Paper 2 assignment

You have now read two unconventional autobiographies, The Education of Henry Adams and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. For your second paper, you will write your own 4-5 page mini-autobiography, emulating or adapting the style of one of these books. You will also write a 1-page writer’s memo reflecting on the process and comparing your autobiography to Adams’s or Stein’s. The directions for each part of the assignment are below. I encourage you to schedule an appointment to talk about the paper before you hand it in.

Mini-autobiography

In Adams’s and Stein’s books, personal and national—or even international—converge. The authors discuss significant events in American history, but they examine them from an individual perspective, which subverts or complicates the typical interpretation of the event that you might find in a history textbook. Their unusual narrative voices (3rd person for Adams’s autobiography; 1st person for Stein’s pseudo-autobiography) draw attention to the overlapping registers of personal and national by obstructing the easy identification between reader and writer encouraged by many autobiographies. Your mini-autobiography will follow this pattern. Choose one nationally or internationally momentous event (you will not have space for a full life story in 4-5 pages) that you have lived through and write about it in the style of Adams or Stein.

Just as Adams and Stein provide unique perspectives on well-known and much-discussed events, you will want to think carefully about how your personal experience speaks to a larger audience. How does your individual experience complicate the mainstream or generally accepted view of the event you’ve chosen? How does your story enhance, challenge, revise, or contribute to the national narrative? Does your particular perspective allow you to generate some insight about the relationship between the local (e.g. you, your friends, your family, your community, etc.) and the national or international?

Writer’s Memo

After you have written your mini-autobiography, reflect on the writing process. Think about the narrative voice you chose: how did it shape your explanation of the event? How did it facilitate or limit the meaning your autobiography conveyed to the reader? Why do you think the author you chose to emulate wrote the way she or he did? What are the benefits and disadvantages of that style?

Think also about the task of writing an autobiography that is more than just an individual’s memoirs. How did you make your perspective meaningful for a larger audience? How did you find connections between your story and a larger national narrative? How did you incorporate those insights into your autobiography? Did you spell them out for your reader, or did you leave them implicit? Why did you choose to write about the event in the way that you did?

These questions are prompts for reflection; you won’t have room to answer all of them in your memo, but they might help you get started. Your memo should be an analytical document, not a mere transcription of your writing process.

Due dates:
4/14 draft due in class (minimum of 3 pgs)
4/21 final draft due