Maybe it doesn’t sound allthat Ivy League or resume building to ask your students to honor the smear ofchildhood or to heed the rhythms of remembered talk. The negotiationof once with the language of right now is unquantifiable. It’s also a tad shy of rigorous to conduct a classroom full ofeased-back kids—dreamers and window watchers, scribblers and flippers of pens,dismantlers of paper clips. There’s no science to teaching creative nonfiction, and there are norules, and if one or two of the students emerge from the reminiscing haze witha sentence that feels new, don’t bet that they all enjoyed the ride.
4 Comments on work in progress: the teaching of memoir, last added: 2/28/2012
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this--are you writing a long essay about it?
I just finished reading Ru by Kim Thuy. It's fiction that reads like memoir--and has some basis in autobiography. It makes me think about memoir as a form for me someday.
I like the idea behind this moment...the moment of teaching something that many may find an insignificant thing to remember...thanks for sharing this work in progress
Love "the smear of childhood." It cannot be Penn where these paper clip dismantlers are not hearing your words, it must be some group of underprivileged teens. Hah. It's still worth doing what you do. But you know that.