Memoir and Autobiography in Freshman Composition

Although first-year composition classes are not comprised entirely of 18-year-old

freshman, the majority of students are both young and new to college. The composition teacher,

then, must rise to the occasion and simultaneously introduce these students to college writing,

and introduce them to the college classroom, assuage their fears of higher-level writing, and, at

some level, ensure that the students feel secure and comfortable enough to take the risk and

attempt to write in new ways. Memoir and Autobiography (for the purposes of this paper, I will

be using these terms interchangeably) present an ideal way of helping the teacher accomplish

these goals. As the first assignment in first-year composition classes, autobiographical writing

allows students to ease their way into writing using their own experiences. They are equipped,

even as they enter the college classroom for the first time, with the tools needed to write memoir.

This assignment, as research suggests, leaves students feeling confident, connected to their

classmates and teacher, and primed to tackle the more traditional, “academic” papers that

College English classes will, inevitably, require.

The Theoretical Rationale for Memoir

Almost every article I encountered arguing for the inclusion of memoir in the freshman

composition class begins with a fervent argument against naysayers, those who claim that

memoir is not “academic” enough. Each article confronts this argument differently, but the

common thread amongst these scholars’ defenses seems to be that memoir allows students to

write critically about, or to analyze, their own experiences. However, each scholar adds his or

her own unique argument in support of memoir. In his seminal 1958 piece, “The Autobiography

as Creative Writing,” Ronald Cutler, first and foremost, argues for the use of autobiography in

freshman composition classes because, he insists, freshman are uprooted from their homes and

need the catharsis autobiography provides. Critic Sandra Wyngaard agrees, and also notes that

during this time of transition, a preoccupation with the self develops in freshman. Teacher must,

she stresses, take advantage of this preoccupation. Both Cutler and Wyngaard agree, though, that

autobiography’s most salient byproduct is the impetus it provides for students to think critically

about the “self.” Students begin to reflect on their personalities as a “process” rather than an

immobile, congenital structure.

Megan Brown takes this discussion of the “self” further in her article, “The Memoir as

Provocation: A Case for ‘Me Studies’ in Undergraduate Classes.” She accepts Cutler’s

proposition that students will recognize the construction of the self as a given, and suggests that

memoir also encourages students to question and critique American culture, a culture intensely

focused on the “self.” Students will start to problematize and analyze the ways identities – and

“life stories” for the purposes of the class – are commodified and consumed in American culture.

Brown posits that this process of analysis will ultimately prompt students to become critical of

other texts, that the experience of analyzing and critiquing their own life will leave with them a

desire to analyze, to look deeper.

Brown’s article starts to take a practical turn, but a significant subset of articles on this

subject focus almost exclusively on autobiography’s ability to teach students concrete skills that

will transfer to other types of writing. In his article on Autobiography in composition classes,

Greg Barton represents the beginning of the move – within the context of the texts included in

my annotated bibliography – toward practical application. He discusses the process by which

students investigate the “backwaters” – their seemingly meaningless memories – and find ways

to ascribe new meaning onto these memories. But this process is not complete with the discovery

or creation of new meaning; the student must translate this. They are compelled to articulate this

process and this new meaning in writing. Barton hints that students must make deliberate

rhetorical choices, and that they are more likely to make effective rhetorical choices because they

are, after all, trying to communicate their own life experiences.

Whereas Barton only hints at rhetoric’s prominent place in autobiography, critic Margaret

Byrd Boegeman illustrates its distinct role in detail. Boegeman balks at the suggestion that

narrative is a less rigorous form of writing than academic analysis. She asserts that “there are

many rhetorical devices at work: thematic unity, Aristotelian wholeness, balance, proportion, and

selectivity” (664). Robert L Root takes the idea that students must make rhetorical choices while

writing autobiography further by suggesting that students must first “draft” their experiences, but

they must also learn to re-draft them, to revise them, to sharpen their writing, to make use of

more rhetorical strategies with each revision.

While Barton, Boegeman, and Root highlight the practical uses of memoir insofar as it

results in concrete improvement of student writing, Alys Culhane provides a practical way of

bringing these changes about. In her article, “Memory, Memoir, and Memorabilia: A Generative

Exercise,” Culhane explores the connection between memory and memorabilia. She proposes a

course in which memorabilia is used to trigger memories, the “most important” part of the

process. Similarly, Sandra Wyngaard details an activity in which students create a “memento

box,” a shoebox of things that are of importance to them. Similarly, in her article on teaching

memoir, Carolyn Kraus advises students to “search outside of themselves for material,” and

recommends the use of documents (547). This brings in a component of research, but also draws

out a story. In Kraus’, Culhane’s, and Wyngaard’s models, students must explore the meaning

behind each object and participate in class-wide workshops. The discussion between students on

the significance of each student’s object(s) and of the memories associated with these objects

offer more possibilities for the memoir itself and creates a unified classroom.

The classroom remains largely overlooked in the majority of articles I annotated. Culhane

touches on its importance, but only as a kind of afterthought. However, both the physical space –

the classroom itself – and the dynamics, or the relationships that form within the space, must be

considered. These are practical concerns, perhaps the most practical in that this is the area the

teacher has the most control over. However, the only critic who fleshes out the importance of the

actual, physical classroom is Wyngaard. This may be because she focuses on high school

freshman. This distinction is important because it reveals a way of thinking about children as

students– we tend to think of children as both “selves” and bodies, as embodied selves – that

differs from the way we think of adults, or more specifically, adults as students. However, I

argue that Wyngaard’s attention to bodies and physical space is important, and that teachers and

pedagogical theorists must think of college students as both a mind to be shaped, taught,

explored, and a physical body, which should be comfortable, and which should be allowed

movement and freedom. Wyngaard allows physical movement in her classroom by placing her

students’ memento boxes at different places around the classroom, thereby allowing her students

to get up and move around, but also to interact with and to feel the objects. Wyngaard does not

ignore the importance of tactile exploration, and neither should teachers of college English.

While the physical classroom is largely disregarded, the classroom as a more abstract,

less physical space of connection is at the center of several articles on memoir and composition.

Rebecca Ruppert Johnson writes that autobiography helps students not only to gain an

understanding of themselves, but also of their classmates. The workshop model, which Ruppert

suggests employing in freshman composition, places students and teacher in the place of the

listener. This, she argues, levels the playing field; students and teacher become equal and

develop a sense of community and a sense of respect for one another.

Amy Kass, in her article “Who am I? Autobiography and American Identity,” extends the

abstract classroom space. She begins by pointing out, as others have, that autobiography spurs a

connection between students and teachers, but she goes further, arguing that the writing of

autobiography points one’s perspective beyond oneself and one’s classmates and onto the larger

world. In order to think about oneself, Kass observes, one must think about “oneself in relation

to others” (94). The students position themselves in relation to their family, their friends, but also

their culture, their beliefs, their nation, et cetera. They connect, in essence, to the larger human

experience.

In the course of these articles and chapters on Autobiography and Memoir in freshman

composition, scholars and critics point to its myriad of benefits. Students look inward; they

search their memories for meaning. Students discover and create new meanings for their

experiences, but they also recognize and analyze the changing, fluid nature of the “self.”

Students become suspicious of discourses that neatly package, commodify, and distribute the

“self.” Students must find new, rhetorically effective ways of communicating these thoughts. All

the while, students connect with each other through workshop and “object-centered” writing

activities. And, perhaps without realizing it, students look outward and begin to make

connections with the larger world. In learning about themselves, they learn about others, and

come a step closer to becoming tolerant, empathetic, and engaged citizens.