I will give away a copy of Ari L. Goldman’s The Search for God at Harvard to the person who contributes the longest list of opening lines from their favorite memoirs. Extra credit if you tell us what you learn about yourself or your favorite books from doing the exercise! Deadline for submissions is Friday night, midnight, July 1, 2011.

Shirley’s Top Ten Memoirs

“Which memoirs do you like best?”

That’s the most frequently asked question when someone hears about this blog. Having now read at least 100 memoirs, I am ready to offer my own top ten list for your inspection. The ten books fall into three categories:

Memoirs written before the current trend–books that first drew me to the genre:

Girls who Dream Big and Get Out of Dodge

Spiritual Awakenings

What do I look for in memoir? A voice that sings even through desperate times, a transcendent voice, a voice at once unique and yet connected to a community and a place, especially rural landscapes.

What can you add or subtract from this description for your own personal hermeneutic?

Mary Karr’s Secret–Humility and Confidence–Interview in the Paris Review

At October 29, 2010
By shirleyhs
In Lists, Personal Reflections, Top Ten Lists
4

Shirley H. Showalter and Mary Karr at Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing

Mary Karr has done it again. Maybe I should say that Amanda Fortini has done it–meaning that the interview Fortini published in The Paris Review with Karr as a subject is wonderful. If you haven’t read any of Karr’s poetry or her three memoirs, you will want to do so after reading the interview. If you have read lots of Karr, you will find the interview doubly gratifying. It will fill in some cracks for you in her published memories.

Karr comes across as both totally honest in her colorfully Texan way and also as a bit reticent. Her new-found faith in God has transformed the way she writes. She prays before she writes each day. Ironically, this submission to God’s will in writing also strengthens her joy as she reports on her latest triumphs in the literary world. She would sound like a braggart online if she were only speaking from the ego. Instead, she is cheerleading for the “team”–God the Author, herself as author, and her readers as community.

On Facebook (you can sign up to be a fan here) she loves to share her triumphs with her fans. On Twitter (you can follow here) her inimitable voice comes through as well (check out her August tweets).

One of the most frequently visited posts among the 215 archived here is the Top Ten List (it’s really eleven) from another interview Mary gave on NPR. My review of her latest memoir Lit is here. If you aspire to greatness in memoir, you will want to read all these books plus Mary’s own. I’m still working on the list myself.

What do you find most attractive about Mary, the Paris Review interview, the Facebook and Twitter pages, or the Top Ten List? Fans and critics are both welcome here!

Memoirs for High School Students: Do You Have a Suggestion or List?

Left to right--Tina, Shirley, Mary, Gloria

Last weekend three of my college friends and I met in the beautiful home of my friend Tina in Virginia. We first spied each other in September, 1966, when we played hookey from college orientation sessions and walked to the local pizza shop instead. We have remained in each other’s lives ever since.

Tina is a reading specialist, guidance counselor, and librarian. She always wants us to bring book suggestions when we meet. She asked for a great list of memoirs suitable for high school students. I shared the list Mary Karr suggested and picked out Black Like Me and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings for special commendation to that age group.

It would be great to hear from you on this subject. What memoirs did you you read when you were young? Have any of them made a life-long impression on you? If you are a teacher or parent, which memoirs have elicited great conversation with young people?

Top Ten Memoir List from Mary Karr

As you know, the goal of this blog is self-education in public. I am trying to learn about memoir by reading and reviewing great examples of the genre, books about the genre, and offering some mini-memoir on the way. When readers search for good memoir reading lists, I want them to find this blog. What better way to create that list than to construct it from the best memoir writers themselves! Here are the ones Mary Karr mentioned as her own models for memoir when she talked with Barbara DeMarco-Barrett on a podcast I highly recommend.

I created a simple list first out of the books Mary Karr mentioned in the podcast. Then below the list you will find direct links to Amazon.com so that you can explore reviews or order them just by clicking. Sorry that the layout is a little confusing–still learning how to insert images correctly!