Research Proposal

A Foreigner Unto Myself—What Memoir, Autobiography, and Second Language

Acquisition Reveal about the Self

Susan Lynch

BIS390

Instructor: Andrea Zach Rutan

4/17/2013

A Foreigner Unto Myself—What Memoir, Autobiography, and Second Language

Acquisition Reveal about the Self

Project Description

An autobiography is written after a life of accomplishment or notoriety in order to

both validate and detail a personal journey. The memoir is also written with a similar goal

in mind, and both set out intent on truthful, if artificially constructed, narrative that

explores and examines the person that came to be. Learning to speak a second language

—for me it was Spanish—is also a type of journey, one that engages both memory and

writing.

The distinction between the three is neither small nor large. Memoir and

autobiography might have comparable elements; however, what sets memoir apart,

according to Dawn Latta Kirby and Dan Kirby, authors of “Contemporary Memoir: A

21st-Century Genre Ideal for Teens,” is its noticeable “first-person voice” and a flexibility

to be written by anyone, of any age, who wants to define a specific chapter of his or her

life. Furthermore, the authors write, a well-written memoir becomes a powerful story

when it reflects the “honest unfolding of human struggles and triumphs from which

important lessons are learned” (22-23).

What entwines all three is introspective analysis that engages the memory and in

that way allows a new voice to emerge. But what happens when memory and writing

about it translate into something different, foreign perhaps? Is the autobiographer and

memoirist then a deliberate immigrant from the past? After all, the point of writing an

autobiography or memoir is to document the transformation of a journey. But who can

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really determine if the translation from past to present is exact when time and language

can be interpreted in different ways?

In order to explore this idea, and complete the BIS program, my final creative

project will be to write a series of essays, partially in Spanish, which examine how the

past and present are translated, created, and re-created in self-reflective writing. Using

bestselling memoirs, specific autobiographies, and a select group of non-fiction books

(including English- and Spanish- language texts) for research, I will examine how each

author distinguishes his or her subject’s old and new selves through voice and language

in order to show how past and present selves are transformed.

The influence that memoir and autobiography have on the reader is not lost on the

authors who have written one or the other. Frank McCourt once said that he was only

able to realize “the significance of my own insignificant life”1 after writing his memoir,

and Mexican-American scholar and author Richard Rodriguez hoped that his

autobiography, Hunger of Memory, would have the power “to resonate with significance

for other lives” (7). These two authors were able to capture and translate the

transformation of a past self into a new self through memoir and autobiographical

writing. My final project essays will interlace past memories and Spanish, the language I

learned as an adult, to explore the notion that memoir, autobiography and second-

language acquisition are tools that helped me discover and also become the person I was

and person I am now.

1 Frank Mcourt, as quoted in William Grimes’s article, “Frank McCourt, Whose Irish Childhood Illuminated His Prose, Is Dead at 78.” New York Times 19, July, 2009. New York ed. A17. Print.

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Literature Review

The purpose of my research is to explore the narrative journey of personal

transformation in memoir and autobiography in relation to another kind of journey—

learning a foreign language. All three engage memory and thoughtful introspection in

order to translate the past into the present with a distinctive voice.

The memoir is a relatively new genre of creative non-fiction, unless you consider

Saint Augustine’s Confessions, written between AD 397 and AD 398, to be the first of its

kind. Confessions has been called both autobiography and memoir, because Augustine

writes about himself and his transformation from a rowdy teen and brazen young man

into to contemplative, serious and devout Christian. Augustine’s autobiography is the

story of how he found his place in the world; he wrote that one should not only speak to

God but also to the reader because “to hear you speaking about oneself is to know

oneself” (180).

Transformation in memoir and autobiography not only captures a span of time but

the emotional distance in between that can lead to healing. A review of Doctor Leslie

Master’s memoir, Naked: This is My Story, This is My Song, appeared in 2010 in the

Clarion Reviews and described how the act of writing (a memoir) not only helped

Masters deal with the physical pain related to injuries she sustained in a car accident but

writing also helped to heal her emotional pain. A “passionate storyteller” is one who is

able to inspire, inform, encourage, and respect “the transformative healing power of a

story.” Masters believes that when telling a personal story from a place of honesty and

openness, the words take on qualities that not only have the power to restore, but an

ability to inform. When a writer exposes personal flaws and fears “with courage,”

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believes Masters, they hold the key to their own recovery and create a compassionate

kinship with the person who listens [the reader].

Exploiting personal flaws or demons in memoir and autobiography, if not crafted

courageously, might alter the characteristic of the genres and turn them into what Leigh

Gilmore, author of the “American Neoconfessional: Memoir, Self-help, and Redemption

on Oprah’s Couch,” calls the “neoconfessional” (657). Her article focuses on James

Frey's book “A Million Little Pieces” which had been repeatedly rejected by publishers

until Frey added : A Memoir after the title. That two-word phrase turned the narrative into

a bestseller and the author was invited on The Oprah Show. Frey’s memoir, Gilmore

states, fits the “redemption narrative” of a protagonist “who overcomes adversity,” except

Frey’s account of his addiction and arrests had been greatly exaggerated and in some

cases, never happened. He confessed again, not in another memoir but on another visit to

The Oprah Show. Although Frey set out to write a narrative based loosely on facts, his

embellishments created a person he pretended to know not a story of redemption or

transformation.

Using documentation to substantiate evidence helps to support a truthful personal

transformation. But what is the real truth in memoir and autobiography? Carolyn Kraus,

author of the essay “Proof of Life: Memoir, Truth, and Documentary Evidence,” could

not remember the exact narrative that took place between her and the father—a man she

had met twice in her life—or if on those two occasions if it was raining or sunny. Kraus

is adamant about documentation; if she had not saved the letters her father had written

her throughout the years (diatribes against society) she would not have been able to prove

that her father had in fact a brief corresponded with Albert Einstein (255). No matter

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what embellishments Krause adds to her manuscript, her work will never be exposed as a

untrue because she possesses “frail private documents,” and “dusty public-records” to

identify the stranger that was her father (268). Documents, diaries, journals, and letters

are just some of the souvenirs that validate our lived experiences and not only create a

database of evidence related to our past identity but can be a source of research that helps

a writer analyze his or her character(s).

Almost all of the books, essays, and articles I have read in relation to my project

proposal speak of the memoirist and autobiographer’s character development in relation

to his or her voice and how that identifying voice is conveyed through the narrative.

Shannon Forbes, who studied the different narrative voices in Frank McCourt’s memoir

Angela’s Ashes says that the way McCourt uses those voices “absolves” the need for

actual documentation while enabling him to tell a truthful story for two reasons: first,

because memoir in its intrinsic nature “suggests subjectivity rather than objectivity” in

the way that autobiography does not (1), and second, because “one cannot argue against

the form or shape events may take in one’s memory (2). Forbes analyzes McCourt's texts

using a technique that Judith Butler2 calls her “theory of performative identity” (2).  The

“complicated linguistic structures” used by McCourt in his narrative establishes his all

the reader needs to know about his character's identity. For example, it would be

impossible for McCourt to know the exact moment of his conception however when he

writes about it, he uses the “author as innocent child” voice, thereby clarifying the source

of the narrative. McCourt uses the same technique when he criticizes the Catholic Church

using “the unbiased chronicler” voice, and so on, managing multiple voices and language

2 Judith Butler is an author, philosopher and professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at University of California Berkeley.

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that identify his characters stages of life. Language, when used to identity stages of life

and cultural identity, is evident in all prose. Gail Bollin explains, in her 2001 review of

Luis Gabriel Aguilera’s memoir Gabriel’s Fire: A Memoir appearing in Multicultural

Education, that the specific “grammatical English” Aguilera uses to link language and

culture evokes an “accurate reflection” and “brilliantly illustrates” how words define not

just our experiences but also our environments.

Robert Langbaum’s essay, “Autobiography and Myth in Out of Africa” suggests

that Isak Dinesen’s novel Out of Africa is not “just another memoir of an interesting life.”

Although it was written after Dinesen left Africa, Langbaum argues that Dinesen would

not have been able to see Africa in the same light had she written the book while she was

there. Because Dinesen understands how to capture the emotional and physical places of

Africa using a distinguished tone, she is able “to show that life has significance” and it is

her recollections and how she voices them that ultimately justify the story.

Memoir and autobiography not only capture a personal moment and place in time

a narrative but according to Jennifer Jensen Wallach’s dissertation abstract,

“Remembering Jim Crow: The Literary Memoir as Historical Source Material” they also

serve as documentation for what was happening historically at the time of the narrative.

Although the focus of the memory is still addressed from a single point of view, the

perspective from which it is narrated offers “the potential to greatly enhance our

historical understanding.” Wallach believes that self-reflective writing not only speaks to

personal transformation but historical transformation as well and she bases her research

on memoirs written by “African Americans, by whites, by men, by women, and by

individuals with various points of views.”

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Historic transformation can also be identified by the language and tone a writer

uses in their narrative. Richard Teleky calls that voice the language of identity. In his

essay “Entering the Silence”: Voice, Ethnicity, and the Pedagogy of Creative Writing, he

says language and voice—even the silent voice, is “part of the transformative act” (207).

Teleky’s explains the relationship of language to identity is the validating component—

the key that helps the author understand what made them who they are. The

“transformative relation of silence to language and identity” is especially noticeable in

memoir and autobiography written by bilingual speakers in order to describe their

experiences learning to speak English in the United States. Teleky wonders why so many

immigrant children grow up to be writers and thinks writing is a coping mechanism to

deal with shame, shyness, and uncertainty that comes with being different and living in

the shadows of the “powerful majority culture” (210). The pressure to transform language

and culture involves decisions about identity; who are you when you speak the language

of another culture? Teleky cites authors who choose language as an agent of change

believing it solves “the confusion of silence with self-discovery” (214).

The current boom in creative-writing classes in colleges and universities is also

noted in Teleky’s essay. He says it is a telling sign that writing is one way to discover

one’s identity and mentions the importance of educators as the “agents of transformation”

(214). Some students might think they have little to say about themselves, but writing

about one’s childhood, says Teleky, is “such a potent subject because it can contain

something for everyone” and the compulsion to write a memoir—citing works published

by D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Wolff, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway—is “crucial to

twentieth-century fiction” (215).

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Who we are has everything to do with our language. It connects us to our culture

like a fetus to its mother. Cecilia Espinosa was born in Ecuador and has a long track

record working in the field of bilingual education. Her 2006 essay “Finding Memorable

Moments: Images and Identities in Autobiographical Writing” appearing in Language

Arts is focused is on the “issues of literacy and biliteracy” and the links between

creativity and literacy. She works with teachers and leads writing seminars, in both

Spanish and English, to help students learn to show rather than tell a story as a technique

to identity the voice in their narratives. Espinosa says the success of any creative writing

program, not only for Spanish speaking students, provides the practice and opportunity

“to tell their stories out loud, [and] learn to see where the good stories hide.” Like similar

approaches that other teachers take to introducing memoir study, Espinosa begins with a

notebook and encourages her students to share stories orally in class. Espinosa believes

that “second language learners” need to be affirmed and that their stories matter. The

memoirs Espinosa uses in her creative writing programs not only identify bilingual

speakers, they are age-specific in order to show how other writers captured their “fears,

and other universal themes.” She reiterates, in Spanish, the words of a colleague who tells

her class:

Sandra Cisneros3 escribe mucho sobre su vida.

Ella tiene una vida interesante, pero la razón por la cual

sus historias son únicas es porque ella escribe sobre

cosas que no parecen tan importantes, pero para ella sí

3 Sandra Cisneros is the author of The House on Mango Street among others. She is the founder of two foundations that serve writers and is the organizer of the Latino MacArthur Fellows. She has been honored with numerous awards including the MacArthur Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Texas Medal of the Arts. She has been writing for more than 45 years, publishing for more than 35, and earning her living by her pen for more than 18 years. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages and published internationally. www.sandracisneros.com

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son cosas importante. Ustedes van a ver que lo que ella

escribió es un pedacito de su vida, no un gran viaje o algo

así.4

The constant thread that runs through memoir and autobiography is the notion

everyone one of us has a unique story to tell because it is our story to tell. Author and

teacher, Amy Arnberg also noticed how enrapt her students became in her sixth-grade

class’s yearlong memoir study writing class. Even the most obstinate student, she notes in

her article, “A Study of Memoir,” who hated to write became caught up in the assignment

after listening to other students share their memories from childhood. Arnberg saw that

the more students shared, the less intimidated they became about writing and providing

each other with respectful feedback. They also learned how to listen to each other and

began to see the significance in the simple personal life event that occurred in each

other’s lives.

Author Megan Brown, who is an assistant professor of English at Drake

University, says she was never compelled to write or teach “personal writing” but,

because of the demand for a creative writing program at her university, along with a

teaching offer, she came to learn that self-reflective writing gave her students the tools to

explore, investigate, and find their creative voice. In her essay “The Memoir as

Provocation: A Case for “Me Studies” in Undergraduate Classes,” Brown notes that the

love of reading, and language, what was guided many of her students toward creative

writing. Brown suggests that for any writer, not just her students, the easiest subject to

write about is oneself. Our life, she states, is a narrative; we are who we are because of

4 Translation: “Sandra Cisneros writes a lot about her life. She has an interesting life, but what is unique about her stories is that she writes about things that don’t seem important, but for her these are important things. You are going to see how what she chose to write about is a little piece of her life, not a huge trip or anything like that.”

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our experiences and that makes our experiences remarkable.

Finding one’s own significance and the voice in which to write about it is not a

self-centered pursuit. Frank McCourt realized it, and so did Mexican-American author

Richard Rodriguez when he wrote his autobiography Hunger of Memory. Rodriguez

hoped that by translating his life through the lens of introspective writing his challenges

with issues surrounding language and cultural identity would “resonate” with others.

Speaking only Spanish at home—his family’s “private” language—he entered school to

learn that his native language and Mexican identity would be replaced with English and

the culture that went with it. But his indigenous features betrayed his new speaking voice

and eventually his beloved Spanish words, which he was free to think with, no longer felt

right on his tongue. His first language and identity had become foreign.

If Rodriguez had been born California within the past ten years, instead of 1944,

and if he had Megan Brown or Amy Arnberg for teachers, instead of las monas de la

escuela Catolica,5 perhaps he would still have felt guilt over his diminished Spanish

voice but, he might also have found an abundance of support and encouragement to write,

what some critics call memoir and autobiography, self-indulgent prose. Those critics

though, do not see what authors and teachers Brown and Arnberg have witnessed inside

their classrooms. From their perspective, Brown and Arnberg have commented that their

student’s “reading, and critical thinking” abilities had greatly improved. Authors Kirby

and Kirby also noted it in their essay concluding that memoir study is more than creative

writing—it is also an educational tool.

What memoir can teach, writes Caroline M. Calvillo in her essay “Memoir and

Autobiography: Pathways to Examining the Multicultural Self,” is that when it comes to

5 Catholic school nuns.

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understanding one’s culture, identity, and language, we are the “intimate insider.”

Writing memoir and autobiography is one way to discover how the self, and the

multicultural self, emerges and through writing about ourselves, we can examine all of

our identities and begin a dialogue for understanding.

Melissa Karin Cheeseman’s dissertation, “Women’s Lives: Memoir Writing and

the Emerging Self,” explores two specific memoirs,6 written by women, to see how each

author’s “inner voice” relates to the “exterior” self. Cheeseman writes that her motivation

for choosing those particular texts, quoting one of the author’s points, is that memoir (and

autobiography and non-fiction writing) is a way to see the world from someone else’s

viewpoint. To metaphorically walk in someone else’s shoes, adds Cheeseman, can be

“deeply satisfying” (80).

Comparative Analysis

A tale of transformation—the personal journey from the past to the present—

requires memories and language in order to describe what transpired. Creative writing,

especially memoir, is a new sub-genre of non-fiction where a writer narrates a personal

story that describes how they came to understand their new place and significance in the

world. Using a best-selling memoir, an autobiography, and one or two works of non-

fiction, I will compare how creative writing and language engage memory and act as a

method of transformation in non-fiction prose.

Creative writing and language are the same because—they are forms of 6 The Road from Coorain, written by Jill Ker Conway, and An American Childhood written by Annie Dillard.

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communication, they help to identify culture and social standing, they both are vehicles

for expressions and information, they inform and validate each other? Creative writing

and language aren’t always spoken to be heard?

Conclusion

Memoirist and autobiographers write, in English and in Spanish, about the past

person they once were in order to discover the person they have become. Examining

one’s past in order to inform the present is an ancient practice. Saint Augustine spent his

lifetime reflecting on his decision in order to communicate not just a story but higher

understanding. Augustine’s memoir is typically introduced in an undergraduate Religion

class instead of a Literature class. Maria del Carmen Quintero Aguiló, a student at the

University of Puerto Rico, writes in her masters thesis paper, “From Theory to Practice:

Mending the Gap between Truth and Memoir,” that memoir and autobiography are very

important components in Literature study today. As far back as Chaucer’s7 The

Canturbery Tales—more than seven-hundred years after Augustine’s Confessions—we

still possess an innate “urge to tell our story; for relief, for survival, or for merely

recording one’s existence on earth (1).

 

 

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7 Geoffrey Chaucer was a Middle Ages poet, philosopher, alchemist, astronmer, and author.

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