Research Proposal
A Foreigner Unto Myself—What Memoir, Autobiography, and Second Language
Acquisition Reveal about the Self
Susan Lynch
BIS390
Instructor: Andrea Zach Rutan
4/17/2013
A Foreigner Unto Myself—What Memoir, Autobiography, and Second Language
Acquisition Reveal about the Self
Project Description
An autobiography is written after a life of accomplishment or notoriety in order to
both validate and detail a personal journey. The memoir is also written with a similar goal
in mind, and both set out intent on truthful, if artificially constructed, narrative that
explores and examines the person that came to be. Learning to speak a second language
—for me it was Spanish—is also a type of journey, one that engages both memory and
writing.
The distinction between the three is neither small nor large. Memoir and
autobiography might have comparable elements; however, what sets memoir apart,
according to Dawn Latta Kirby and Dan Kirby, authors of “Contemporary Memoir: A
21st-Century Genre Ideal for Teens,” is its noticeable “first-person voice” and a flexibility
to be written by anyone, of any age, who wants to define a specific chapter of his or her
life. Furthermore, the authors write, a well-written memoir becomes a powerful story
when it reflects the “honest unfolding of human struggles and triumphs from which
important lessons are learned” (22-23).
What entwines all three is introspective analysis that engages the memory and in
that way allows a new voice to emerge. But what happens when memory and writing
about it translate into something different, foreign perhaps? Is the autobiographer and
memoirist then a deliberate immigrant from the past? After all, the point of writing an
autobiography or memoir is to document the transformation of a journey. But who can
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really determine if the translation from past to present is exact when time and language
can be interpreted in different ways?
In order to explore this idea, and complete the BIS program, my final creative
project will be to write a series of essays, partially in Spanish, which examine how the
past and present are translated, created, and re-created in self-reflective writing. Using
bestselling memoirs, specific autobiographies, and a select group of non-fiction books
(including English- and Spanish- language texts) for research, I will examine how each
author distinguishes his or her subject’s old and new selves through voice and language
in order to show how past and present selves are transformed.
The influence that memoir and autobiography have on the reader is not lost on the
authors who have written one or the other. Frank McCourt once said that he was only
able to realize “the significance of my own insignificant life”1 after writing his memoir,
and Mexican-American scholar and author Richard Rodriguez hoped that his
autobiography, Hunger of Memory, would have the power “to resonate with significance
for other lives” (7). These two authors were able to capture and translate the
transformation of a past self into a new self through memoir and autobiographical
writing. My final project essays will interlace past memories and Spanish, the language I
learned as an adult, to explore the notion that memoir, autobiography and second-
language acquisition are tools that helped me discover and also become the person I was
and person I am now.
1 Frank Mcourt, as quoted in William Grimes’s article, “Frank McCourt, Whose Irish Childhood Illuminated His Prose, Is Dead at 78.” New York Times 19, July, 2009. New York ed. A17. Print.
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Literature Review
The purpose of my research is to explore the narrative journey of personal
transformation in memoir and autobiography in relation to another kind of journey—
learning a foreign language. All three engage memory and thoughtful introspection in
order to translate the past into the present with a distinctive voice.
The memoir is a relatively new genre of creative non-fiction, unless you consider
Saint Augustine’s Confessions, written between AD 397 and AD 398, to be the first of its
kind. Confessions has been called both autobiography and memoir, because Augustine
writes about himself and his transformation from a rowdy teen and brazen young man
into to contemplative, serious and devout Christian. Augustine’s autobiography is the
story of how he found his place in the world; he wrote that one should not only speak to
God but also to the reader because “to hear you speaking about oneself is to know
oneself” (180).
Transformation in memoir and autobiography not only captures a span of time but
the emotional distance in between that can lead to healing. A review of Doctor Leslie
Master’s memoir, Naked: This is My Story, This is My Song, appeared in 2010 in the
Clarion Reviews and described how the act of writing (a memoir) not only helped
Masters deal with the physical pain related to injuries she sustained in a car accident but
writing also helped to heal her emotional pain. A “passionate storyteller” is one who is
able to inspire, inform, encourage, and respect “the transformative healing power of a
story.” Masters believes that when telling a personal story from a place of honesty and
openness, the words take on qualities that not only have the power to restore, but an
ability to inform. When a writer exposes personal flaws and fears “with courage,”
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believes Masters, they hold the key to their own recovery and create a compassionate
kinship with the person who listens [the reader].
Exploiting personal flaws or demons in memoir and autobiography, if not crafted
courageously, might alter the characteristic of the genres and turn them into what Leigh
Gilmore, author of the “American Neoconfessional: Memoir, Self-help, and Redemption
on Oprah’s Couch,” calls the “neoconfessional” (657). Her article focuses on James
Frey's book “A Million Little Pieces” which had been repeatedly rejected by publishers
until Frey added : A Memoir after the title. That two-word phrase turned the narrative into
a bestseller and the author was invited on The Oprah Show. Frey’s memoir, Gilmore
states, fits the “redemption narrative” of a protagonist “who overcomes adversity,” except
Frey’s account of his addiction and arrests had been greatly exaggerated and in some
cases, never happened. He confessed again, not in another memoir but on another visit to
The Oprah Show. Although Frey set out to write a narrative based loosely on facts, his
embellishments created a person he pretended to know not a story of redemption or
transformation.
Using documentation to substantiate evidence helps to support a truthful personal
transformation. But what is the real truth in memoir and autobiography? Carolyn Kraus,
author of the essay “Proof of Life: Memoir, Truth, and Documentary Evidence,” could
not remember the exact narrative that took place between her and the father—a man she
had met twice in her life—or if on those two occasions if it was raining or sunny. Kraus
is adamant about documentation; if she had not saved the letters her father had written
her throughout the years (diatribes against society) she would not have been able to prove
that her father had in fact a brief corresponded with Albert Einstein (255). No matter
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what embellishments Krause adds to her manuscript, her work will never be exposed as a
untrue because she possesses “frail private documents,” and “dusty public-records” to
identify the stranger that was her father (268). Documents, diaries, journals, and letters
are just some of the souvenirs that validate our lived experiences and not only create a
database of evidence related to our past identity but can be a source of research that helps
a writer analyze his or her character(s).
Almost all of the books, essays, and articles I have read in relation to my project
proposal speak of the memoirist and autobiographer’s character development in relation
to his or her voice and how that identifying voice is conveyed through the narrative.
Shannon Forbes, who studied the different narrative voices in Frank McCourt’s memoir
Angela’s Ashes says that the way McCourt uses those voices “absolves” the need for
actual documentation while enabling him to tell a truthful story for two reasons: first,
because memoir in its intrinsic nature “suggests subjectivity rather than objectivity” in
the way that autobiography does not (1), and second, because “one cannot argue against
the form or shape events may take in one’s memory (2). Forbes analyzes McCourt's texts
using a technique that Judith Butler2 calls her “theory of performative identity” (2). The
“complicated linguistic structures” used by McCourt in his narrative establishes his all
the reader needs to know about his character's identity. For example, it would be
impossible for McCourt to know the exact moment of his conception however when he
writes about it, he uses the “author as innocent child” voice, thereby clarifying the source
of the narrative. McCourt uses the same technique when he criticizes the Catholic Church
using “the unbiased chronicler” voice, and so on, managing multiple voices and language
2 Judith Butler is an author, philosopher and professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at University of California Berkeley.
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that identify his characters stages of life. Language, when used to identity stages of life
and cultural identity, is evident in all prose. Gail Bollin explains, in her 2001 review of
Luis Gabriel Aguilera’s memoir Gabriel’s Fire: A Memoir appearing in Multicultural
Education, that the specific “grammatical English” Aguilera uses to link language and
culture evokes an “accurate reflection” and “brilliantly illustrates” how words define not
just our experiences but also our environments.
Robert Langbaum’s essay, “Autobiography and Myth in Out of Africa” suggests
that Isak Dinesen’s novel Out of Africa is not “just another memoir of an interesting life.”
Although it was written after Dinesen left Africa, Langbaum argues that Dinesen would
not have been able to see Africa in the same light had she written the book while she was
there. Because Dinesen understands how to capture the emotional and physical places of
Africa using a distinguished tone, she is able “to show that life has significance” and it is
her recollections and how she voices them that ultimately justify the story.
Memoir and autobiography not only capture a personal moment and place in time
a narrative but according to Jennifer Jensen Wallach’s dissertation abstract,
“Remembering Jim Crow: The Literary Memoir as Historical Source Material” they also
serve as documentation for what was happening historically at the time of the narrative.
Although the focus of the memory is still addressed from a single point of view, the
perspective from which it is narrated offers “the potential to greatly enhance our
historical understanding.” Wallach believes that self-reflective writing not only speaks to
personal transformation but historical transformation as well and she bases her research
on memoirs written by “African Americans, by whites, by men, by women, and by
individuals with various points of views.”
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Historic transformation can also be identified by the language and tone a writer
uses in their narrative. Richard Teleky calls that voice the language of identity. In his
essay “Entering the Silence”: Voice, Ethnicity, and the Pedagogy of Creative Writing, he
says language and voice—even the silent voice, is “part of the transformative act” (207).
Teleky’s explains the relationship of language to identity is the validating component—
the key that helps the author understand what made them who they are. The
“transformative relation of silence to language and identity” is especially noticeable in
memoir and autobiography written by bilingual speakers in order to describe their
experiences learning to speak English in the United States. Teleky wonders why so many
immigrant children grow up to be writers and thinks writing is a coping mechanism to
deal with shame, shyness, and uncertainty that comes with being different and living in
the shadows of the “powerful majority culture” (210). The pressure to transform language
and culture involves decisions about identity; who are you when you speak the language
of another culture? Teleky cites authors who choose language as an agent of change
believing it solves “the confusion of silence with self-discovery” (214).
The current boom in creative-writing classes in colleges and universities is also
noted in Teleky’s essay. He says it is a telling sign that writing is one way to discover
one’s identity and mentions the importance of educators as the “agents of transformation”
(214). Some students might think they have little to say about themselves, but writing
about one’s childhood, says Teleky, is “such a potent subject because it can contain
something for everyone” and the compulsion to write a memoir—citing works published
by D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Wolff, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway—is “crucial to
twentieth-century fiction” (215).
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Who we are has everything to do with our language. It connects us to our culture
like a fetus to its mother. Cecilia Espinosa was born in Ecuador and has a long track
record working in the field of bilingual education. Her 2006 essay “Finding Memorable
Moments: Images and Identities in Autobiographical Writing” appearing in Language
Arts is focused is on the “issues of literacy and biliteracy” and the links between
creativity and literacy. She works with teachers and leads writing seminars, in both
Spanish and English, to help students learn to show rather than tell a story as a technique
to identity the voice in their narratives. Espinosa says the success of any creative writing
program, not only for Spanish speaking students, provides the practice and opportunity
“to tell their stories out loud, [and] learn to see where the good stories hide.” Like similar
approaches that other teachers take to introducing memoir study, Espinosa begins with a
notebook and encourages her students to share stories orally in class. Espinosa believes
that “second language learners” need to be affirmed and that their stories matter. The
memoirs Espinosa uses in her creative writing programs not only identify bilingual
speakers, they are age-specific in order to show how other writers captured their “fears,
and other universal themes.” She reiterates, in Spanish, the words of a colleague who tells
her class:
Sandra Cisneros3 escribe mucho sobre su vida.
Ella tiene una vida interesante, pero la razón por la cual
sus historias son únicas es porque ella escribe sobre
cosas que no parecen tan importantes, pero para ella sí
3 Sandra Cisneros is the author of The House on Mango Street among others. She is the founder of two foundations that serve writers and is the organizer of the Latino MacArthur Fellows. She has been honored with numerous awards including the MacArthur Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Texas Medal of the Arts. She has been writing for more than 45 years, publishing for more than 35, and earning her living by her pen for more than 18 years. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages and published internationally. www.sandracisneros.com
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son cosas importante. Ustedes van a ver que lo que ella
escribió es un pedacito de su vida, no un gran viaje o algo
así.4
The constant thread that runs through memoir and autobiography is the notion
everyone one of us has a unique story to tell because it is our story to tell. Author and
teacher, Amy Arnberg also noticed how enrapt her students became in her sixth-grade
class’s yearlong memoir study writing class. Even the most obstinate student, she notes in
her article, “A Study of Memoir,” who hated to write became caught up in the assignment
after listening to other students share their memories from childhood. Arnberg saw that
the more students shared, the less intimidated they became about writing and providing
each other with respectful feedback. They also learned how to listen to each other and
began to see the significance in the simple personal life event that occurred in each
other’s lives.
Author Megan Brown, who is an assistant professor of English at Drake
University, says she was never compelled to write or teach “personal writing” but,
because of the demand for a creative writing program at her university, along with a
teaching offer, she came to learn that self-reflective writing gave her students the tools to
explore, investigate, and find their creative voice. In her essay “The Memoir as
Provocation: A Case for “Me Studies” in Undergraduate Classes,” Brown notes that the
love of reading, and language, what was guided many of her students toward creative
writing. Brown suggests that for any writer, not just her students, the easiest subject to
write about is oneself. Our life, she states, is a narrative; we are who we are because of
4 Translation: “Sandra Cisneros writes a lot about her life. She has an interesting life, but what is unique about her stories is that she writes about things that don’t seem important, but for her these are important things. You are going to see how what she chose to write about is a little piece of her life, not a huge trip or anything like that.”
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our experiences and that makes our experiences remarkable.
Finding one’s own significance and the voice in which to write about it is not a
self-centered pursuit. Frank McCourt realized it, and so did Mexican-American author
Richard Rodriguez when he wrote his autobiography Hunger of Memory. Rodriguez
hoped that by translating his life through the lens of introspective writing his challenges
with issues surrounding language and cultural identity would “resonate” with others.
Speaking only Spanish at home—his family’s “private” language—he entered school to
learn that his native language and Mexican identity would be replaced with English and
the culture that went with it. But his indigenous features betrayed his new speaking voice
and eventually his beloved Spanish words, which he was free to think with, no longer felt
right on his tongue. His first language and identity had become foreign.
If Rodriguez had been born California within the past ten years, instead of 1944,
and if he had Megan Brown or Amy Arnberg for teachers, instead of las monas de la
escuela Catolica,5 perhaps he would still have felt guilt over his diminished Spanish
voice but, he might also have found an abundance of support and encouragement to write,
what some critics call memoir and autobiography, self-indulgent prose. Those critics
though, do not see what authors and teachers Brown and Arnberg have witnessed inside
their classrooms. From their perspective, Brown and Arnberg have commented that their
student’s “reading, and critical thinking” abilities had greatly improved. Authors Kirby
and Kirby also noted it in their essay concluding that memoir study is more than creative
writing—it is also an educational tool.
What memoir can teach, writes Caroline M. Calvillo in her essay “Memoir and
Autobiography: Pathways to Examining the Multicultural Self,” is that when it comes to
5 Catholic school nuns.
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understanding one’s culture, identity, and language, we are the “intimate insider.”
Writing memoir and autobiography is one way to discover how the self, and the
multicultural self, emerges and through writing about ourselves, we can examine all of
our identities and begin a dialogue for understanding.
Melissa Karin Cheeseman’s dissertation, “Women’s Lives: Memoir Writing and
the Emerging Self,” explores two specific memoirs,6 written by women, to see how each
author’s “inner voice” relates to the “exterior” self. Cheeseman writes that her motivation
for choosing those particular texts, quoting one of the author’s points, is that memoir (and
autobiography and non-fiction writing) is a way to see the world from someone else’s
viewpoint. To metaphorically walk in someone else’s shoes, adds Cheeseman, can be
“deeply satisfying” (80).
Comparative Analysis
A tale of transformation—the personal journey from the past to the present—
requires memories and language in order to describe what transpired. Creative writing,
especially memoir, is a new sub-genre of non-fiction where a writer narrates a personal
story that describes how they came to understand their new place and significance in the
world. Using a best-selling memoir, an autobiography, and one or two works of non-
fiction, I will compare how creative writing and language engage memory and act as a
method of transformation in non-fiction prose.
Creative writing and language are the same because—they are forms of 6 The Road from Coorain, written by Jill Ker Conway, and An American Childhood written by Annie Dillard.
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communication, they help to identify culture and social standing, they both are vehicles
for expressions and information, they inform and validate each other? Creative writing
and language aren’t always spoken to be heard?
Conclusion
Memoirist and autobiographers write, in English and in Spanish, about the past
person they once were in order to discover the person they have become. Examining
one’s past in order to inform the present is an ancient practice. Saint Augustine spent his
lifetime reflecting on his decision in order to communicate not just a story but higher
understanding. Augustine’s memoir is typically introduced in an undergraduate Religion
class instead of a Literature class. Maria del Carmen Quintero Aguiló, a student at the
University of Puerto Rico, writes in her masters thesis paper, “From Theory to Practice:
Mending the Gap between Truth and Memoir,” that memoir and autobiography are very
important components in Literature study today. As far back as Chaucer’s7 The
Canturbery Tales—more than seven-hundred years after Augustine’s Confessions—we
still possess an innate “urge to tell our story; for relief, for survival, or for merely
recording one’s existence on earth (1).
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7 Geoffrey Chaucer was a Middle Ages poet, philosopher, alchemist, astronmer, and author.
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