Gierke 1

Bradi Gierke
Storycraft
Memoir Reflection

Before today I did not know much about memoirs. I had only read one before, and that
was because I was forced in the fifth grade. Not that I have anything against them, they just
never fell into my category of interests. The event I attended included two authors, Alden Jones,
and Rick Moody. Both authors shared parts of their memoirs and spoke about how it felt to write
them. What I found was that both memoirs held a much deeper meaning than what was
presented on the surface.

Alden Jones’s memoir was about a hike she had taken to find herself after a divorce.
However, she did more than find herself along the way. She found that she had been
surrounding herself with people who had things in common with her husband, but not herself.
She was pretending to be someone she was not. She was pretending to like things she did not.
Jones grew tired of this on the trip and decided to start being brutally honest with herself and
everyone around her. At the end of her book, she writes about how she realized she was “an
asshole” to many people on that trip. Jones went back and forth about calling herself out in her
own book but finally ruled to keep it in there. She realized being brutally honest is what it took to
find herself. Jones’s transparency made many others reevaluate themselves and how they were
living. Jones also included personal thoughts about others who were on the trip with her that
she was afraid for them to read once the book was published. She wrote about the slang they
used and the inappropriate jokes they would make that left her feeling very uncomfortable.
Ironically, she told us in the event that these people had drastically changed their views on
topics they used to joke about, such as gay marriage. These people now would deny ever
acting like that or saying such things, which leads to the next lesson brought out in the memoir,
forgiveness. We have to accept not only that others may change over time but that we
ourselves may change. Forgiving and forgetting is a part of life that is necessary for growth.

Rick Moody took his memoir in a different direction. At one point in his life, he had
acquired a postcard signed by Charles Manson. Soon after storing this postcard in his desk
drawer, he claims that a series of unfortunate events took place. He blames his bad luck on this
postcard. In his memoir, he writes about all the terrible events that took place and how he
eventually got rid of the postcard but also what it taught him after. He realized that this postcard
is not what was causing his life to be so terrible it was his own choices. He could not blame
these unfortunate events on a silly postcard. Moody reflects on a more personal topic such as
marriage in his memoir as well. He relates marriage to Jones’s journey in the wilderness
beautifully. Moody relates the wilderness to his marriage through exploration. He says that he
will never be able to stop exploring in his marriage because he can always learn something new
about his wife. He may know by heart the order she picks up dishes off the table every night but
will learn why her favorite book is her favorite the next day. There is always something new to
be learned and always something new to be explored in the wilderness.
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I was surprised by the deepness in each of the memoirs. I was expecting a personal
account of something that had happened, much like the memoir I had read in fifth grade.
However, the underlying lessons that each memoir brought made them much more than just an
account of an event in their life. I learned that many authors go through struggles we may not
realize while writing and publishing books. Obviously, the writing process is no cakewalk, but it
is comforting to know that even the experts run into roadblocks sometimes. I appreciated how
honest each author was. I gained a lot of respect for each one of them after hearing parts of
their memoirs and their experiences while writing them.

Due to this event, I have a new perspective on memoirs. I also have a new amount of
respect for the authors that write them. I realize how hard it must be to be that honest about
something personal with thousands of people. In the future, I would like to ask other memoir
authors how they deal with the opinions of others. It cannot be easy knowing how many people
will critique something you put a lot of work into. I plan on reading more memoirs in the future
and learning the valuable lessons that they entail. If you haven’t read one yet, I highly suggest
picking one up.