The memoir genre has become a very popular one in these past years. It's an author's account of personal experiences. The purpose of this genre is for the author to tell certain biographical and historical truths, to obey the right of privacy and to display normative models of personhood. (Eakin) Each memoir is different in there own rights because it is the author's point of view. Two examples of memoirs that are different styles of writing would be Dakota by Kathleen Norris and Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas.
Dakota is a memoir that describes feeling more then telling a story. Kathleen Norris focuses on her journey through her faith and her coming to terms with living in Dakota opposed to the big city. Her memoir doesn't follow a certain story line but instead it tells bits and pieces of her journey and the feelings she has. Kathleen Norris splits up her thoughts into chapters; she includes weather reports that are like little blurbs of wisdom from others that she has inquired. She also puts a quote under each of her chapter titles that pertains to the chapter. One chapter with extraordinary structure is titled "Where I Am" she takes the where I am scheme and uses it with each paragraph to follow a pattern.
Another example of a memoir is Piri Thomas's Down These Mean Streets. One of the most noticeable differences between the two books is Piri's book tells a story more then it tells feeling. His book takes us from when he was a young boy to the point of adult hood. He tells of his experiences that lead him to the south and that then in turn lead him to jail. Piri's book is broken up into five places, Harlem, Suburbia, Down South, Prison, and New York Town. These places signify the places that shaped him. Harlem, his home in the city, taught him the street life and "heart". Suburbia, where his family moved to, taught him more about prejudice. Down South, where he traveled to learn what it meant to be black, showed him the culture of being black and how its okay to be black.
Now, these were no ordinary clocks. These clocks he made were very special and as precious as life, and I mean literally. ... I am a prophet sent down by God to help everyone out and put them in place." ... Things were not going as planned by most of the people in Dakota. ... Just like Adam and Eve, two people who had to originate sin, these people of the city Dakota, had to originate death. ...
These people were to have nearly as great an effect on Erikson as Sigmund Freud himself (Beoree, 1997). ... In between the years of 1933, when he first came to the United States, and 1945, Erikson studied the child-rearing practices of the Sioux tribe in South Dakota, and the Yurok tribe along the pacific coast (Erikson, 1950). The information that he collected from these studies were what made up his first book, Childhood and Society, published in 1950. ... Erikson created these stages by observing. ... Erikson believed there is no use trying to rush children into adulthood before they are...
These people were to have nearly as great an effect on Erikson as Sigmund Freud himself (Beoree, 1997). ... In between the years of 1933, when he first came to the United States, and 1945, Erikson studied the child-rearing practices of the Sioux tribe in South Dakota, and the Yurok tribe along the pacific coast (Erikson, 1950). The information that he collected from these studies were what made up his first book, Childhood and Society, published in 1950. ... Erikson created these stages by observing. ... Erikson believed there is no use trying to rush children into adulthood before they are r...