Write a non-for-college memoir essay 500 to 1000 words by the end of the school day Wednesday, December 22. The memoir essay is characterized by a living, intimate voice, vivid storytelling, and thoughtful reflection. It should be as Phillip Lopate writes, "a vivid, self-reflective tale," a "compressed" bildungsroman. I'll ask you to bring in a draft Thursday, December 16.
Your essay should demonstrate several of the characteristics that Lopate sets forth in his essay "Are We Living through a Resurgence of the Essay?". In response to the question, what makes a first-rate essay Lopate writes:
* I [look] for a certain density of thought. A living voice. A text that would surprise me and take me through a mental adventure.
* I've been drawn to the analytical, the wry, the self-aware. . . . [I]t's a performance of extreme sophistication, the argument rising or falling on the basis of verbal nuance, persona pirouette, exposure of unconscious contradiction in oneself and others.
* [In the first-rate memoir-essay the reader gets]
*
* [T]hese pieces champion an uneasy complexity and contradiction, just as they refuse glib accommodations.
* [T]he essayists . . . echo [an] opposition to easy answers, and help increase our capacity to face the unreconciled.
Look at "Memoir Essays a.k.a. Not-for-College Essays" for examples.
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