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How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide

Zining Mok | January 29, 2024 | 32 Comments

If you’ve thought about putting your life to the page, you may have wondered how to write a memoir. We start the road to writing a memoir when we realize that a story in our lives demands to be told. As Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

How to write a memoir? At first glance, it looks easy enough—easier, in any case, than writing fiction. After all, there is no need to make up a story or characters, and the protagonist is none other than you.

Still, memoir writing carries its own unique challenges, as well as unique possibilities that only come from telling your own true story. Let’s dive into how to write a memoir by looking closely at the craft of memoir writing, starting with a key question: exactly what is a memoir?

How to Write a Memoir: Contents

What is a Memoir?

Memoir vs Autobiography

Memoir Examples

Short memoir examples.

How to Write a Memoir: A Step-by-Step Guide

A memoir is a branch of creative nonfiction , a genre defined by the writer Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.” The etymology of the word “memoir,” which comes to us from the French, tells us of the human urge to put experience to paper, to remember. Indeed, a memoir is “ something written to be kept in mind .”

A memoir is defined by Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.”

For a piece of writing to be called a memoir, it has to be:

Nonfictional
Based on the raw material of your life and your memories
Written from your personal perspective

At this point, memoirs are beginning to sound an awful lot like autobiographies. However, a quick comparison of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love , and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , for example, tells us that memoirs and autobiographies could not be more distinct.

Next, let’s look at the characteristics of a memoir and what sets memoirs and autobiographies apart. Discussing memoir vs. autobiography will not only reveal crucial insights into the process of writing a memoir, but also help us to refine our answer to the question, “What is a memoir?”

Memoir vs. Autobiography

While both use personal life as writing material, there are five key differences between memoir and autobiography:

1. Structure

Since autobiographies tell the comprehensive story of one’s life, they are more or less chronological. writing a memoir, however, involves carefully curating a list of personal experiences to serve a larger idea or story, such as grief, coming-of-age, and self-discovery. As such, memoirs do not have to unfold in chronological order.

While autobiographies attempt to provide a comprehensive account, memoirs focus only on specific periods in the writer’s life. The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

Autobiographies prioritize events; memoirs prioritize the writer’s personal experience of those events. Experience includes not just the event you might have undergone, but also your feelings, thoughts, and reflections. Memoir’s insistence on experience allows the writer to go beyond the expectations of formal writing. This means that memoirists can also use fiction-writing techniques , such as scene-setting and dialogue , to capture their stories with flair.

4. Philosophy

Another key difference between the two genres stems from the autobiography’s emphasis on facts and the memoir’s reliance on memory. Due to memory’s unreliability, memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth. In addition, memoir writers often work the fallibility of memory into the narrative itself by directly questioning the accuracy of their own memories.

Memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth.

5. Audience

While readers pick up autobiographies to learn about prominent individuals, they read memoirs to experience a story built around specific themes . Memoirs, as such, tend to be more relatable, personal, and intimate. Really, what this means is that memoirs can be written by anybody!

Ready to be inspired yet? Let’s now turn to some memoir examples that have received widespread recognition and captured our imaginations!

If you’re looking to lose yourself in a book, the following memoir examples are great places to begin:

The Year of Magical Thinking , which chronicles Joan Didion’s year of mourning her husband’s death, is certainly one of the most powerful books on grief. Written in two short months, Didion’s prose is urgent yet lucid, compelling from the first page to the last. A few years later, the writer would publish Blue Nights , another devastating account of grief, only this time she would be mourning her daughter.
Patti Smith’s Just Kids is a classic coming-of-age memoir that follows the author’s move to New York and her romance and friendship with the artist Robert Maplethorpe. In its pages, Smith captures the energy of downtown New York in the late sixties and seventies effortlessly.
When Breath Becomes Air begins when Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Exquisite and poignant, this memoir grapples with some of the most difficult human experiences, including fatherhood, mortality, and the search for meaning.
A memoir of relationship abuse, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is candid and innovative in form. Machado writes about thorny and turbulent subjects with clarity, even wit. While intensely personal, In the Dream House is also one of most insightful pieces of cultural criticism.
Twenty-five years after leaving for Canada, Michael Ondaatje returns to his native Sri Lanka to sort out his family’s past. The result is Running in the Family , the writer’s dazzling attempt to reconstruct fragments of experiences and family legends into a portrait of his parents’ and grandparents’ lives. (Importantly, Running in the Family was sold to readers as a fictional memoir; its explicit acknowledgement of fictionalization prevented it from encountering the kind of backlash that James Frey would receive for fabricating key facts in A Million Little Pieces , which he had sold as a memoir . )
Of the many memoirs published in recent years, Tara Westover’s Educated is perhaps one of the most internationally-recognized. A story about the struggle for self-determination, Educated recounts the writer’s childhood in a survivalist family and her subsequent attempts to make a life for herself. All in all, powerful, thought-provoking, and near impossible to put down.

While book-length memoirs are engaging reads, the prospect of writing a whole book can be intimidating. Fortunately, there are plenty of short, essay-length memoir examples that are just as compelling.

While memoirists often write book-length works, you might also consider writing a memoir that’s essay-length. Here are some short memoir examples that tell complete, lived stories, in far fewer words:

“ The Book of My Life ” offers a portrait of a professor that the writer, Aleksandar Hemon, once had as a child in communist Sarajevo. This memoir was collected into Hemon’s The Book of My Lives , a collection of essays about the writer’s personal history in wartime Yugoslavia and subsequent move to the US.
“The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.” So begins Cheryl Strayed’s “ The Love of My Life ,” an essay that the writer eventually expanded into the best-selling memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail .
In “ What We Hunger For ,” Roxane Gay weaves personal experience and a discussion of The Hunger Games into a powerful meditation on strength, trauma, and hope. “What We Hunger For” can also be found in Gay’s essay collection, Bad Feminist .
A humorous memoir structured around David Sedaris and his family’s memories of pets, “ The Youth in Asia ” is ultimately a story about grief, mortality and loss. This essay is excerpted from the memoir Me Talk Pretty One Day , and a recorded version can be found here .

So far, we’ve 1) answered the question “What is a memoir?” 2) discussed differences between memoirs vs. autobiographies, 3) taken a closer look at book- and essay-length memoir examples. Next, we’ll turn the question of how to write a memoir.

How to Write a Memoir: A-Step-by-Step Guide

1. how to write a memoir: generate memoir ideas.

how to start a memoir? As with anything, starting is the hardest. If you’ve yet to decide what to write about, check out the “ I Remember ” writing prompt. Inspired by Joe Brainard’s memoir I Remember , this prompt is a great way to generate a list of memories. From there, choose one memory that feels the most emotionally charged and begin writing your memoir. It’s that simple! If you’re in need of more prompts, our Facebook group is also a great resource.

2. How to Write a Memoir: Begin drafting

My most effective advice is to resist the urge to start from “the beginning.” Instead, begin with the event that you can’t stop thinking about, or with the detail that, for some reason, just sticks. The key to drafting is gaining momentum . Beginning with an emotionally charged event or detail gives us the drive we need to start writing.

3. How to Write a Memoir: Aim for a “ shitty first draft ”

Now that you have momentum, maintain it. Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write. It can also create self-doubt and writers’ block. Remember that most, if not all, writers, no matter how famous, write shitty first drafts.

Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write.

4. How to Write a Memoir: Set your draft aside

Once you have a first draft, set it aside and fight the urge to read it for at least a week. Stephen King recommends sticking first drafts in your drawer for at least six weeks. This period allows writers to develop the critical distance we need to revise and edit the draft that we’ve worked so hard to write.

5. How to Write a Memoir: Reread your draft

While reading your draft, note what works and what doesn’t, then make a revision plan. While rereading, ask yourself:

What’s underdeveloped, and what’s superfluous.
Does the structure work?
What story are you telling?

6. How to Write a Memoir: Revise your memoir and repeat steps 4 & 5 until satisfied

Every piece of good writing is the product of a series of rigorous revisions. Depending on what kind of writer you are and how you define a draft,” you may need three, seven, or perhaps even ten drafts. There’s no “magic number” of drafts to aim for, so trust your intuition. Many writers say that a story is never, truly done; there only comes a point when they’re finished with it. If you find yourself stuck in the revision process, get a fresh pair of eyes to look at your writing.

7. How to Write a Memoir: Edit, edit, edit!

Once you’re satisfied with the story, begin to edit the finer things (e.g. language, metaphor , and details). Clean up your word choice and omit needless words , and check to make sure you haven’t made any of these common writing mistakes . Be sure to also know the difference between revising and editing —you’ll be doing both. Then, once your memoir is ready, send it out !

Learn How to Write a Memoir at Writers.com

Writing a memoir for the first time can be intimidating. But, keep in mind that anyone can learn how to write a memoir. Trust the value of your own experiences: it’s not about the stories you tell, but how you tell them. Most importantly, don’t give up!

Anyone can learn how to write a memoir.

If you’re looking for additional feedback, as well as additional instruction on how to write a memoir, check out our schedule of nonfiction classes . Now, get started writing your memoir!

32 Comments

Thank you for this website. It’s very engaging. I have been writing a memoir for over three years, somewhat haphazardly, based on the first half of my life and its encounters with ignorance (religious restrictions, alcohol, and inability to reach out for help). Three cities were involved: Boston as a youngster growing up and going to college, then Washington DC and Chicago North Shore as a married woman with four children. I am satisfied with some chapters and not with others. Editing exposes repetition and hopefully discards boring excess. Reaching for something better is always worth the struggle. I am 90, continue to be a recital pianist, a portrait painter, and a writer. Hubby has been dead for nine years. Together we lept a few of life’s chasms and I still miss him. But so far, my occupations keep my brain working fairly well, especially since I don’t smoke or drink (for the past 50 years).

Hi Mary Ellen,

It sounds like a fantastic life for a memoir! Thank you for sharing, and best of luck finishing your book. Let us know when it’s published!

Best, The writers.com Team

Hello Mary Ellen,

I am contacting you because your last name (Lavelle) is my middle name!

Being interested in genealogy I have learned that this was my great grandfathers wife’s name (Mary Lavelle), and that her family emigrated here about 1850 from County Mayo, Ireland. That is also where my fathers family came from.

Is your family background similar?

Hope to hear back from you.

Richard Lavelle Bourke

Hi Mary Ellen: Have you finished your memoir yet? I just came across your post and am seriously impressed that you are still writing. I discovered it again at age 77 and don’t know what I would do with myself if I couldn’t write. All the best to you!! Sharon [email protected]

I am up to my eyeballs with a research project and report for a non-profit. And some paid research for an international organization. But as today is my 90th birthday, it is time to retire and write a memoir.

So I would like to join a list to keep track of future courses related to memoir / creative non-fiction writing.

Hi Frederick,

Happy birthday! And happy retirement as well. I’ve added your name and email to our reminder list for memoir courses–when we post one on our calendar, we’ll send you an email.

We’ll be posting more memoir courses in the near future, likely for the months of January and February 2022. We hope to see you in one!

Very interesting and informative, I am writing memoirs from my long often adventurous and well travelled life, have had one very short story published. Your advice on several topics will be extremely helpful. I write under my schoolboy nickname Barnaby Rudge.

[…] How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide […]

I am writing my memoir from my memory when I was 5 years old and now having left my birthplace I left after graduation as a doctor I moved to UK where I have been living. In between I have spent 1 year in Canada during my training year as paediatrician. I also spent nearly 2 years with British Army in the hospital as paediatrician in Germany. I moved back to UK to work as specialist paediatrician in a very busy general hospital outside London for the next 22 years. Then I retired from NHS in 2012. I worked another 5 years in Canada until 2018. I am fully retired now

I have the whole convoluted story of my loss and horrid aftermath in my head (and heart) but have no clue WHERE, in my story to begin. In the middle of the tragedy? What led up to it? Where my life is now, post-loss, and then write back and forth? Any suggestions?

My friend Laura who referred me to this site said “Start”! I say to you “Start”!

Hi Dee, that has been a challenge for me.i dont know where to start?

What was the most painful? Embarrassing? Delicious? Unexpected? Who helped you? Who hurt you? Pick one story and let that lead you to others.

I really enjoyed this writing about memoir. I ve just finished my own about my journey out of my city then out of my country to Egypt to study, Never Say Can’t, God Can Do It. Infact memoir writing helps to live the life you are writing about again and to appreciate good people you came across during the journey. Many thanks for sharing what memoir is about.

I went to Egypt earlier this year. I aspire for my second book to document and tell the story of my travels of Africa, following the first – a memoir that led me to this post.

I am a survivor of gun violence, having witnessed my adult son being shot 13 times by police in 2014. I have struggled with writing my memoir because I have a grandson who was 18-months old at the time of the tragedy and was also present, as was his biological mother and other family members. We all struggle with PTSD because of this atrocity. My grandson’s biological mother was instrumental in what happened and I am struggling to write the story in such a way as to not cast blame – thus my dilemma in writing the memoir. My grandson was later adopted by a local family in an open adoption and is still a big part of my life. I have considered just writing it and waiting until my grandson is old enough to understand all the family dynamics that were involved. Any advice on how I might handle this challenge in writing would be much appreciated.

I decided to use a ghost writer, and I’m only part way in the process and it’s worth every penny!

Hi. I am 44 years old and have had a roller coaster life .. right as a young kid seeing his father struggle to financial hassles, facing legal battles at a young age and then health issues leading to a recent kidney transplant. I have been working on writing a memoir sharing my life story and titled it “A memoir of growth and gratitude” Is it a good idea to write a memoir and share my story with the world?

Thank you… this was very helpful. I’m writing about the troubling issues of my mental health, and how my life was seriously impacted by that. I am 68 years old.

[…] Writers.com: How to Write a Memoir […]

[…] Writers.com: “How to Write a Memoir” […]

I am so grateful that I found this site! I am inspired and encouraged to start my memoir because of the site’s content and the brave people that have posted in the comments.

Finding this site is going into my gratitude journey 🙂

We’re grateful you found us too, Nichol! 🙂

Firstly, I would like to thank you for all the info pertaining to memoirs. I believe am on the right track, am at the editing stage and really have to use an extra pair of eyes. I’m more motivated now to push it out and complete it. Thanks for the tips it was very helpful, I have a little more confidence it seeing the completion.

Well, I’m super excited to begin my memoir. It’s hard trying to rely on memories alone, but I’m going to give it a shot!

Thanks to everyone who posted comments, all of which have inspired me to get on it.

Best of luck to everyone! Jody V.

I was thrilled to find this material on How to Write A Memoir. When I briefly told someone about some of my past experiences and how I came to the United States in the company of my younger brother in a program with a curious name, I was encouraged by that person and others to write my life history.

Based on the name of that curious program through which our parents sent us to the United States so we could leave the place of our birth, and be away from potentially difficult situations in our country.

As I began to write my history I took as much time as possible to describe all the different steps that were taken. At this time – I have been working on this project for 5 years and am still moving ahead. The information I received through your material has further encouraged me to move along. I am very pleased to have found this important material. Thank you!

Wow! This is such an informative post packed with tangible guidance. I poured my heart into a book. I’ve been a professional creative for years to include as a writer, mainly in the ad game and content. No editor. I wasn’t trying to make it as an author. Looking back, I think it’s all the stuff I needed to say. Therapy. Which does not, in and of itself, make for a coherent book. The level of writing garnering praise, but the book itself was a hot mess. So, this is helpful. I really put myself out there, which I’ve done in many areas, but the crickets response really got to me this time. I bought “Educated” as you recommended. Do you have any blog posts on memoirs that have something to say to the world, finding that “something” to say? It feels like that’s theme, but perhaps something more granular. Thanks for this fantastic post. If I had the moola, I would sign up for a class. Your time is and effort is appreciated. Typos likely on comments! LOL

thanks. God bless

I am a member of the “Reprobates”, a group of seven retired Royal Air Force pilots and navigators which has stayed in intermittent touch since we first met in Germany in 1969. Four of the group (all of whom are in their late seventies or early eighties) play golf together quite frequently, and we all gather for reunions once or twice a year. About a year ago, one of the Reprobates suggested posterity might be glad to hear the stories told at these gatherings, and there have since been two professionally conducted recording sessions, one in London, and one in Tarifa, Spain. The instigator of these recordings forwarded your website to his fellow Reprobates by way of encouragement to put pen to paper. And, I, for one, have found it inspiring. It’s high time I made a start on my Memoirs, thank you.

Thank you for sharing this, Tim! Happy writing!

Hi, I’m Jo. I’m finally jumping in and writing the memoir that has been running alongside me for at least the last 5 years. I’m terrified, of what I’m not 100% sure. The story won’t leave me alone and right now is the time to start my first draft. I’m approaching half way through what nature may call natural life on Earth, mid-life sounds strange to say. It just feels like the right time to document the journey thus far – especially the last decade. It’s been a radical time for transformation, internally and externally. I’m afraid but your post and these comments have helped.

Good luck on your memoir, Jo! I’m excited to hear more.

Some Good Memoirs For High Schoolers To Read

Please Note : This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure (link) for more info.

Attention high school students, get ready to embark on an adventure through the world of memoirs! But before we dive into the pages of these captivating stories, let me ask you a question: have you ever wondered what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes? Well, that’s exactly what a memoir allows you to do. You can experience life in a different time, place, and perspective through the eyes of the author.

But don’t think for a second that these are your typical boring, dusty, textbook reads. No, no, these memoirs are full of adventure, humor, and heart. They’ll take you on a wild ride through the ups and downs of life, making you laugh, cry, and question everything in between. So, buckle up and get ready to be transported to a whole new world with some of the best memoirs out there.

Life lessons beyond the classroom: 10 must-read Memoirs for high school students that will inspire, educate, and empower

Memoirs are a powerful genre of writing that provides a glimpse into the lived experiences of an individual. Through personal anecdotes, reflections, and insights, high school students can explore their own identities and share their unique stories and short stories with others.

1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

This classic memoir is a powerful account of Maya Angelou’s childhood in the South during the 1930s and 1940s. The book explores issues of race, identity, and trauma in a powerful and poetic way. Angelou’s writing is both lyrical and honest, and her story is a poignant reminder of the struggles faced by African Americans during the Jim Crow era.

The book is a great choice for high school students who are interested in exploring themes of social justice and self-discovery and can spark important discussions about race and inequality in America.

2. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

“The Glass Castle” is a coming-of-age memoir that follows the author’s unconventional upbringing with her bohemian parents. Walls’ story is a poignant and often humorous account of resilience and the power of the human spirit.

The book explores themes of family, identity, and the importance of overcoming adversity. It is a great choice for high school students who are trying to navigate their own challenges and find inspiration in the stories of others.

3. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

This graphic novel memoir tells the story of Marjane Satrapi’s childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Satrapi’s story is a unique and powerful perspective on Iranian history and explores the challenges faced by those growing up during a time of political turmoil.

The graphic novel format is a visually engaging way for high school students to engage with the material, and the story is both entertaining and educational. The book is also a great way to introduce students to the medium of graphic novels, which are increasingly recognized as an important form of literature.

4. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

“Born a Crime” is a humorous and insightful account of Trevor Noah’s childhood in South Africa during apartheid. The book explores issues of race, identity, and family in a way that is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

Noah’s writing is engaging and accessible, making this memoir a great choice for high school students who are looking to learn more about apartheid and its impact on South African society.

5. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

“Hillbilly Elegy” is a memoir that explores the author’s experiences growing up in a working-class family in Ohio and the challenges faced by many working-class Americans. The book is a timely and important look at the socio-economic issues facing America today and explores themes of poverty, addiction, and the importance of community.

Vance’s writing is honest and insightful, and the book can spark important conversations about social and economic inequality.

6. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

This nonfiction memoir tells the story of a woman whose cancer cells were used without her consent to create the first immortal human cell line. The book explores issues of ethics, scientific progress, and the human cost of medical research.

Skloot’s writing is engaging and accessible, and the book is a great choice for high school students who are interested in science and medical ethics.

7. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The Diary of a Young Girl is a classic memoir that is a firsthand account of life in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The book is a powerful and haunting reminder of the human cost of war and intolerance and explores themes of resilience, hope, and the importance of bearing witness to history.

The book is a great choice for high school students who are interested in history and social justice.

8. Educated by Tara Westover

Educated is a memoir that tells the story of Tara Westover’s journey from a rural Idaho upbringing to earning a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. The book explores themes of education, family, and the power of self-discovery.

Westover’s writing is powerful and evocative, and the book is a great choice for high school students who are grappling with questions about their own future and the role of education in their lives.

9. Night by Elie Wiesel

The night is a memoir that is a firsthand account of the author’s experiences during the Holocaust. The book is a haunting and powerful reminder of the human cost of war and intolerance and explores themes of resilience, hope, and the importance of bearing witness to history.

Wiesel’s writing is spare and powerful, and the book is a great choice for high school students who are interested in history and social justice.

10. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Angela’s Ashes is a memoir that tells the story of the author’s childhood in poverty-stricken Ireland. The book explores themes of family, identity, and the importance of perseverance in the face of adversity.

McCourt’s writing is engaging and poignant, and the book is a great choice for high school students who are interested in exploring themes of social justice and the power of the human spirit.

What to look out for in a memoir for high schoolers?

When selecting a memoir for high schoolers, it’s important to consider a few key factors to ensure that the book is engaging and appropriate for this age group. Here are some things to look out for:

Relatable and relevant themes: High schoolers will be more likely to connect with a memoir if it covers themes that are relevant to their own lives, such as friendship, family, identity, and coming of age.
Engaging writing style: The memoir should be well-written and engaging, with a narrative that keeps the reader interested from beginning to end. It should also be accessible to high school students in terms of vocabulary and complexity.
Appropriate content: Make sure the memoir doesn’t contain content that may be too mature or graphic for high schoolers.
Cultural or historical significance: A memoir that provides insight into a specific culture or period in history can be a great way to expose high schoolers to new ideas and perspectives.
Diversity: Look for memoirs written by authors from diverse backgrounds and with diverse experiences, as this can broaden high schoolers’ understanding of the world and promote empathy and understanding.

Overall, selecting a memoir that is relevant, engaging, and appropriate for high schoolers can help foster a love of reading and encourage students to explore new ideas and perspectives.

Writing a memoir can be a transformative experience for high school students. Through the process of reflecting on their experiences and sharing their stories, students can gain a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. By developing their writing skills and cultivating their creativity, they can express themselves authentically and leave a lasting impression through their words.

Memoirs offer a valuable opportunity for high school students to connect with others and build empathy, as readers can relate to and learn from their personal anecdotes and insights. Ultimately, memoirs are a powerful genre of writing that can help students discover and share their unique voices.

Having a 10+ years of experience in teaching little budding learners, I am now working as a soft skills and IELTS trainers. Having spent my share of time with high schoolers, I understand their fears about the future. At the same time, my experience has helped me foster plenty of strategies that can make their 4 years of high school blissful. Furthermore, I have worked intensely on helping these young adults bloom into successful adults by training them for their dream colleges. Through my blogs, I intend to help parents, educators and students in making these years joyful and prosperous.

How to Teach Memoir Writing in High School: 3 Tips for Teaching Memoir Writing

A great way to get students writing in middle school or high school English class is by assigning a memoir project. In this blog post, you will learn how to teach memoir writing to your secondary ELA students.

When thinking about writing a memoir, people get nervous, especially students, as they will have to let down their walls and share a portion of their lives. Also, it is hard to remember fragments of memories because it will be a challenge to recall significant moments in their lives.

Though it is important to remind students that they do not have to share memories that will be uncomfortable to write, they can choose mundane memories like a walk to school. By writing about these small moments, students will learn how to remember and become comfortable writing the critical ones.

But before writing, teachers will need to explain the importance of senses and interviewing skills since students will need to interview various people to help them recall a memory. This post may contain affiliate links.

How to Teach Memoir Writing: 3 Tips for Teaching Memoir Writing

Teaching memoir writing: use a memoir as a mentor text.

Another discussion to bring up to students is about traumatic experiences, and it is best to take a cautious approach. The reason to talk about this is to show students that memoir writing might be tough, especially if a student chooses to write about a traumatic event. However, it is of the utmost importance that students feel safe in your classroom while writing their memoirs.

If a student isn’t comfortable opening up and sharing, it is vitally important not to push for details. Students will write and share about trauma on their own terms. That is why it is essential for teachers also to encourage students to write memoirs that don’t include any trauma.

Students must know that adult writers had difficulty writing about their experiences, like Gerda Weissmann Klein wrote about her survival in the holocaust in her memoir, All But My Life . Also, Reyna Grande wrote about her struggles of immigration in her memoir, The Distance Between Us . Grande and Klein had distinct experiences, and each experienced trauma through their experience. Writing these stories was most likely not an easy and light-hearted task.

Reminding students of that will make them feel better, for they will not feel alone. Also, tell your class that your classroom is a safe space for their writing if students choose to write about a mature theme. Another key element to consider is that students know that teachers are court-mandated reporters.

Teaching Memoir Writing: Interview Relatives

Have your students ask relatives and themselves about events with these questions:

What day was it?
What was the weather?
What was I wearing?
What was I doing, and why?

These questions will help them to make the sight of vague memories and add details about them. Besides asking questions, students can bring photos to recreate whatever happened in that picture since the images can show trips to Europe, to the beach, or parties. However, sketch notes will benefit students more, for they can draw what is in the photograph, and the image will help them recollect other details that were not in a photo. For instance, if a student had a picture of a day at the beach and remembered there was a dolphin in the water, even though it was not in the photograph, they will draw it and other images. After the students finished sketching, tell them to add a title to the top of the page.

Teaching Memoir Writing: One Sentences At A Time!

Now the students will be ready to write since they have answers to their questions, photos, and sketch notes. It is time for them to write one paragraph; however, they will add details to it. For example, one of your students may write, ‘I went to the carnival last night. It was fun even when my friends had a popcorn fight. We went on a lot of rides. My friend Claudia tried to make me eat chocolate ice cream, but I do not like that flavor.’

Then the student would add a description to their paragraphs. It will look like this with details: ‘last night, I went to the carnival, and the moon was our night light. There were many rides, and my favorite was the white one roller coaster with the rainbow lights, it made me dizzy. I never felt the wind rush towards us so fast, and heard kids shriek so loudly before. After, I watched in amusement as my friends tossed the buttery popcorn onto each other. But I had to run away from Susan, who tried to make me eat chocolate ice cream, which she knows I hate.’

Notice how adding details make a difference? Students can capture the reader! Hopefully, your students will enjoy it and will find comfort in writing their memories down.

One Comment

Am just giving my students their personal narrative assignment today. We have been using The Color of Water as a kind of mentor text–it's been great. Perfect text for teaching personal narrative. Has all the hallmarks of good narrative writing and showing vs telling, which is something we've been working on. Thanks for your suggestions; they are helpful. When it comes to memoir, yes, being cautious about trauma is especially important. High schoolers often think everything has to be intense drama, when you're right–a memoir about walking to school could be fantastic. Thanks.

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63 Best Memoir Writing Prompts To Stoke Your Ideas

You’re writing a memoir. But you’re not sure what questions or life lessons you want to focus on.

Even if only family members and friends will read the finished book, you want to make it worth their time.

This isn’t just a whimsical collection of anecdotes from your life.

You want to convey something to your readers that will stay with them.

And maybe you want your memoir’s impact to serve as your legacy — a testament to how you made a small (or large) difference.

The collection of memoir questions in this post can help you create a legacy worth sharing.

So, if you don’t already have enough ideas for a memoir, read on.

A Strong Theme

Overcoming obstacles, emotional storytelling, satisfying ending, examples of good starting sentences for a memoir , 63 memoir writing prompts , what are the primary parts of a memoir.

Though similar to autobiographies, memoirs are less chronological and more impressionable – less historical and more relatable.

Resultantly, they’re structured differently.

With that in mind, let’s look at five elements that tie a memoir together, rendering it more enjoyable.

Biographies are histories that may not hew to a cohesive theme. But memoirs focus on inspiring and enlightening experiences and events.

As such, books in the genre promote a theme or idea that binds the highlighted happenings to an overarching reflection point or lesson.

Many people are super at sniffing out insincerity, and most folks prefer candidness.

So while exact dates and logistical facts may be off in a memoir, being raw and real with emotions, revelations, and relational impacts is vital. To put it colloquially: The best personal accounts let it all hang out.

People prefer inspiring stories. They want to read about people overcoming obstacles, standing as testaments to the tenacious nature of the human spirit. Why?

Because it engenders hope. If this person was able to achieve “x,” there’s a possibility I could, too. Furthermore, people find it comforting that they’re not the only ones who’ve faced seemingly insurmountable impediments.

Readers crave emotion. And for many of the stoic masses, books, plays, television shows, and films are their primary sources of sentimentality.

Historically, the best-performing memoirs are built on emotional frameworks that resonate with readers. The goal is to touch hearts, not just heads.

In a not-so-small way, memoirs are like romance books: Readers want a “happy” ending. So close strongly. Ensure the finale touches on the book’s central themes and emotional highlights.

End it with a smile and note of encouragement, leaving the audience satisfied and optimistic.

Use the following questions as memoir writing exercises . Choose those that immediately evoke memories that have stayed with you over the years.

Group them by theme — family, career, beliefs, etc. — and address at least one question a day.

For each question, write freely for around 300 to 400 words. You can always edit it later to tighten it up or add more content.

1. What is your earliest memory?

2. What have your parents told you about your birth that was unusual?

3. How well did you get along with your siblings, if you have any?

4. Which parent were you closest to growing up and why?

5. What parent or parental figure had the biggest influence on you growing up?

6. What is your happiest childhood memory?

7. What is your saddest or most painful childhood memory?

8. Did you have good parents? How did they show their love for you?

9. What words of theirs from your childhood do you remember most, and why?

10. What do you remember most about your parents’ relationship?

11. Were your parents together, or did they live apart? Did they get along?

12. How has your relationship with your parents affected your own love relationships?

13. Who or what did you want to be when you grew up?

14. What shows or movies influenced you most during your childhood?

15. What were your favorite books to read, and how did they influence you?

16. If you grew up in a religious household, how did you see “God”?

17. How did you think “God” saw you? Who influenced those beliefs?

18. Describe your spiritual journey from adolescence to the present?

19. Who was your first best friend? How did you become friends?

20. Who was your favorite teacher in elementary school, and why?

21. Did you fit in with any social group or clique in school? Describe your social life?

22. What were your biggest learning challenges in school (academic or social)?

23. Who was your first crush, and what drew you to them? How long did it last?

24. What was your favorite subject in school, and what did you love about it?

25. What do you wish you would have learned more about growing up?

26. What did you learn about yourself in high school? What was your biggest mistake?

27. What seemed normal to you growing up that now strikes you as messed up?

28. How old were you when you first moved away from home?

29. Who gave you your first kiss? And what do you remember most about it?

30. Who was your first love ? What do you remember most about them?

31. Was there ever a time in your life when you realized you weren’t straight?

32. Describe a memorable argument you had with one of your parents? How did it end?

33. Have you lost a parent? How did it happen, and how did their death affect you?

34. What was your first real job? What do you remember most about it?

35. How did you spend the money you earned with that job?

36. At what moment in your life did you feel most loved?

37. At what moment in your life did you feel most alone?

38. What do you remember most about your high school graduation? Did it matter?

39. What’s something you’ve done that you never thought you would do?

40. What has been the greatest challenge of your life up to this point?

41. What did you learn in college that has had a powerful influence on you?

42. How has your family’s financial situation growing up influenced you?

43. How has someone’s harsh criticism of you led you to an important realization?

44. Do you consider yourself a “good person”? Why or why not?

45. Who was the first person who considered you worth standing up for?

46. If you have children, whom did you trust with them when they were babies?

47. Did you have pets growing up? Did you feel close or attached to any of them?

Final Thoughts

These memoir topics should get ideas flooding into your mind. All you have to do, then, is let them out onto the page. The more you write, the easier it will be to choose the primary focus for your memoir. And the more fun you’ll have writing it.

That’s not to say it’ll be easy to create a powerful memoir. It won’t be. But the more clarity you have about its overall mission, the more easily the words will flow.

Enjoy these memoir writing exercises. And apply the same clarity of focus during the editing process. Your readers will thank you.

6 Word Memoir Assignment and Rubric

Examples of six word memoirs--, say it in six words, six word memoirs by teens, types of point of view: the ultimate guide to first person and third person pov, 6 word memoirs.

This unit explores the memoir and writing memoirs using only six words.

Six Word Memoir Unit

Overview-- Today you will be learning the meaning of the word memoir, exploring other memoirs written by teens, and writing your own memoir,

There are activities, videos, and reading material to complete along the way, so be sure to check each added resource.

This Powerpoint introduces you to the concept of what a "memoir" is and I have modeled some of my own to demonstrate that in only 6 words, you learn a lot about a person. Be prepared to answer the questions together as we get to then on the slides.

As you view the video, "Six Word Memoirs by Teens," think about which one stood out to you and think about why. Did it have strong words, did it pull on some emotional strings, did it realate to you?

Reading Material

As you get ready to write your own 6 word memoir, refresh your writing knowledge on the difference between first person and 3rd person. Remember the memoir you are going to write will need to be in 1st person.

Examples of 6 Word Memoirs

Check out these examples of six word memoirs. See which ones stand out to you.

Six Word Memoir Practice

On this pdf file, you will practice your 6 word memoir writing.

Version History

Exploring the Power of Language with Six-Word Memoirs

Resources & Preparation
Instructional Plan
Related Resources

What do the words we write really have to say about us? In this lesson, students examine the power of word choice as they write six-word memoirs of their lives. After manipulating the language of their memoir with an interactive tool, students reflect on synonymous words that they have explored and choose the best one to use to tell the story of their lives.

Featured Resources

This interactive allows students to explore the similarities and differences among words typically considered synonyms and encourages more precision in word choice in student writing.

From Theory to Practice

In "Register and Charge: Using Synonym Maps to Explore Connotation," Darren Crovitz and Jessica A. Miller argue that students' typical understanding of the word synonym as meaning "'a word that means the same as another word'" is "at best an oversimplification and at worst a way to end thinking about what words actually signify" (49). They advocate for investigations into language and word groups to allow students to discover that "the subtlety of just how and to what extent [words are] similar makes all the difference when it comes to choosing the best word for a given purpose" (49). This lesson encourages students to explore the subtleties of shifting connotation and meaning affected by word choice.

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
9. Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

Word Matrix student interactive
Video: Six Word Memoirs by Teens
Video: Six-Word Memoirs, the book
Video: “Six Tips for Writing Six-Word Memoirs”
Computers with Internet access
Choosing the Best Word: Six-Word Memoirs

This site includes six-word memoirs written by a variety of authors on life stories. Also included are videos about the memoirs and information about Six-Word Memoir books.

On this site, students can explore memoirs and join thousands of storytellers to have a chance to be in a future book of Six-Word Memoirs.

This wiki includes six-word memoir films created by students, for students.

Preparation

Locate one or more copies of the Six-Word Memoir books . Familiarize yourself with the content within the book(s). You may wish to choose a few memoirs to share with and/or point out to the students.
Six Word Memoirs by Teens
Six-Word Memoirs, the book
“Six Tips for Writing Six-Word Memoirs”
Test the Word Matrix student interactive. You will need computers with internet access for each student to use this interactive. If computer accessibility is a problem, print out paper copies of the interactive and make enough copies for each student.
Photocopy the Choosing the Best Word: Six-Word Memoirs handout for students.
Familiarize yourself with the ideas of synonyms, connotation, register, and sound/rhythm. Additional teacher information on synonyms and language can be found in a variety of articles from English Journal , Vol. 97, No. 4, March 2008 , with the issue theme “Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary in High School.”

Student Objectives

Students will:

define synonym and consider the implications of multiple word meanings for authors attempting to choose the most effective word in a given situation.
investigate the similarities and differences within word groups on the basis of connotation and register.
create, reflect on, and revise a memoir, taking into account word choice and message.

Session One

Begin a class discussion with students about memoirs and their “life stories.” What do students consider to be their “life story”? Would they need to write a novel to explain everything, or could they tell about one event that helped shape them as a person? Explain to students that they are going to be writing memoirs of their lives, but there’s a catch—they only have six words to portray themselves however they wish and to get a message across.
Introduce the idea of six-word memoirs by projecting Six Word Memoirs by Teens or Six-Word Memoirs, the book . You may also wish to have some Six-Word Memoir books available for students to peruse after the video to see more examples.
After reading/seeing some six-word memoirs, what surprises you about this form?
What’s the difference between a story and a memoir? Why do we tell stories? Who knows your story best?
How is it both possible and impossible to distill the essence of who you are into six words? Which author do you think does the best job of it and why?
Again, explain the parameters of the assignment: students must write a personal memoir in only six words. To give students a bit more information about what’s required, show students the “Six Tips for Writing Six-Word Memoirs” video. Allow for students’ questions and then ask that students spend some time brainstorming and writing down different possibilities for their own six-word memoir. Eventually, ask students to choose one memoir that they deem their “favorite” and they would like to use for the remainder of this lesson.
Ask students to write down a definition of the word synonym and provide several examples.
Arrange students in small groups to share their definitions and examples. As they share, ask them to look for similarities and differences in their definitions and examples. Have groups share their findings with the entire class and create a class definition of the word synonym , to be written on the board or chart paper.
Facilitate a discussion on how a poet or author might choose the "best word" for their piece of writing when there may be several words in the English language that express the same, or nearly the same, idea or concept.
Connotation: the emotional or personal associations the word carries, beyond its literal definition.
Register: the level of formality or informality associated with the word.
Sound and rhythm: the way words sound and scan contribute to their appropriateness.
Remind students to keep the memoir that they chose to use for the remainder of this lesson. If they wish, they may continue brainstorming and working on their memoir outside of class, as long as they bring their chosen memoir to the next session.

Session Two

Note to the Instructor : Synonyms can be any part of speech (e.g. nouns , verbs , adjectives , adverbs or prepositions ), as long as both members of the pair are the same part of speech.
Give students a few minutes to make their list of synonymous words (they may use a thesaurus if necessary) and think about how they actually differ in regard to connotation and register. Ask students to share examples and explain the differences they see.
Inform students that they will be using an online tool to explore the ideas of synonyms, connotation, and register further by arranging words that have the same meaning as their focus word but vary according to connotation and/or register.
Direct students to the Word Matrix tool online and ask them to select the option to organize words by connotation and register. Students will need to create a new concept that includes their focus words and the synonymous words in their list. You may wish to model this process before having students work independently.
After creating their concepts, each student should arrange their words according to relative charge in connotation and formality of register. Point out that there are not right or wrong answers to this activity. More important than where the students end up putting words is the explanations they write about what the words mean and how they relate to each other. They should indicate their thinking by double-clicking each word and writing a brief justification for its placement.
Explain to students that they can access online resources and get more information about connotation and register by clicking on the orange question mark within the tool. They should use the back navigation within the tool (not the back arrow in the browser) to get back to their work within the matrix .
Have students print their completed matrices . Review them before the next session to gauge student understanding of connotation and register.
Ask students to rewrite their six-word memoir by substituting each synonym in the place of the focus word that they originally chose. Thus, they should have multiple examples of the same six-word memoir with a different synonym replacing the focus word in each example. Students should complete this activity before the next session.

Session Three

Ask students to take out their list of memoirs within which they substituted different synonyms for their focus word. Have them take a moment to review the different memoirs and how they changed the meaning of the memoir.
Have students take out their Choosing the Best Word: Six-Word Memoirs handout, on which they originally wrote their focus word and their synonyms. Ask them to reflect on how their word choice affected the meaning of their different memoirs. They should write about their thoughts and the memoir they prefer (with reasoning) on the handout under the Reflection Question.
After all students have completed the handout, have students take turns sharing their experience. They should share their original memoir, what their synonyms were, and the final memoir they decided on (along with their reasoning). Allow for other students to ask questions about the students’ word choice if they so choose.
create a class book of memoirs;
produce a video of your students’ memoirs, much like the videos they watched at the beginning of the session; or
have students submit their own six-word memoir at www.SMITHteens.com .
Allow students time to study their classmates’ memoirs and ask questions to get to know each other better and build a stronger classroom community!
Make six-word memoirs a part of your classroom routine. Do warm-ups or exit slips that ask students to write six-word memoirs. You’ll be amazed at how much you’ll learn about students based on their memoirs!
Present other short form writing choices for students to experiment with such as Haiku . Have them follow the same steps of substituting different synonyms into their writing to focus on word choice.
Expand on the idea of a six-word memoir while still focusing on word choice and story elements. Have students increase the length of their memoir.
Connect six-word memoirs to a literature activity by having students write literary characters’ six-word memoirs.
Have students produce a video of their memoirs to post to You Tube or another video site. Use the video as an electronic scrapbook of the students in each class.

Student Assessment / Reflections

Provide formative feedback through the completed matrices , synonym lists, and any other student work prior to the project.
Evaluate students’ understanding of the project and completion of all of the steps during and after their oral presentation of their findings.
Student Interactives
Lesson Plans
Professional Library
Calendar Activities

Explore the similarities and differences among words typically considered synonyms with this tool that allows middle- and secondary-level students organize groups of words by connotation on one axis and by register on another.

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12 Must-Read Memoirs for Teachers and Students

by Claire Groft

Some of the most important stories ever told are the true ones, so we’ve rounded up twelve memoirs that would make fantastic additions to your nonfiction literature curriculum. From Alaska to outer space, your students won’t believe where these stories take them.

12. October Sky

In 1957, young Homer Hickam builds his own rocket, hoping that it will be his way out of his hometown. October Sky is a moving, inspiring, and easy-to-read memoir about one man’s extraordinary journey from small-town boy to NASA engineer.

11. A Long Way Gone

As a teenager, Ishmael Beah was forced to fight in Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war. Beah’s memoir is chilling and insightful, and readers will be stunned by the speed at which war turns a joyful young boy into a soldier addicted to both gruesome violence and the drugs his army freely distributes.

10. Down These Mean Streets

Piri Thomas’s memoir, Down These Mean Streets , is an authentic and sharp account of growing up and living in Spanish Harlem. Your students are sure to enjoy this gritty and honest journey to finding self-acceptance.

9. A Child Called “It”

The human spirit is unbreakable, and Dave Pelzer is living proof. In this unforgettable memoir, Pelzer chronicles the abuse he suffered as a child and shares how he overcame the isolation and torture inflicted upon him.

8. The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls’s nomadic childhood exposed her to the wonders of America—as well as to some of its harshest realities. Strange but true, this nonfiction text is a spectacular choice for your classroom. Learn more about this book with our blog post: How to Teach The Glass Castle .

Elie Wiesel’s powerful memoir chronicling his time in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps helps students explore moral issues such as the danger of remaining silent in the face of oppression. Exploring themes like violence and anti-Semitism, this text teaches your students about social responsibility while keeping alive Wiesel’s message to never forget those whose lives were lost. Learn more about this book with our blog post: How to Teach Night .

6. Woodsong

Your students may have already read a few of Paulsen’s novels, so introduce them to a real-life adventure story in which Paulsen writes about his experiences running and racing sled dogs in Minnesota and Alaska. A compelling and ultimately inspiring memoir, Woodsong just might be the book that gets your students excited about nonfiction literature.

5. They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky

This intimate memoir takes your students into the heart of the conflict in Sudan, beginning with the struggle of three children determined to escape it. This story spins a tale of terror, courage, spirit, and the loss of childhood to the atrocities of war.

4. Always Running

Luis Rodriguez wrote this memoir, a firsthand account of gang life in Los Angeles, to dissuade his teenage son from following in his footsteps. A scathing exposé of gang culture, Always Running is powerful and essential reading.

3. Farewell to Manzanar

Farewell to Manzanar has become a curriculum staple in schools across the United States. Seven-year-old Jeanne Wakatsuki and her family are held in the Manzanar internment camp following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Thirty years later, Jeanne delivers a powerful first-person account that reveals her search for the meaning of her experiences at Manzanar. Her memoir touches on important themes that will resonate with even your most reluctant readers. Learn more about this book with our blog post: How to Teach Farewell to Manzanar .

2. The Last Lecture

Inspire your students to live their lives to the fullest with this memoir, an expansion of professor Randy Pausch’s final lecture to his students after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Full of pragmatic wisdom and positivity, this nonfiction text is a charming guide to personal betterment. Learn more about this book with our blog post: How to Teach The Last Lecture .

1. Tuesdays with Morrie

Acclaimed sportswriter Mitch Albom flies to Massachusetts every week to meet with his teacher and mentor, Morrie Schwartz. Over the months of their sessions, the terminally ill Morrie teaches Mitch how to live. The topics of these conversations supply ample material for class discussions and writing assignments. Learn more about this book with our blog post: How to Teach Tuesdays with Morrie .

Do you have a favorite memoir or life story? Leave a comment below!

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Six in Schools

Since we launched the Six-Word Memoir project, educators across the world have found six words to be a terrific classroom assignment and catalyst for self-expression. Here we celebrate students’ work from classrooms across the world.

Six In Schools

Note to teachers.

Here are a few useful links to start your Six Journey:

New! “My Life Now: Six Words on the Pandemic” Teaching Guides ( which also takes you to three more free Six-Word Teaching Guides )
Welcome teachers & guidelines for posting on Six-Word Memoirs
A video about the Six-Word Memoir project
Bring Six-Word Memoir creator Larry Smith to your school or classroom

We love to feature students using Six-Word Memoirs. Keep us posted on your latest projects — contact us at [email protected]

Grade Elementary School Middle School High School College & Above

Subject english/ela arts special ed library/social studies esl/international stem, clear filter, apply filter.

Prof. John Ferry: Mastering the “Art” of the Six-Word-Memoir

Tabitha Cooper: From One Class to a School Community

Jennifer Mayberry cooks up Six-Word Memoirs with her students

“The Power of One Word”: English Teacher Mary Lochtefeld Teaches Concise Writing

John Ferry’s 2023 “Image and Form” Class at Kansas City Art Institute

Melanie Abrams’ Short Fiction Class at UC Berkeley: The Core of a Character

Six Words and Numerous Changes at Libra Academy, Huntington Park, California

Definitely not keeping secrets: english classes at hononegah community high school, rockton, illinois.

Serendipity of Six Words in Elizabeth Brandstrom’s Accelerated Program at Maranatha Christian Academy

Free teaching resource download.

Instantly download the following Teaching Guides in the Six Store

• New! My Life Now: Six Words on the Pandemic • Guide For Not Quite What I was Planning • Guide For I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets • Guide For Six Words Fresh Off the Boat

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Last updated on Apr 06, 2021

21 Memoir Examples to Inspire Your Own

About the author.

Reedsy's editorial team is a diverse group of industry experts devoted to helping authors write and publish beautiful books.

About Martin Cavannagh

Head of Content at Reedsy, Martin has spent over eight years helping writers turn their ambitions into reality. As a voice in the indie publishing space, he has written for a number of outlets and spoken at conferences, including the 2024 Writers Summit at the London Book Fair.

About Tom Bromley

Author, editor, tutor, and bestselling ghostwriter. Tom Bromley is the head of learning at Reedsy, where he has created their acclaimed course, 'How to Write a Novel.'

Writing a memoir is a daunting endeavor for any author: how do you condense your entire life story into a mere couple hundred pages? Of course, you'll find plenty of online guides that will help you write a memoir by leading you through the steps. But other times that old adage “show, don’t tell” holds true, and it’s most helpful to look at other memoir examples to get started.

If that’s the case for you, we’ve got you covered with 21 memoir examples to give you an idea of the types of memoirs that have sold well. Ready to roll up your sleeves and dive in?

The autobiographical memoir

The autobiographical memoir — a retelling of one’s life, from beginning to present times — is probably the standard format that jumps to most people’s minds when they think of this genre.

At first glance, it might seem like a straightforward recount of your past. However, don’t be deceived! As you’ll be able to tell from the examples below, this type of memoir shines based on three things: the strength of the author’s story, the strength of the story’s structure, and the strength of the author’s voice.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. The woman who Toni Morrison said “launched African American writing in the United States,” Angelou penned this searing memoir in 1969, which remains a timeless classic today.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Less of a singular memoir than a collection of humorous anecdotes framed around his life as a transplant to Paris, the star of this book is Sedaris’ dry voice and cutting humor.

A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby. Chacaby’s remarkable life — from growing up abused in a remote Ojibwa community to overcoming alcoholism and coming out as a lesbian as an adult — is captured in this must-read autobiography.

The “experience” memoir

One of the most popular memoirs that you’ll find on bookshelves, this type focuses on a specific experience that the author has undergone. Typically, this experience involves a sort of struggle, such as a bitter divorce, illness, or perhaps a clash with addiction. Regardless of the situation, the writer overcomes it to share lessons learned from the ordeal.

In an "experience" memoir, you can generally expect to learn about:

How the author found themselves facing said experience;
The obstacles they needed to overcome; and
What they discovered during (and after) the experience.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. Faced with the prognosis of terminal cancer at the age of thirty-six, Paul Kalanithi wrote an unforgettable memoir that tackles an impossible question: what makes life worth living?

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. An account of drug and alcohol abuse that one reviewer called “the War and Peace of addiction,” this book became the focus of an uproar when it was revealed that many of its incidents were fabricated. (In case you’re wondering, we do not recommend deceiving your readers.)

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. Adapted in 1999 into a critically acclaimed film starring Angelina Jolie, Girl, Interrupted enduringly recounts the author’s battle with mental illness and her ensuing 18-month stay in an American psychiatric hospital.

The “event” memoir

Similar to the “experience” memoir, the “event” memoir centers on a single significant event in the author’s life. However, while the former might cover a period of years or even decades, the “event” memoir zeroes in on a clearly defined period of time — for instance, a two-month walk in the woods, or a three-week mountain climb, as you’ll see below.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau. In July of 1845, Henry David Thoreau walked into the woods and didn’t come out for two years, two months, and two days. This is the seminal memoir that resulted.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer. The controversial account of the 1996 Everest disaster, as written by author-journalist Krakaeur, who was climbing the mountain on the same day that eight climbers were killed.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. Immortalized as one of the classic books about mourning, The Year of Magical Thinking recounts the grief Didion endured the year following the death of her husband.

The “themed” memoir

When you look back on your own timeline, is there a strong theme that defines your life or ties it all together? That’s the premise on which a “themed” memoir is based. In such a memoir, the author provides a retrospective of their past through the lens of one topic.

If you’re looking to write this type of memoir, it goes without saying that you’ll want to find a rock-solid theme to build your entire life story around. Consider asking yourself:

What’s shaped your life thus far?
What’s been a constant at every turning point?
Has a single thing driven all of the decisions that you’ve made?

Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. Throughout an up-and-down upbringing complete with a debilitating battle with depression, the single consistent thread in this author’s life remained football and Arsenal F.C.

Educated by Tara Westover. If there’s one lesson that we can learn from this remarkable memoir, it’s the importance of education. About a family of religious survivalists in rural Idaho, this memoir relates how the author overcame her upbringing and moved mountains in pursuit of learning.

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth. Now best known for its BBC adaptation, Worth’s account of her life as a midwife caught people’s imagination with its depiction of life in London’s East End in the 1950s.

The family memoir

In a family memoir, the author is a mirror that re-focuses the light on their family members — ranging from glimpses into the dysfunctional dynamics of a broken family to heartfelt family tributes.

Examples of this type of memoir

Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat. A love letter to her family that crosses generations, continents, and cultures, Brother, I’m Dying primarily tells the intertwined stories of two men: Danticat’s father and her uncle.

Native Country of the Heart by Cherrie Moraga. The mother is a self-made woman who grew up picking cotton in California. The daughter, a passionate queer Latina feminist. Weaving the past with the present, this groundbreaking Latinx memoir about a mother-daughter relationship confronts the debilitating consequences of Alzheimer's disease.

The childhood memoir

A subset of the autobiographical memoir, the childhood memoir primarily focuses (spoiler alert!) on the author’s childhood years. Most childhood memoirs cover a range of 5 - 18 years of age, though this can differ depending on the story.

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. The groundbreaking winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, McCourt’s memoir covers the finer details of his childhood in impoverished Dublin.

Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl. Evoking his schoolboy days in the 1920s and 30s, the stories in this book shed light on themes and motifs that would play heavily in Dahl’s most beloved works: a love for sweets, a mischievous streak, and a distrust of authority figures.

The travel memoir

What happens when you put an author on a plane? Words fly!

Just kidding. While that’s perhaps not literally how the travel memoir subgenre was founded, being on the move certainly has something to do with it. Travel memoirs have been written for as long as people could traverse land — which is to say, a long time — but the modern travel narrative didn’t crystallize until the 1970s with the publication of Paul Theroux’s Great Railway Bazaar and Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia .

In a travel memoir, the author isn’t the star of the show: the place is. You can expect to find these elements in a travel memoir:

A description of the place
A discussion of the culture and people
How the author experienced the place and dealt with setbacks during the journey

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Proof that memoirs don’t have to tell catastrophic stories to succeed, this book chronicles Gilbert’s post-divorce travels, inspiring a generation of self-care enthusiasts, and was adapted into a film starring Julia Roberts.

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. A four-month journey from London to East Asia (and back again) by train, this is the book that helped found the modern travel narrative.

The celebrity memoir

The celebrity memoir is just that: a memoir published by a celebrity. Though many celebrity memoirs are admittedly ghostwritten, the best ones give us an honest and authentic look at the “real person” behind the public figure.

Note that we define “celebrity” broadly here as anyone who is (or has been) in the public spotlight. This includes:

Political figures
Sports stars
Actors and actresses

Paper Lion by George Plimpton. In 1960, the author George Plimpton joined up with the Detroit Lions to see if an ordinary man could play pro football. The answer was no, but his experience in training camp allowed him to tell the first-hand story of a team from inside the locker room.

Troublemaker by Leah Remini. The former star of TV’s The King of Queens tackles the Church of Scientology head-on, detailing her life in (and her decision to leave) the controversial religion.

It’s Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong. This is a great lesson on the way authors often write books to create their own legacy in the way they see fit. As history confirmed, Armstrong’s comeback success wasn’t entirely about the bike at all.

Now that you know what a memoir looks like, it’s time to get out your pen and paper, and write your own memoir to pass down family generations ! And if you want even more memoir examples to keep being inspired? We’ve got you covered: here are the 30 best memoirs of the last century .

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Articles / Memoir Writing

How to Teach Memoir in the Middle Grades

by MiddleWeb · Published 10/13/2015 · Updated 04/14/2020

I stand in front of my eighth grade class, excitement and anticipation washing over me. It is the beginning of the memoir unit, and I know that the next two months will be the most memorable and most meaningful work we do all year.

I tell my students how excited I am. I tell them that by the end of the unit most of them will produce the best piece of writing they have ever produced, and many of them will have come to see themselves and their lives in new ways.

They look at me skeptically. How do I know this will happen? I know it, I say, because it happens every year.

There are many reasons – both academic and social-emotional – why it is so worthwhile to teach memoir writing to adolescents, but here I want to focus on the how. How do I help students who say they don’t remember anything well enough to write about it? How do I get them to dig deep and uncover the themes in their lives? How do I help them elevate the craft of their writing? For teachers embarking on a memoir writing unit, there are three fundamental ideas about the genre that I find myself returning to again and again.

► Memoirs do not need to be factually accurate, but they need to be truthful.

► Every story must have an understory.

► Memoirs should move seamlessly between the sea and the mountain.

1. Sorting Out Fact and Truth

When I was young, maybe five or six, my father took me to play in the park, and a dog bit me. I took this memory and developed it into a memoir for a high school writing assignment. Since I didn’t remember exactly what had happened, I had to make up most of the details – the words that my father and I spoke to each other, the appearance of the dog, what I was feeling at the time. I didn’t purposely lie; instead I recreated the events as I imagined they might have occurred.

We need to approach memoir with the understanding and with the acceptance that memory is imperfect. That’s okay, because when we tell our stories, our goal is not to get everything exactly “right,” but rather to recreate our past experiences in a way that reveals larger truths about our lives and about who we are. In the case of my story, what mattered most was being able to convey how I viewed my father at the time, and how this incident made me realize that he would not always be able to keep me safe.

When students come to understand that the inadequacy of memory is not so much a limitation as it is an opportunity to shape their stories as they see fit, they begin to feel liberated and are able to move forward in their work of looking back.

2. Telling the Understory

My first year of teaching memoir writing, I had a student who wrote about a day he spent at Coney Island with his mother when he was five. He described the rides and attractions in great detail. He talked about eating Nathan’s hot dogs. He did an excellent job providing a play-by-play account of what happened that day. What he did not do was convey why this day was worth writing about.

“It just stands out in my memory,” he said, during our conference.

I continued to ask questions and to listen, and soon this student was speaking about his relationship with his mother, about how she worked all the time and he rarely saw her, how this was a day when he saw another side of her that he rarely saw growing up. By the time he turned in his final draft, the memoir had become something much more than just the recounting of a day at Coney Island. It had become a moving and powerful story of the relationship between a boy and his mother.

Every memoir – every good memoir – needs to be about more than just the events it recounts. I call this added layer the “understory” because it signifies that there is something lurking beneath a story’s surface, a deeper significance, and it is our job as writers to bring it forth.

A memoir’s understory will dictate which details to emphasize when we tell our story, and which details to leave out. When I wrote about being bitten by a dog, I included many details about my relationship with my father because that was what my memoir was really about. If my understory had been something different – for example, how growing up is about taking risks – then I would have made different choices.

When I discuss what it means to have an understory in memoir, it is really the same thing as discussing theme in literature. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is much more than just an adventure story about a boy and a runaway slave rafting down the Mississippi River. Much of the book’s brilliance comes from the way in which the author uses the story to comment on questions of freedom, racial prejudice, the collision of law and conscience, and other issues society was grappling with at the time.

When we effectively weave together story and understory in our memoirs, we open a window into the our lives and illuminate something deep and meaningful about who we are.

3. Atop the Mountain, Into the Sea

On the board, I draw a picture of a mountain overlooking the sea. A lone figure stands perched atop the mountain’s summit and another swims among the waves below.

“What does this picture have to do with writing memoir?” I ask my students.

Vector night landscape with mountains, lake and forest on a starry sky background

What I want to convey is the different ways the two people view the ocean, how the swimmer is assaulted by his immediate surroundings – the cresting waves, the floating seaweed– while the person on the mountain sees the big picture, the water stretching endlessly toward the horizon.

When we write memoir, we want to move back and forth between the sea and the mountain. That is, we want to zero in on the sights and smells and sounds and feelings of past moments in such detail that our readers can fully experience these moments for themselves. At the same time, we want to zoom out from these moments and reflect on how and where they fit into the grand scheme of who we are and the lives we’ve lived.

Two divers looking to the big shark and coral reef on a blue sea background

Before I ask students to integrate these perspectives, I spend time teaching them to write from each one individually.

Writing from the sea involves re-creating past incidents as scenes, using dialogue, descriptive action, access to the character’s thoughts and feelings, and sensory detail to bring the reader into the middle of what is unfolding.

Writing from the mountain means asking ourselves: What do I understand now about this story and about myself that I did not understand when I was living through it? Sometimes we can express these more mature understandings explicitly, with sentence starters like, “I now realize…” or “What I have come to understand…” More often, mountaintop writing is just observations and insights woven into the story that the character was probably not consciously aware of at the time or would not have been able to articulate.

Teachers of writing should live writerly lives

Fact and truth, story and understory, sea and mountain – over the years, I have returned to these three ideas again and again to help my students write deeply and meaningfully about their lives. I have also returned to these ideas again and again in my own memoir writing.

Because as much as we focus on how best to teach our students, we should never lose sight of the fact that one of our most powerful tools is to live writerly lives ourselves. When we do the work we’re asking our students to do, when we try out the prompts, and share our drafts, and recognize the challenges, we become both better writers and better teachers of writing.

Perhaps most important, when we open windows into our own lives and share our stories of who we are, we inspire our students to do the same.

Read a MiddleWeb review of Worth Writing About

3 Responses

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Loved this book! Best book on teaching memoir to young people I’ve ever read.

Thanks so much! I love these key concepts–what a clear way to get across important ideas!

Constantly have to practice our craft. Great reminders and guidelines. I like the mountain and the sea analogy. Wonderful way to explain details vs. theme or big picture.

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Secondary Classrooms 8 Meaningful Memoirs for Middle School

Reading memoirs can help students grow their empathy and understanding of others’ perspectives. Here are 8 memoirs to incorporate into your ELA curriculum to engage your students in the experiences of others, and grow their reading comprehension skills.

“ The Drive-In Movies ” by Gary Soto (6th Grade)

In this memoir, Gary Soto recounts a Saturday from his childhood. Soto describes how he tried to quickly complete all of his chores so his mom would take him and his siblings to the drive-in movies.

Start a Discussion using Question 2, “In the context of the story, what does it mean to be grown up? In your opinion, is the narrator ‘grown up’?” Prompt students to go deeper with the additional prompt, “Cite evidence from this text, your own experience, and other literature, art, or history in your answer.”

“ Names/Nombres ” by Julia Alvarez (6th Grade)

In this memoir chronicling the personal history of her name, Julia Alvarez describes her experience immigrating to the United States from the Dominican Republic. Alvarez recounts all of the different names and nicknames she was given when others couldn’t pronounce her name correctly.

To deepen students’ understanding of Alvarez’s experience of immigrating to a country where people speak a new language, show the video in the Related Media tab, “ Julia Alvarez - The Writer’s Language .” Ask students to discuss the challenges that Alvarez describes about writing in English, “How did writing in English eventually become an important form of expression for Alvarez?”

“ Little Things Are Big ” by Jesús Colón (6th Grade)

In this short text, Colón describes a time when his actions were influenced by his identity as a man of color. He tells the story of his experience on a subway car in the 1950s and others’ perception impacted his actions.

To give students a closer look into Colón’s perspective, teachers can start a class discussion with Question 1, “Place yourself in Colón's shoes. How do you think you would have responded in this situation? Has anything similar happened to you?”

“ The Terror ” by Junot Díaz (7th Grade)

In this memoir, Junot Díaz retells an experience he had in middle school with a group of teenage bullies. The memoir follows Díaz’s experience with fear and shame up until he confronts these feelings years later.

Teaching this story provides a great opportunity to explore how authors portray emotions from a first-person point of view. Use Assessment Question 5 to help students dig into Díaz’s perspective by asking, “How does the author feel about himself when he says, ‘I hated these brothers from the bottom of my heart, but even more than them, I hated myself for my cowardice’?”

“ Us and Them ” by David Sedaris (7th Grade)

This humorous text describes young David Sedaris’ fascination with an unusual new family in his neighborhood. Despite its humor, this text tackles a major theme about identity and the separation of social groups.

To further explore this theme, assign the poem “ Identity ” by Julio Noboa from the Paired Texts tab. Have students compare what/who is the “us” and “them” in each piece.

Screenshot of Paired Texts tab for "Us and Them" reading lesson

“ In My Mom’s Shoes ” by Kat Chow (8th Grade)

In this powerful memoir, Chow jumps between years of her life in flashbacks as she reflects on losing her mother at a young age. Chow describes her feelings of grief as she walks in a pair of her mother’s shoes.

Teach this text alongside “ New Carolina City ” by Sydney Hamilton from the Paired Texts tab. Ask students to discuss how certain images and objects evoke a sense of nostalgia in both texts, and how the different forms explore this sense of nostalgia.

Screenshot of Paired Texts tab for "In My Mom's Shoes" reading lesson

“ Hello, My Name is ______ ” by Jason Kim (8th Grade)

Jason Kim is an Asian American screenwriter and playwright whose memoir details his experience moving from South Korea to the United States as a child. Kim describes how he chose an American name and began to reject his Asian identity for most of his youth.This story is a great springboard for class discussions about identity.

Teachers can ask Discussion Question 2, “In the text, Kim attempts to change his Asian identity. Was he successful? Can you change your identity? Why or why not?”

Are you a teacher looking for more great content on CommonLit? Browse the CommonLit Library or come to one of our webinars!

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Tiny Memoir Contest for Students: Write a 100-Word Personal Narrative

We invite teenagers to tell a true story about a meaningful life experience in just 100 words. Contest dates: Nov. 6 to Dec. 4, 2024.

A banner of six purple and black illustrations. From left to right: a woman hanging a star in a window with the help of a little girl; two men staring lovingly at each other over a small table; a man presenting a miniature Christmas tree to his pet fish; a frog reaching out his arms to a squiggly figure; three family members piled on top of each other on a couch; a woman looking pensively out a widow as it snows outside.

By The Learning Network

Illustrations from Modern Love’s Tiny Love Stories , the inspiration for this contest.

Can you tell a meaningful and interesting true story from your life in just 100 words? That’s the challenge we pose to teenagers with our 100-Word Personal Narrative Contest, a storytelling form popularized by Modern Love’s Tiny Love Stories series .

After running this contest for two years, receiving a total of more than 25,000 entries, and honoring dozens of excellent miniature teen-written memoirs, we have discovered the answer is a resounding yes .

So, we challenge you to try it yourself.

We’re not asking you to write to a particular theme or to use a specific structure or style, but we are looking for short, powerful stories about a particular moment or event in your life. We want to hear your story, told in your unique voice, and we hope you’ll experiment with style and form to tell a tale that matters to you, in a way you enjoy telling it.

And, yes, it’s possible to do all that in only 100 words. For proof, just look at last year’s 15 winning entries . We also have a step-by-step guide full of advice that is grounded in 25 excellent 100-word mentor texts, as well as a rehearsal space , published for our first year’s contest, that has over 1,000 student-written mini memoirs. Because that space was so successful, we’re keeping it open for this year’s contest. We hope students will use it to get inspiration, experiment and encourage each other.

Take a look at the full guidelines and related resources below. Please post any questions you have in the comments and we’ll answer you there, or write to us at [email protected]. And, consider hanging this PDF one-page announcement on your class bulletin board.

Here’s what you need to know:

Resources for Teachers and Students
Frequently Asked Questions
Submission Form

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Musing From The Middle School

Memoir Writing in Middle School: Part 1

February 9, 2020 by jwyks Leave a Comment

Hey friends! I’ve got a picture-heavy post for you today, so grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and settle in.

So, for years… basically since I started my career, I’ve been teaching personal narrative writing to my middle schoolers. Recently, my district started to tweak a few things in our curriculum and so for this year, we replaced that unit with memoir.

I had to do some research to find out the difference between the two and I found this is a pretty murky area. But here is a decent explanation:

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University of Illinois

History 462

Prof. Diane P. Koenker

Spring 2014

History of the Soviet Union since 1917

Paper Assignment:

Personal Narratives and Memoirs

The paper will be based on a careful reading of a personal narrative, and should include the following points:

(1) who is the author and what is the author's point of view;

(2) the major themes of the narrative in terms of the historical context of twentieth-century Russia; and

(3) In addition, you should choose a particular theme, event, or episode in the narrative and compare the author's analysis of it with the analysis found in several works of historical scholarship. For example, you might take Alexander Werth's Moscow War Diary and compare his discussion of home front morale with the work by Mark Harrison and John Barber, The Soviet Home Front 1941-1945: A Social and Economic History of the USSR in World War II; John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad ; and the Soviet Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945. You might take Leon Trotsky's My Life account of the October 1917 revolution and compare it with several recent works on the Russian revolution. Or you might take Elena Bonner's ( Mothers and Daughters ) description of her high school days and compare it with Larry Holmes, The Kremlin and the School House , and other works on Soviet education.

Choose one of the following personal narratives to be the focus of your 12-15 page paper.

The narratives are grouped roughly according to the chronology of the course. No book can be claimed by more than one student : first come, first served. You must see me in person in my office during office hours or at another time to discuss your book choice. I will also schedule "group office hours" after spring break to discuss your work on the paper. The deadline for choosing a book is March 14 . Papers are due Monday , May 12 , 11 a.m.

I. Revolution and Civil War

Chernov , Victor. The Great Russian Revolution . Trans. and abridged by Philip E. Mosely . New Haven, Conn., 1936. 466 pp.

Chernov was the leader of the peasant-oriented Socialist Revolutionary Party from 1906 to 1917, and remained active in the socialist opposition to the Bolsheviks until 1921. He was Minister of Agriculture in the Provisional Government in 1917, a leading socialist insider. The memoir focuses in detail on the ten months of 1917 between the February and October revolutions, from Chernov's vantage point as Provisional Government member and leader of the SR party.

Denikin , Anton I. The Russian Turmoil : Memoirs : Military, Social, and Political . London, 1922. 344 pp. Claimed 2 February 2014

Denikin was a tsarist general who became commander-in-chief of the White Army during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. This memoir recounts his experience in the 1917 revolution, from his vantage point of service in the army general staff. He describes the situation at the front in 1917, the failed July offensive, relations with the Provisional Government, and his role in the Kornilov mutiny of August 1917 that put Denikin briefly in prison and ended hopes for a compromise settlement to the crisis of revolutionary power.

Dotsenko , Paul. The Struggle for a Democracy in Siberia, 1917-1920: Eyewitness Account of a Contemporary . Stanford, 1983. 178 pp.

An activist member of the Socialist Revolutionary party, Dotsenko was serving a term of Siberian exile when the 1917 revolution erupted. He remained in Siberia, taking part in the SR government in Omsk and later observing the military take-over of Admiral Kolchak and the impact of foreign intervention in the civil war in Siberia.

Kerensky, Alexander. Russia and History's Turning Point. New York, 1965.556 pp.

Kerensky was a civil rights lawyer and moderate socialist in 1917 when he catapulted to fame and notoriety first as Minister of Justice in the Provisional Government and then Prime Minister. He escaped from Russia after the October Revolution in order to rally a non-Bolshevik opposition, then spent the rest of his life writing and reflecting on what went wrong in 1917. His first attempt, The Catastrophe , was published in 1922. This more mature reflection, which dwells on his own biography (he and Lenin were schoolmates as young boys ) was published after he had lived many years in the United States.

Liberman , Simon. Building Lenin's Russia . Chicago, 1945. 229 pp.

Liberman was a Menshevik businessman in the years before the revolution, and although he never joined the Communist party, worked for the new regime during the period of the civil war as a specialist in charge of the timber industry. He provides recollections of many of the leading Bolshevik industrial figures and of his international trade negotiations in 1920 and the early years of NEP. Professing to be a loyal Soviet citizen, he nonetheless left the USSR under political suspicion in 1926.

Mstislavskii , Sergei D. Five Days Which Transformed Russia . Bloomington, Ind., 1988 (1922). Translated by Elizabeth Zelensky . 168 pp.

Mstislavskii , born in 1876, was a scientist and Social Revolutionary who favored radical of the imperial regime and became a champion of peasants' and workers' rights. He served as an officer of the General Staff Academy in Petersburg during WWI, and later stood with the Bolsheviks. This is an account of the events of 1917, as seen and experienced by the author himself.

Shklovsky , Viktor. A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917-1922 . Translated by Richard Sheldon. Ithaca, N.Y., 1984. 304 pp.

Shklovsky was a major Russian writer and proponent of Futurism, who served in the tsarist army and then Red Army between 1914 and 1922. His memoirs detail his experience among front line troops during the 1917 revolution and during the Civil War in Ukraine and in Persia.

Sukhanov , Nikolai. The Russian Revolution, 1917: A Personal Record . Trans. and abridged by Joel Carmichael. London, 1955. 699 pp.

The single best personal narrative of the 1917 revolution in Petrograd. Sukhanov was a moderate socialist, a Menshevik, whose analysis of the political events of 1917 and perceptive vignettes of the major revolutionary leaders remains a fundamental source for our understanding of revolutionary politics.

Trotsky, Leon. My Life . London, 1930. 602 pp.

Leon Trotsky was one of the giants of the revolutionary movement, a brilliant revolutionary strategist, organizer of the October revolution and creator of the Red Army, and the principal rival to Stalin for the leadership of the USSR after the death of Lenin. The memoir covers his life to 1929, when he was expelled from the country by the Communist Party: his education, activism in the underground revolutionary movement, role in the revolution and civil war, his relations with Lenin and his role in the Communist Party opposition up until his exile to Kazakhstan in 1927, and expulsion from the country in 1929. Trotsky remained a vocal opponent of Stalin in exile, until he was killed by a NKVD agent in Mexico in 1940, and even after that, the Trotskyite wing of the communist movement remained an important element of worldwide left politics.

II. 1920s and 1930s

Allilueva , Svetlana. Twenty Letters to a Friend . Translated by Priscilla Johnson McMillan. New York, 1967. 246 pp. Claimed 27 January 2014

The daughter of Joseph Stalin who defected to the west in the 1960s, these "letters" relate her memories of family and father as written in Moscow in 1963. Topics include the death of Stalin and his last years; her childhood, grandparents, and family; her mother, Stalin's second wife, daughter of a leading Bolshevik revolutionary, who committed suicide in 1932; Stalin as Dad; school and studies in the 1930s (she moved in the same circles as Elena Bonner, below); the war; her first marriage to the son of one of Stalin's close associates, Zhdanov; and a bit about the years after Stalin's death.

Andreev- Khomiakov . Bitter Waters: Life and Work in Stalin's Russia . Boulder, Colo., 1997. 195 pp.

Released from a penal colony in 1935, Andreev- Khomiakov's memoir recounts his efforts to find work as a suspicious ex-prisoner, first in the Fish trust and then in the lumber industry. His account describes how workers got by in the 1930s, gives details of daily life, ordinary corruption, party incompetence, and attitudes towards authority on the eve of the great patriotic war.

Baitalsky , Mikhail. Notebooks for the Grandchildren . Translated and edited by Marilyn Vogt-Downey. Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1995. 416 pp.

A native of Odessa, Baitalsky became a journalist and supporter of Trotsky as a young man (he was born in 1903). Arrested in 1929, and again in 1935, he was released from the Vorkuta camp in 1941. After the war, he served another camp sentence from 1950 to 1956. These "notebooks" were composed in the same spirit of thaw as were Ginzburg's memoirs, and his testimony was handed over to dissident historian Roy Medvedev , to be used as evidence in Medvedev's indictment of Stalin, Let History Judge .

Bonner, Elena. Mothers and Daughters . Translated by Antonina W. Bouis . New York, 1992. 349 pp.

Bonner was the daughter of high-ranking communist officials. In the 1960s she would become a leading dissident, and together with her husband Andrei Sakharov emerge as the conscience of the Soviet Union during the regimes of Brezhnev and Gorbachev. This memoir of her early life describes her experience as a school girl in the time of the purges of the 1930s, as seen from the point of view of the privileged daughter of the revolutionary elite.

Borodin, N.M. One Man in His Time . New York, 1955. 344 pp.

Borodin came from a Don Cossack family, born in 1905, and became a "Soviet man." He received his education under Soviet power and became a biologist, working also as a "consultant" for the GPU (secret police.) By the time of the war, he was a leading official in the Soviet pharmaceutical industry, and was entrusted with visits to England and the U.S. to learn how to manufacture penicillin. He remained quite loyal to the USSR, but doubts began to surface after the war, and he defected to England in 1948. The memoir, however, represents the experiences of one quite loyal to the regime.

Burrell, George. An American Engineer Looks at Russia . Boston, 1932. 324 pp.

Burrell worked for 18 months as a petroleum engineer in 1931-32, headquartered in Grozny (capital of Chechnya). A critical but supportive observer of the Soviet industrialization effort, he describes many aspects of life and work in the period of the five-year plan.

Ciliga , Anton. The Russian Enigma . London, 1940. 304 pp.

An Italian communist, Ciliga went to the USSR in 1926, where he participated in Communist International politics and witnessed the climax of the opposition movements. He taught for a time at the Communist University, and observed the collectivization campaign and first five-year plan. He was arrested in 1930 and first imprisoned as a spy, then exiled to the Urals.

Fischer, Markoosha . My Lives in Russia . New York, 1944. 269 pp.

A supporter of the Soviet Union, Fischer had left Russia before 1914 because of her opposition to the tsarist regime; she returned in 1922 and lived there from 1927 to 1939 as the wife of the American foreign correspondent Louis Fischer. Her narrative focuses on living in Moscow in the 1930s as a keen observer of events around her, as a member of the literary elite, and as the mother of two boys who grew up and went to school in the USSR of the five-year plans and purges.

Hindus, Maurice. Broken Earth . New York, 1926. 287 pp.

Hindus was a sympathizer of the socialist revolution who returned to his native village and to Russia several times and reported on what he encountered for readers back in the United States. In this account, he visited his native village at a time when socialism and capitalism were competing for the allegiance of the peasantry, seen in his eyes as combat between the new and the old. He describes his encounters with various village types, the new youth, women, and the new socialist state farms. A conversational tone attempts to capture the flavor of the arguments he heard while visiting his old village.

Hindus, Maurice. Red Bread: Collectivization in a Russian Village . Allahabad, 1945. (Reprint 1988). 372 pp.

A journalist who had left Russia before the revolution and who returned as a sympathizer of the Soviet regime, Hindus revisited his native village in 1929-30, where he describes the collectivization campaign and the reaction of the villagers to it.

Körber , Lili . Life in a Soviet Factory . Translated by Claude W. Sykes. London, 1933. 280 pp.

A German radical and member of the Society of Authors, Körber spent two months as a worker at Leningrad's Putilov factory from July to August 1931, at the height of the first five-year plan. In a novelesque account, she describes work, daily life, culture, politics, bureaucracy, and her encounters with the GPU.

Kopelev , Lev. The Education of a True Believer . Translated by Gary Kern. New York, 1980. 328 pp.

Kopelev became an important dissident in the 1970s until his expulsion to Germany. He was an associate of Solzhenitsyn and his character appears in Solzhenitsyn's novel The First Circle . Kopelev , a philologist by training, wrote several memoirs. This one describes his youth and upbringing in the 1920s, his schooling, his relationship to the Jewish rituals of his family, his sense of Ukrainian identity, his formative years as an intellectual. He joined the party and aided in the collectivization and grain collection drives of the 1930s before entering Kharkov University in 1933. This memoir ends with the beginnings of the disappearance of his friends to the purges in 1937.

Kopelev , Lev. Ease My Sorrows: A Memoir . Translated by Antonina W. Bouis . New York, 1983.

This volume of Kopelev's memoirs deals with his imprisonment between 1947 and 1953 in a special labor camp that functioned as a closed laboratory for the Soviet military. Here he worked on voice-decoding technology. Among his prisonmates was a mathematician, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who used this prison as the center piece of what I think is his best novel, The First Circle . Kopelev is the model for the character Lev Rubin.

Kravchenko , Victor. I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official . New York, 1946. 481 pp.

A Soviet official who defected to the United States in 1944 when posted to Washington, this Ukrainian engineer and Communist party official defends his choice by relating his childhood on the banks of the Dnieper, his passion for freedom unleashed by the revolution and civil war, his enthusiasm as a member of the Komsomol and Communist party, his work as an industrial specialist during the five-year plans, his service in the munitions industry during the second world war, and his growing doubts about the legitimacy of the Soviet system.

Larina , Anna. This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin's Widow . New York, 1991. 384 pp.

Larina became the young wife of Nikolai Bukharin, one of the leading Bolsheviks throughout the 1920s and by 1930 a veteran oppositionist. The narrative relates their life together as simultaneously members of the Soviet elite in the 1930s and as victims of Stalin's purges, with special attention paid to the process of the terror, Beria, prison, prison camps, and Stalin.

Leder , Mary M. My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back . Bloomington, 2001, edited by Laurie Bernstein. 344 pp. Claimed 3 March 2014

Leder moved with her parents from California to the Jewish autonomous republic of Birobidzhan as a teenager , but she soon flew the coop for the bright lights of Moscow in the mid-1930s. Her story recounts her life and loves, amidst purges, war, and young motherhood. The book offers a microcosm of Soviet history and a window into everyday life and culture in the Stalin era.

Lyons, Eugene. Assignment in Utopia. New York, 1937. 658 pp.

Lyons was a U.S. journalist, sympathetic to radical causes, who began reporting from the USSR in 1927. His memoir describes his experience with American radicalism from 1919-1927, and covers the major developments in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1933, including the political oppositions, collectivization, industrialization, cultural politics, famine, and includes a notorious interview with Stalin. Lyons was expelled from the country in 1933.

Mandelshtam , Nadezhda . Hope against Hope . Translated by Max Hayward. New York, 1970. 431 pp.

The widow of the brilliant Russian poet Osip Mandelshtam , this memoir tells the story of his persecution by the NKVD from 1934 until his arrest in 1937. She poignantly describes the life of persecution, interrogation, and uncertainty all the while emphasizing the creative genius of Mandelshtam and his zeal to write poet, and hers to memorize his, in this terrible period. An evocative memoir of survival and loss, this volume was followed by her Hope Abandoned in 1974, which tells the story of Mandelshtam before 1934, and hers after he disappeared into the camps. (Her first name, Nadezhda , means "hope" in Russian.) One of the most beautiful literary memoirs of the period.

Mochulsky , Fyodor Vasilevich . Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir . Edited and translated by Deborah Kaple . Oxford, 2011. 225 pp. Claimed 3 February 2014

Mochulsky (1918-1999) lived his life in the USSR as a Communist party member and a diplomat. At age 22, he was sent to the Gulag in the Far North as a prison supervisor for a work crew. He describes the conditions in the camps from the point of view of a boss, not a prisoner. His story reflects on the question how apparently “ordinary men” can participate in extraordinarily evil actions.

Petrov , Vladimir. Escape from the Future . Bloomington, 1973. 470 pp.

Arrested in 1935 as a young university student in Leningrad, Petrov spent the next years in the gold fields of Kolyma, in the Soviet Far East. He was released during the war and recounts his journey back to European Russia, and then to the U.S., providing a novelist's eye view (and a hostile one) of Soviet society at the end of the war. When he wrote these memoirs, Petrov was a senior Russian historian at George Washington University.

Robinson, Robert, with Jonathan Slevin . Black on Red: A Black American's 44 Years inside the Soviet Union . Washington, D.C., 1988. 436 pp.

Robinson, a skilled machinist from Detroit, went to the USSR in 1930 to work in the industrialization of the Soviet Union. Assigned to the Stalingrad Tractor Plant, he witnessed the industrialization of the country, the Great Purges, the war, the death of Stalin, and the regime of Khrushchev. With perceptive comments on racism in the USSR, Robinson describes life in a Soviet factory and provides observations on a wide range of the Soviet experience. He left the country in 1974.

Rosenberg, Suzanne. A Soviet Odyssey . New York, 1988. 212 pp.

Daughter of militant Bolshevik parents, Rosenberg followed them to Canadian emigration, and returned with them to the USSR when she was 16 years old, in 1931. She describes life among the intellectuals and artists of Moscow in the 1930s, the coming of war, and the political crackdown after the war, in which first her friends and husband were arrested as part of the campaign against "cosmopolitanism" (which was usually a code word for Jews) and then she herself was arrested. She was released from prison with the death of Stalin in 1953, and left the USSR for Canada in 1986.

Rukeyser, Walter. Working for the Soviets: an American Engineer in Russia . London, 1932. 286 pp.

A mining engineer who travelled to the USSR in August 1929 on a consulting contract with the Soviet asbestos industry, Rukeyser spent about a year in this work, and describes his travels to the Urals, his contacts with the industrial bureaucracy, negotiations between Western firms and Soviet bureaucrats, the GPU, his impressions of workers, and the state of work in the mines.

Smith, Andrew. I Was a Soviet Worker . Supplemented by Maria Smith. New York, 1936. 298 pp. Claimed 3 March 2014

An American trade union organizer of Slovak background, Smith spent three years as a worker at Moscow's Elektrozavod from 1932 to 1935. He describes many aspects of Soviet life in the early thirties, including factory life and labor, health care, women, children, daily life, and shopping. Many vignettes are added by his wife, Maria Smith, whose illnesses provoked their desire to leave the USSR and return to the United States. Smith describes an extended voyage down the Volga as far as the Caspian city of Astrakhan, as well as his growing disillusionment with the USSR and his attempts to leave.

Weissberg , Alexander. The Accused . Translated by Edward Fitzgerald. New York, 1951. 518 pp.

One of the first memoirs of the purge and prison system to be published. Weissberg was an Austrian scientist who moved to the USSR in 1931. Arrested in 1937, he uses his prison experience to reflect on the past events in the USSR, condemning the Soviet system. He was deported to Germany in 1940 after 3 years in prison.

Witkin , Zara. An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia: the Memoirs of Zara Witkin , 1932-1934. Edited with an introduction by Michael Gelb. Berkeley, 1991. 363 pp.

Witkin went to the Soviet Union in 1932 when he was 31 years old, an ardent believer in the Soviet project of refashioning humankind. He moved among the expatriate circles of Moscow, and counted among his friends Eugene Lyons; he also began a love affair with a Soviet actress, whom the editor, Gelb, interviewed in Moscow in 1989 (see the introduction). As an engineer, Witkin was assigned to the factory-building trust and describes his work and conflicts with the industrialization process, including many nasty encounters with the OGPU. He describes an excursion to the Caucasus and his difficulties in leaving the USSR in 1934.

Yakir , Pyotr . A Childhood in Prison . Ed. Robert Conquest. London, 1972. 155 pp.

The son of a Red Army general who was purged in the 1930s, Yakir grew up to become an important individual in the dissident movement, facing his own show trial for seditious behavior in 1973. In this memoir of his childhood and youth, he recounts his banishment to a children’s colony of disgraced persons.

III. War and Era of Post-Stalin Reform

Berezhkov , Valentin . History in the Making: Memoirs of World War II Diplomacy. Moscow, 1983. 493 pp.

Berezhkov was a young engineer who was tapped to serve as Stalin's interpreter during World War II, and he accompanied Stalin to the major allied conferences. He also served as interpreter in 1940 in Berlin, during the period of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Note the date of publication of this memoir: 1983, by Progress Publishers in Moscow: in other words, it appeared at the height of the era of stagnation with the official imprimatur of the Soviet government.

Burlatsky , Fedor . Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring . Translated by Daphne Skillen . London, 1991. 286 pp.

A political adviser to Khrushchev from 1960 to 1965, Burlatsky's narrative describes his association with some of the Soviet leaders including Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Andropov. He discusses the period of the post-Stalin thaw, the 20th Party Congress and the anti-Stalin efforts, international relations with Yugoslavia and Albania, the Cuban missile crisis, summit meetings, the fall of Khrushchev and the rise of Brezhnev. Burlatsky was especially close to inner circles from 1960 to 1965, and he carefully describes Kremlin politics in this period.

Djilas, Milovan . Conversations with Stalin. Translated by Michael B. Petrovich . New York, 1962. 211 pp. Claimed 27 January 2014

As a young representative of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Djilas made three trips to Moscow between 1944 and 1948, and his memoir charts the deteriorating relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia. Along the way, he encounters the Soviet elite, including Stalin, Molotov, Khrushchev, and Zhukov, and describes them and their policies. Later, Djilas would write an important account of the bureaucratization of communism, The New Class.

Ehrenburg, Ilya . The War, 1941-1945 . Cleveland, 1964. 198 pp.

Ehrenburg was a major Soviet novelist and journalist who covered Western Europe before 1941, and served as a war correspondent from 1941-1945. This portion of his 6-volume memoir reports on the home front in 1941, conversations with soldiers, and his reporting for the army newspaper Red Star. As a war correspondent, Ehrenburg was based in Moscow, and traveled from time to time to the various fronts, including the western front as the Red Army began to drive the Germans out of their country after 1943.

Ehrenburg, Ilya . Post-War Years, 1945-1954. Translated by Tatiana Shebunina . Cleveland, 1967. 349 pp.

Ehrenburg was a major Soviet novelist and journalist who covered Western Europe before 1941, and served as a war correspondent from 1941-1945. He became a leading activist in the World Peace Council after 1945. This portion of his 6-volume memoir observes events in eastern Europe, the Nuremburg trial, the US, China, the Jewish Anti-fascist committee, as well as reflects on life at home in this period, the death of Stalin, and the craft of memoir writing.

Ginzburg , Eugenia. Within the Whirlwind . Trans. Ian Boland. New York, 1981. 423 pp.

This is the sequel to Journey into the Whirlwind . Ginzburg recounts her life after having survived the Gulag, thanks to her assignment in the camp hospital, where she meets her second husband, a camp physician. Sentenced to permanent exile in the city of Magadan in the Soviet Far East, this book describes the next 15 years of her life, her adoption of a daughter and return to her profession as a teacher, and it continues the optimistic theme of faith that Stalin’s wrongs will eventually be put right.

Gorbatov , Aleksandr V. Years Off My Life: The Memoirs of a General of the Soviet Army, A.V. Gorbatov . New York, 1965. 222 pp.

A veteran of the army from 1912, Gorbatov describes his early years, and his experiences in the Russian Revolution, Civil War, and peacetime army. He was arrested in 1937 in the general purge, served time in the Kolyma gold fields, but was released in 1940 and reinstated, serving with distinction as a general in the Red Army's offensive toward Berlin.

Gromyko, Andrei. Memories . Translated by Harold Shukman . Foreword by Henry Kissinger. New York, 1989. 414 pp.

Gromyko served as Khrushchev's foreign minister and was a key figure in the diplomatic struggles of the Cold War, including the Cuban Missile Crisis. His memoir reflects on his life as a young communist in the revolution, his student days in the 1930s, his service in the diplomatic corps in Washington during World War II, and his many engagements as a diplomat in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and engaging with U.S. foreign policy.

Grossman, Vassili . The Years of War (1941-1945) . Moscow, 1946. Translated by Elizabeth Donnelly and Rose Prokofiev. 451 pp. Claimed 3 February 2014

Grossman served as a war correspondent throughout the war, and his dispatches were reworked and collected in this publication that celebrated the war effort of commanders and troops on the front-lines . He stayed with the troops through the retreat of 1941, and witnessed the defense of Stalingrad in 1942-43, then moving with the advancing Soviet Army to the west in 1944-45. He would later recast his war experiences in a powerful novel, Life and Fate , that earned the ire of the Soviet censors in the 1970s. This personal narrative itself is very novelesque in its style.

Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich . Khrushchev Remembers . Boston, 1970. Translated by Strobe Talbott . 639 pp. Claimed 24 February 2014

Was it a hoax? The purported memoirs of the deposed Soviet leader, dictated, taped, and smuggled to the west by KGB operatives, and transcribed there by Strobe Talbott , a Time magazine journalist (later President Clinton's adviser on Russia). These juicy tidbits covered his early career and party work, including his role in the great terror, the war, Stalin's last years, the 20th party congress at which he began the process of destalinization, and Khrushchev's encounters with the outside world, the first Soviet leader to travel abroad: Korea, Tito, Suez, Berlin, China, Castro.

Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich . Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament . Translated by Strobe Talbott . Boston, 1974. 602 pp.

More Khrushchev tapes, released after the former leader's death in 1971. Now verified by voice-print tests of the tapes deposited at Columbia University, this volume discusses Khrushchev's firing of Marshall Zhukov, scientists, the intelligentsia, domestic policies (housing and the Virgin Lands), eastern Europe, China, travels in the developing world, his encounters with Eisenhower, the U-2 incident, Kennedy, Berlin, and Cuba.

Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich . Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes . Translated by Jerrold L. Schechter. Boston, 1990. 219 pp.

Still more Khrushchev, the bits that were too hot to publish in the 1970s. NOT TO BE USED AS A PERSONAL NARRATIVE, but available to supplement a reading of either of the two earlier Khrushchev memoirs. Covers the terror and 20th Party Congress, the war, relations with west and east, Cuba and Berlin, and the intellientsia .

Maisky , Ivan. Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador: the War, 1939-43 . New York, 1968. 408 pp.

Maisky served as the Soviet ambassador to Britain from 1933 to 1943. In this memoir, he recounts the phony war, Battle of Britain, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, and the diplomatic struggle for a second front. He was recalled to Moscow in 1943, where the memoir ends.

Petkevich , Tamara. Memoir of a Gulag Actress . Translated by Yasha Klots and Ross Ufberg . DeKalb, 2010. 481 pp.

Born in 1920, the author spent 7 years in the Gulag beginning in 1943, where she eventually managed to be assigned to a traveling theatre troupe. The memoir recounts her youth as a firm believer in Communism, followed by arrest in 1943 for political crimes, and the conditions she endured in many camps across the USSR. As a memoir of the Gulag, this was hugely successful in post-Soviet Russia for its portrayal of the prison experience and culture.

Shepilov , Dmitrii . The Kremlin’s Scholar: A Memoir of Soviet Politics under Stalin and Khrushchev . Translated by Anthony Austin. Edited by Stephen V. Bittner. New Haven, 2007. 404 pp.

Shepilov , Soviet success story, was born in Soviet Central Asia in 1905, and rose to become a lawyer, economist, and Communist Party official under Stalin and Khrushchev. He survived the Stalin purges of the late 1940s and became a supporter of Khrushchev, until he became disillusioned. Shepilov joined an attempt to oust Khrushchev in 1957, and spent the rest of his career out of power. The memoir was written in the mid-1960s as a kind of self-justification.

Zhukov, Georgy . The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov . New York, 1971. 692 pp.

Zhukov emerged as the leader of the Red Army and architect of its victory over the Germans in World War II. This memoir, highly censored, describes his childhood and youth, his experience in World War I and the civil war as a soldier, the peacetime army up to 1939, and his wartime experiences, ending with the capture of Berlin in 1945.

IV. From Dissidence to Perestroika to the Fall of the USSR

Alexeyeva , Ludmilla , and Paul Goldberg, The Thaw Generation: Coming of Age in the Post-Stalin Era . Pittsburgh, 1990. 339 pp.

Alexeyeva was a central player in the “kitchen culture” of the 1960s that led to the movement for human rights in the 1970s, one of the most notable of the dissident groupings. Her memoir recounts the personal politics and personal lives of a brave and persecuted generation of urban intellectuals.

Amalrik , Andrei. Involuntary Journey to Siberia . Translated by Manya Harari and Max Hayward. New York, 1970. 297 pp.

Amalrik was an early leader of the dissident movement, and recounts in this memoir his experiences from 1965 of KGB surveillance, interrogation, arrest, and exile to a Siberian village. His accounts of life on a collective farm are among the most chilling in the literature . He was allowed to return to Moscow in 1966, and later was permitted to emigrate to western Europe. (He was killed in an automobile crash in Spain in 1980 on the way to a human rights conference.)

Amalrik , Andrei. Notes of a Revolutionary . Translated by Guy Daniels. New York, 1982. 343 pp.

This second installment of Amalrik's reflections takes his story from his return to Moscow in 1966, describing the underground cultural world of dissident Moscow, his repeated encounters with KGB harassment and surveillance, another arrest, trial and exile in 1970, and continuing battles with the KGB until he was exiled from the country in 1976.

Bukovsky , Vladimir. To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter . Translated by Michael Scammell . New York, 1979. 438 pp.

A leading Soviet dissident who spent much of his adult life in prison, Bukovsky was released from prison in exchange for Chilean political prisoners in 1976, at the age of 34. His perceptive memoir describes his childhood and growing up in the late Khrushchev thaw, and his increasing involvement in marginally acceptable activities such as a club for nonconformist artists and youth festivals. He ran into trouble with the KGB beginning in 1961, was expelled from the university and Young Communist League, arrested in 1963, and released in 1965 as a mental patient. He joined the protests against the repression of writers in 1966, and found himself in and out of jail and psychiatric hospitals from then until his exchange in 1976.

Dobrynin , Anatoly. In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents. New York, 1995. 672 pp.

Dobrynin served as the Soviet ambassador to the US from 1962 until 1986, and his memoir describes his experience dealing with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan.

Golyakhaovsky , Vladimir. Russian Doctor . Translated by Michael Sylwester and Eugene Ostrovsky . New York, 1984. 312 pp.

The author was an orthopedic surgeon who grew up and was educated in late and post-Stalin USSR. The memoir recounts his medical training, early career and family life, dangers and opportunities of being a Jewish professional in the 1950s and 1960s. Provides a portrait of “normal” lives of the Soviet intelligentsia in a time of hope and renewal, and the growing pressures that led many Jews to seek to leave the country. The author emigrated with his family in 1979.

Gorbachev, Mikhail. Memoirs. New York, 1996. 769 pp.

The last General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and President of the Soviet Union tells his story. The last 600 pages concern his activities as General Secretary from 1985 to 1991.

Gorokhova , Elena. A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir . New York, 2009. 308 pp.

Gorokhova , who now lives in the US, describes her family, childhood, and youth growing up in Leningrad in the 1960s and 1970s: family life, student life, sex life, with stories about the experiences of her parents and grandparents also. She became seduced by the English language at an early age and realized this could be her ticket out of the USSR. She emigrated with her American husband in 1980.

Grigorenko , Petro. Memoirs. Translated by Thomas P. Whitney. New York, 1982. 462 pp.

Grigorenko was a Ukrainian military man, joining the Red Army in 1932 and serving first in the far east and then distinguishing himself in World War II. The bulk of his memoir concerns his growing disillusionment with the Communist Party, his criticism of the party in 1961, arrest in 1964, and involvement in the human rights movement after his release in 1966.

Gurevich , David. From Lenin to Lennon: A Memoir of Russia in the Sixties . New York, 1991. 307 pp.

Son of a Soviet Air Force officer, the author spent his childhood on air bases around the country, finishing high school in the small closed town of Syzran. The memoir recounts his university years at the School of Foreign Languages in Moscow in the 1960s, his obsession with rock and roll, his loves and family quarrels, his work as an interpreter and translator, and his efforts to emigrate. He left the USSR in 1976.

Kaminskaya , Dina. Final Judgment: My Life as a Soviet Defense Attorney. Translated by . New York, 1982. 364 pp.

A look at the Soviet judicial system as well as the inside story of an attorney who helped defend dissidents, beginning with Vladimir Bukovsky in 1967. The memoir describes her law school education in the 1930s, the system of justice, and encounters with many of the leading moments in the history of the Soviet opposition. She was expelled from the bar in 1971.

Khanga , Yelena, with Susan Jacoby. Soul to Soul : A Black Russian-American Family 1865-1992 . New York, 1992. 319 pp.

Daughter of an African-American communist woman who came to the USSR with her parents in the 1930s, and an African politican , Khanga's memoir traces her complicated family history (her grandparents included Russian Jews and African-American planters in the south) and the story of growing up in Moscow in the 1960s and 1970s, a Soviet teenager at the height of the Cold War. She studied journalism at Moscow State University and became a working journalist in the period of glasnost.

Ligachev , Egor . Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin: The Memoirs of Yegor Ligachev . New York, 1993. 369 pp.

The number 2 man in the Kremlin during Gorbachev's regime, Ligachev was known as a communist die-hard and old-fashioned Soviet man. His memoir covers his arrival as a Kremlin insider in 1983, his encounters with top-ranking communists, Gorbachev's regime and the crises faced by Gorbachev's "misguided" policies.

Orlov , Yuri. Dangerous Thoughts: Memoirs of a Russian Life . Translated by Thomas P. Whitney. New York, 1991. 348 pp.

One of the leaders of the human rights movement and Helsinki Watch group in the 1960s through 1980s, Orlov describes his upbringing in rural Russia, his experiences in the war as a factory worker and then officer (he turned 18 in 1942). After the war, he was tapped for the prestigious physics institute, but soon ran afoul of authorities for "ideological impurity." He suffered eighteen years of exile to Armenia, returning to Moscow in 1972 to plunge into the human rights movement. He was sentenced several times to prison and labor camps, and finally left the USSR in 1989.

Nekrich , Aleksandr . Forsake Fear: Memoirs of an Historian . Translated by Donald Linebaugh . Boston, 1991. 293 pp.

Nekrich was trained as an historian in the early years of the Cold War, participating in the efforts of Soviet historians to respond to Khrushchev’s Thaw and to revise the standard view of Soviet history. His controversial study of the 1941 German invasion, very critical of Stalin’s role, led to his expulsion from the Institute of History and his association with the dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Pankin , Boris. The Last Hundred Days of the Soviet Union . London, 1996. Translated by Alexei Pankin . 282 pp.

Pankin was appointed Gorbachev's foreign minister in mid-1991, and his memoir recounts his attempts to maintain an activist foreign policy in the months between the August 1991 coup that nearly toppled Gorbachev, and the dissolution of the USSR on Christmas Day 1991, that removed Gorbachev's country out from under him. Among the activities Pankin recounts are human rights negotiations, Middle East issues, and arms control.

Sakharov, Andrei. Memoirs . Translated by Richard Lourie . New York, 1990. 773 pp.

Physicist and developer of the hydrogen bomb in the Soviet Union, Sakharov was also a great humanist and became the leading figure in the human rights movement from the 1960s until his death in 1991. His memoir recounts his childhood and youth, his wartime experience and involvement in the nuclear physics group, his encounters with Khrushchev, the turning point of 1968, and his increasing participation in the human rights movement and Helsinki Watch groups. During the last years of the Brezhnev regime, he and his wife Elena Bonner were exiled to the closed city of Gorky so that they could not communicate with western journalists. They were permitted to return to Gorbachev to Moscow, and Sakharov continued his activism as an elected member of the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989, denouncing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Shevardnadze, Eduard. The Future Belongs to Freedom . Translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. New York, 1991. 237 pp.

Shevardnadze served as Gorbachev's foreign minister in developing the policy of "New Thinking." He resigned from Gorbachev's inner circle in 1991 after warning of an impending coup d'etat against the perestroika policy, and returned to his native Georgia, where he was eventually elected president. The memoir traces his life and political career, focusing on his relationship with Gorbachev, the policy of New Thinking, arms negotiations, Chernobyl, and the August 1991 coup against Gorbachev.

Young, Cathy (Ekaterina Jung). Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood. New York, 1989.

The daughter of successful Moscow professionals, Young left the USSR when her parents emigrated to the US in 1980; she was seventeen. The memoir, written after she graduated from Rutgers University in 1988, looks at growing up in socialist Moscow, school, gender attitudes, sex and the Soviet teenager, and describes how she became a "closet dissident," reading forbidden books and learning to think freely.

Zyuganov, Gennady. My Russia: The Political Autobiography of Gennady Zyuganov . Ed. Vadim Medish . Armonk, N.Y., 1997. 198 pp.

The political manifesto as well as autobiography of the leader of the post-communist Communist Party, architect of the brown-red coalitions that seriously challenged the electoral supremacy of Boris Yeltsin’s reformers during the 1990s. This is a document of a true party believer written during a period of competition for political ideas.

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ebook ∣ An American Military Attaché in the Ussr 1979-1981

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7 Memorable Memoirs for High School Studies
Carolyn Ferrell's memoir describes her college summer job: working on an estate in the Hamptons. Ferrell shares vivid details of her experience, recollecting the disdain she felt from her employers. Years later, Ferrell has become a successful author and travels to the Hamptons as a guest for the first time. During her trip out to the ...
How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide
7. How to Write a Memoir: Edit, edit, edit! Once you're satisfied with the story, begin to edit the finer things (e.g. language, metaphor, and details). Clean up your word choice and omit needless words, and check to make sure you haven't made any of these common writing mistakes.
Some Good Memoirs For High Schoolers To Read
Wiesel's writing is spare and powerful, and the book is a great choice for high school students who are interested in history and social justice. 10. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Angela's Ashes is a memoir that tells the story of the author's childhood in poverty-stricken Ireland.
How to Teach Memoir Writing in High School: 3 Tips for Teaching Memoir
How to Teach Memoir Writing: 3 Tips for Teaching Memoir Writing Teaching Memoir Writing: Use a Memoir as a Mentor Text. A great way to introduce students into memoir writing is by reading a memoir in the classroom. For example, Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, interviewed her mother to recount their lives while she was growing up ...
63 Memoir Writing Prompts With Examples
Let's jump in. 1. "They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.". From Night, a first-hand account of the WWII Holocaust by Elie Wiesel. 2. "My mother is scraping a piece of burned toast out of the kitchen window, a crease of annoyance across her forehead.". From Toast: The Story of a Boy's ...
PDF Sample Memoir
Sample Memoir ReadWriteThink: Making the Cut Created by Rebecca Addleman The Unexpected Dangers of Roasting Marshmallows Autumn is like eating a hot fudge sundae. It smells good, looks good, and tastes even better. Sue, my roommate, and I had invited a couple friends over for dinner before our weekly Wednesday get-together in town.
PDF UNIT: "HOW TO WRITE A MEMOIR"
importance of memoirs while considering personal exploration of transition and hope • •Text Use: Read, comprehend, evaluate, and write memoirs This task assesses: • Comprehending memoirs • Evaluating memoirs by applying the recommendations of other authors Read and understand text: • Lesson 1 (sample tasks included)
Memoir Unit Plan for High School
Memoir Unit Plan Summary. This memoir unit plan can serve as your guide as you teach high school students about the art of memoir writing. The unit begins by framing the memoir in its larger ...
6 Word Memoirs
Homework/Assignment, Lesson Plan Level: Middle School, High School Tags: Memoir; Writing; Log in to ... Media Formats: Downloadable docs, Video. Show More Show Less. Version History. PDF 6 Word Memoir Assignment and Rubric Download View. PDF Examples of Six Word Memoirs-- ... Check out these examples of six word memoirs. See which ones stand ...
PDF The Memoir Assignment
Your Memoir Must: Be 2-3 pages in length. Be typed, double-spaced, with size 12 font, 1" margins all around. Have a creative, catchy, original title. Have an exciting beginning that draws the reader in. Start in an interesting place and hook your reader in the first sentence. You can use action, a vivid description, or dialogue, for instance.
Exploring the Power of Language with Six-Word Memoirs
11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities. 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
12 Must-Read Memoirs for Teachers and Students
This intimate memoir takes your students into the heart of the conflict in Sudan, beginning with the struggle of three children determined to escape it. This story spins a tale of terror, courage, spirit, and the loss of childhood to the atrocities of war. Order They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky. 4. Always Running.
Six in Schools
Since we launched the Six-Word Memoir project, educators across the world have found six words to be a terrific classroom assignment and catalyst for self-expression. Here we celebrate students' work from classrooms across the world. ... English Classes at Hononegah Community High School, Rockton, Illinois . October 6, 2022
21 Memoir Examples to Inspire Your Own
Examples. Walden by Henry David Thoreau. In July of 1845, Henry David Thoreau walked into the woods and didn't come out for two years, two months, and two days. This is the seminal memoir that resulted. Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer.
Teaching Adolescents to Write Personal Memoirs
Memoirs should move seamlessly between the sea and the mountain. 1. Sorting Out Fact and Truth. When I was young, maybe five or six, my father took me to play in the park, and a dog bit me. I took this memory and developed it into a memoir for a high school writing assignment.
8 Meaningful Memoirs for Middle School
Here are 8 memoirs to incorporate into your ELA curriculum to engage your students in the experiences of others, and grow their reading comprehension skills. "The Drive-In Movies" by Gary Soto (6th Grade) In this memoir, Gary Soto recounts a Saturday from his childhood. Soto describes how he tried to quickly complete all of his chores so ...
Writing Memoirs In High School Teaching Resources
4.9. (31) $16.50. $12.50. Zip. This product contains all of the materials for a 16-Day Creative Writing Unit for a "Childhood Memoir" assignment aligned to Common Core for ELA 9-10 and 11-12: 1.) 15 Printable Documents including overall instructions, peer critique rubrics, revision instructions, self evaluations, overall evaluations ...
Tiny Memoir Contest for Students: Write a 100-Word Personal Narrative
You must be a student ages 13 to 19 in middle school or high school to participate, and all students must have parent or guardian permission to enter. Please see the F.A.Q. section for additional ...
PDF Teaching Students To Read &Write A Memoir
In order to write a proficient Memoir, the student should be able to: narrow topic and focus. identify audience and purpose. use prewriting strategies e.g. brainstorm, visualize, draw, freewrite, web, cluster, and other graphic aids. use an individual voice. develop characters through thoughts, characters, words.
Memoir Writing in Middle School: Part 1
Day 7: Objective: SWBAT recognize how memoir writers use descriptive language and sensory details to create a sense of place. Read the first chapter in Marshfield Dreams, "Marshfield," and have students highlight the words and phrases that help the reader visualize the places Fletcher talks about.Have students practice "Writing Like Ralph" and create their own piece about a place ...
memoir.list.99
The memoir describes her law school education in the 1930s, the system of justice, and encounters with many of the leading moments in the history of the Soviet opposition. She was expelled from the bar in 1971. Khanga, Yelena, with Susan Jacoby. Soul to Soul: A Black Russian-American Family 1865-1992. New York, 1992. 319 pp.
Schoology Learning
The hub for personalized learning: Connect students, families, teachers, and the community to learning across your entire district. More than just assignments, messaging, and calendars, Schoology Learning is a one-stop platform for educators to personalize your district's curriculum to the needs of each student.
Moscow Memoir by James R. Holbrook
This memoir portrays the ups and downs in the life and work of an American military attach in the Soviet Union from 1979-1981. The Iranian Hostage Crisis, the failed attempt to rescue those hostages, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the American-led boycott of the Moscow Summer Olympics all occurred during this period.
Moscow High School... Class of 1964, A Classmember Page
Class of 1964, A Classmember Page. Moscow Bear. Spouce: DeYaWana B Grizzley, June 10, 1966. Kids: Buff Bear, March 1, 1973. The past 40 years have been bearable. The hair is a little grayer and quite a bit thinner but I've added a couple of pounds to make up for that.
Moscow High School Class of 1964, In memory of our classmates
In Memory Video. Some of our classmates have passed from this earth since we parted ways in 1964. This page is intended to honor their memory. If you would like to add a note to their page (e.g. a tribute or acknowledgement), please send it to me and I'll add it for you. If you know of other classmates that have died, please contact the ...