Good Afternoon Chickadees!

1. Good Afternoon Chickadees! DO NOW: (extended journal response) Write about any memory that is significant to you. It could be a memory from this year, or from when you were 2. As you write, include detailed description and dialogue (what people said). If you can’t remember word-for-word, (you probably can’t) make it up!

2. Announcements/HW • Bring in ear-buds/headphones for tomorrow • You MUST have your copy of “A Long Way Gone” by tomorrow, or $10 if you have made arrangements with me. • Bring in a favorite photo of yourself from 4 or more years ago.

3. Excerpt 1: from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather. My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant--before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result. I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work.

4. Excerpt 2: from A Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls Mom stood fifteen feet away. She had tied rags around her shoulders to keep out the spring chill and was picking through the trash while her dog, a black-and-white terrier mix, played at her feet. Mom's gestures were all familiar -- the way she tilted her head and thrust out her lower lip when studying items of potential value that she'd hoisted out of the Dumpster, the way her eyes widened with childish glee when she found something she liked. Her long hair was streaked with gray, tangled and matted, and her eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, but still she reminded me of the mom she'd been when I was a kid, swan-diving off cliffs and painting in the desert and reading Shakespeare aloud. Her cheekbones were still high and strong, but the skin was parched and ruddy from all those winters and summers exposed to the elements. To the people walking by, she probably looked like any of the thousands of homeless people in New York City. It had been months since I laid eyes on Mom, and when she looked up, I was overcome with panic that she'd see me and call out my name, and that someone on the way to the same party would spot us together and Mom would introduce herself and my secret would be out. I slid down in the seat and asked the driver to turn around and take me home to Park Avenue.

5. What is a Memoir? A memoir is also a story that a person writes about him/herself. • It usually is about a specific time in the author’s life. (ex: a memoir of a child bullied in school, would only cover school years. ) “A memoir is how one remembers one's own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked.”– Gore Vidal • A memoir might seem more like a novel than an autobiography

6. What’s the difference between a memoir and autobiography? • An autobiography is a self-written account of the author from birth until the book is published whereas a memoir is a random set of events that occurred and impacted the author’s life • An autobiography is chronological but a memoir does not follow any timelines • A memoir is more personal and emotional than an autobiography • A memoir can be written by anybody whereas an autobiography is generally written by a celebrity

7. The James Frey Controversy • http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/oprah-goes-on-the-attack/6f6kfq7

8. What do you think? Do you agree with Oprah, who publicly criticized Frey for calling his fictionalized piece a memoir, or do you agree with the Huffington Post writer, who thinks people just don’t understand what memoir really is?

9. A Long Way Gone • A Long Way Gone is a memoir about a boy’s journey fighting in a civil war in Sierra Leone. It is described as: a gripping story of a child’s journey through hell and back. • There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words.

10. Ishmael Beah • http://www.alongwaygone.com/media.html

11. Exit Slip • Do you think a memoir helps us to understand the human experience better than an autobiography? Why or why not? • If you could write a memoir, what would it be about? What memories would you focus on? • Why is memoir an appropriate genre to use when describing Beah’s book? • Knowing that it is a memoir, does it change how you will read it? Explain. • REMINDERS: bring headphones/ear buds tomorrow. Bring $ for book if you need to.