{"id":4460,"date":"2026-05-18T09:38:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T09:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=4460"},"modified":"2026-05-18T09:40:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T09:40:58","slug":"teaching-autobiographies-and-memoirs-some-conclusions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2026\/05\/18\/teaching-autobiographies-and-memoirs-some-conclusions\/","title":{"rendered":"TEACHING AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS: SOME CONCLUSIONS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019m three classes away from finishing (on 28 May) my third\/fourth year BA elective subject \u2018English Prose: 21st<\/sup> Century Autobiographies and Memoirs\u2019 and I\u2019ve been drafting my conclusions. I have decided to share them here, together with a couple of lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Each class (80-90 minutes) has consisted of the following: a mini-lecture (35 minutes) in which I have presented three autobiographies or memoirs and one academic secondary source; time for writing practice (15 minutes), in which students have written a 300-word autobiographical text (from a list of topics I have provided, though they could also choose free topics); and interaction time (30 minutes) during which students have maintained three 10-minute conversations with their classmates about the books they have been reading (each student has read four different autobiographies or memoirs). At home, they have completed their daily 300-word essay and written four 800-1000 word essays linking their books to the scholarship I have presented in class. Forty of the forty-four students will complete the assignments, and, as I anticipate, pass the course. I\u2019ll be having an individual tutorial with them in June, in which we will discuss their writing practice. They also need to bring two lists: ten books they would like to read among the 74 I have presented in class, and ten books selected from their conversations with their peers (on average 60-65 books\/conversations). A student that has followed all aspects of assessment and always attended class will have learn about almost 140 books or more, and read 4 in depth (all 21st<\/sup> century).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Here\u2019s the list of autobiographies and memoirs I have very briefly presented in class. No, I have not read all of them and, yes, there should be more in other languages. I have used Wikipedia, as I told the students, and reviews to compose one PowerPoint slide for each (with book covers, and, if possible, photo of the authors). They are all highly recommended; please, note the 1990s immense boom:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. 50\/40 BC Julius Caesar. De bello Gallico<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. 397-398 Saint Augustine. Confessiones<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. 1561-62 (written 1588) Teresa de Jes\u00fas. Vida de la Madre Teresa de Jes\u00fas<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. 1666 John Bunyan. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, or a Brief Relation of the Exceeding Mercy of God in Christ to his Poor Servant John Bunyan<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. 1682 Mary Rowlandson. A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. 1782-1789. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Les Confessions<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. 1791 Franklin, Benjamin. Autobiography<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. 1811-1814 (vols. I-III); 1833 (vol. IV) Johann Wolfgang, von Goethe. Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  9. 1849-50 M\u00e9moires d’Outre-Tombe (English: Memoirs from Beyond the Grave), Fran\u00e7ois-Ren\u00e9 de Chateaubriand<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  10. 1845 Frederick Douglass. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  11. 1850 William Wordsworth. The Prelude<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  12. 1855 (published 1877) Harriet Martineau. Autobiography<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  13. 1861 Harriet Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  14. 1864 Cardinal John Henry Newman. Apologia pro Vita Sua<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  15. 1873 John Stuart Mill. Autobiography<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  16. 1885-1899 John Ruskin. Praeterita<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  17. 1887 Charles Darwin. Autobiography<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  18. 1899 Margaret Oliphant. Autobiography<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  19. 1901 Booker T. Washington. Up from Slavery<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  20. 1903 Helen Keller. The Story of My Life<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  21. 1907 Henry Adams. The Education of Henry Adams<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  22. 1926 T.E. Lawrence. Seven Pillars of Wisdom<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  23. 1927 William Butler Yeats. Autobiographies<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  24. 1929 Robert Graves. Good-Bye to All That<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  25. 1933 George Orwell. Down and Out in Paris and London<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  26. 1933 Gertrude Stein. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  27. 1933 Vera Brittain. Testament of Youth \/ Testament of Friendship<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  28. 1937 Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen). Out of Africa<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  29. 1939 Virginia Woolf. \u201cA Sketch of the Past.\u201d Moments of Being<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  30. 1945 Richard Wright. Black Boy<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  31. 1951, 1966 Vladimir Nabokov. Speak, Memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  32. 1955 C.S. Lewis. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  33. 1956 Gerald Durrell. My Family and Other Animals<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  34. 1964 Ernest Hemingway. A Moveable Feast<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  35. 1964 Charles Chaplin. My Autobiography<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  36. 1969 Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  37. 1974 Jan Morris. Conundrum<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  38. 1976 Maxine Hong Kingston. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  39. 1977 Eve Babitz. Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  40. 1978 Harry Crews. A Childhood: The Biography of a Place<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  41. 1982 Russell Baker. Growing Up<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  42. 1982 Audre Lorde. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  43. 1982 Michael Ondaatje. Running in the Family<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  44. 1983 Joyce Johnson. Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  45. 1983 Eudora Welty. One Writer’s Beginnings<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  46. 1984 Janet Frame. An Angel At My Table<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  47. 1985 Richard P. Feynman. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  48. 1987 Vivian Gornick. Fierce Attachments: A Memoir<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  49. 1989 Tobias Wolff. This Boy’s Life<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  50. 1989 Peter Mayle. A Year in Provence<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  51. 1990 William Styron. Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  52. 1991 Philip Roth. Patrimony: A True Story<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  53. 1991 Terry Tempest Williams. Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  54. 1991 Jung Chang. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  55. 1991 Kingsley Amis. Memoirs<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  56. 1991 Andy McNab. Bravo Two Zero<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  57. 1992 Rosa Parks (& Jim Haskins). Rosa Parks: My Story<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  58. 1992 Nick Hornby. Fever Pitch<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  59. 1993 Anatole Broyard. Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  60. 1993 Lars Eighner. Travels With Lizbeth: : Three Years on the Road and on the Streets<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  61. 1994 Lucy Grealy. Autobiography of a Face<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  62. 1994 Nelson Mandela. The Long Walk to Freedom<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  63. 1994 Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, John Lydon, Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  64. 1995 Temple Grandin. Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  65. 1995 Mary Karr. The Liars\u2019 Club<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  66. 1995 James McBride. The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  67. 1995 Barack Obama. Dreams From My Father<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  68. 1995 Gore Vidal. Palimpsest<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  69. 1995 Bill Bryson. Notes from a Small Island<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  70. 1996 Caroline Knapp. Drinking: A Love Story<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  71. 1996 Frank McCourt. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir of Childhood<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  72. 1997 Mitch Albom. Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  73. 1997 JM Coetzee. Boyhood<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  74. 1998 Ruth Reichl. Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

              Apart from presenting these books, I have read and commented in class passages from the following academic texts, in the chronological order they appear here. Esther Pujolr\u00e0s and Felicity Hand presented, as guests, their own volume in a special session:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    1. Shumaker, Wayne (1954). English Autobiography: Its Emergence, Materials, and Form.<\/em> University of California Press.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. Gusdorf, Georg (1956) \u201cConditions and Limits of Autobiography\u201d, reprinted in James Olney (ed.). Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical<\/em>. Princeton UP, 1980.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Barthes, Roland (1986). \u201cThe Death of the Author\u201d (1968). In The Rustle of Language<\/em>. Trans. Richard Howard. Hill & Wang. 49-55.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    4. Olney, James (1972). Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography<\/em>. Princeton UP.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    5. de Man, Paul (1979). \u201cAutobiography as De-Facement.\u201d Modern Language Notes<\/em>, 94: 919\u201330.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    6. Jelinek, Estelle, ed. (1980). Women\u2019s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism<\/em>. Indiana UP.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    7. Eakin, Paul John (1985). Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention<\/em>. Princeton UP.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    8. Lejeune, Philippe. (1989) On Autobiography<\/em>. Trans. Katherine Leary. University of Minnesota Press.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    9. Heilbrun, Carolyn G. (1989). Writing a Woman\u2019s Life<\/em>. Ballantine Books.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    10. Derrida, Jacques (& Marie-Louise Mallet and David Wills) (2008). The Animal That Therefore I Am<\/em>. Fordham UP.<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    11. Gass, William (May 1994). \u201cThe Art of Self: Autobiography in the Age of Narcissism.\u201d Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/em>: 43-52. https:\/\/harpers.org\/2017\/12\/the-art-of-self\/<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    12. Morrison, Toni (1995). \u201cThe Site of Memory.\u201d William Zinsser (ed.), Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir<\/em>. Houghton Mifflin. 83-102.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    13. Rugg, Linda (1997). Picturing Ourselves: Photography & Autobiography.<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    14. Anderson, Linda (1997). Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century: Remembered Futures<\/em>. Prentice Hall\/Harvester Wheatsheaf.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    15. Broughton, Trev Lynn (1999). Men of Letters, Writing Lives: Masculinity and Literary Auto\/Biography in the Late Victorian Period<\/em>. Routledge.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    16. Gornick, Vivian (2001). The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative<\/em>. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    17. Miller, Nancy K. (2002). But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People\u2019s Lives<\/em>. Columbia UP.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    18. Pozuelo Yvancos, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda (2006). De la autobiograf\u00eda: teor\u00eda y estilos. <\/em>Cr\u00edtica.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    19. Moore-Gilbert, Bart J. (2009). Postcolonial Life-writing: Culture, Politics, And Self-representation<\/em>. Routledge, 2009.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    20. Douglas, Kate (2010). Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma, and Memory<\/em>. Rutgers UP.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    21. Yagoda, Ben (2010). Memoir: A History<\/em>. Riverhead Books.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    22. Poletti, Anna and Julie Rak (ed.) (2016). Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online<\/em>. The University of Wisconsin Press.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    23. Pujolr\u00e0s, Esther & Felicity Hand (2023). Mourning and Resilience in Indian Ocean Life Writing<\/em>. Routledge.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    24. Schep, Dennis (2020). The Autobiography Effect Writing the Self in Post-Structuralist Theory<\/em>. Routledge.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    25. Hayes, Patrick (2022). The Oxford History of Life-Writing. Volume 7: Postwar to Contemporary, 1945-2020<\/em>. Oxford UP.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    26. Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson (2001, 2010, 2024). Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives<\/em>. University of Minnesota Press.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                This last book by Smith and Watson is the most adequate as introduction to life narratives, as you can see from the title, but I decided to use a much wider range of scholarship. Our students are not really exposed to much scholarship and I decided to introduce a more sophisticated approach than usual. Quite another matter is whether they have been at all interested in my theoretical discussions. I hope so!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Here are a few quick notes about other matters I have learned:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n
      1. That teaching an elective subject closest to the interests of the teacher-researcher is ideal (yes, I\u2019m doing research for a book on memoirs written by sons about their fathers).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      2. The long lecture is gone, and we need to structure out sessions in shorter segments, with more student interaction.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      3. Students have welcomed writing in class (by hand, on notebooks), which suggests that we need to introduce creative writing in the English Literature class.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      4. Students\u2019 interaction is a very useful teaching tool (though it\u2019s quite difficult to increase the depth of the conversations, as students begin each unit without having read the corresponding book yet).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      5. From the 74 autobiographies and memoirs I have commented in class, I have learned that we overvalue the novel and that these genres have much to contribute to literature, being literary and not just aspects of sociology, anthropology, ethnography and so on.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      6. It\u2019s fascinating to see how a new field of research unfolds and what problems are attached to its unfolding: from the initial narrow focus on \u2018great\u2019 white men to the struggle to open up the study of Life Writing to the texts by all types of persons.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      7. Life Writing Studies has been shaped by external factors that have to do with the evolution of Philosophy from the 1960s onwards, and of other intellectual movements such as Structuralism (from Anthropology and Linguistics) and Post-Structuralism, rather than just from internal needs.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      8. The concept \u2018Life Writing\u2019 is both very useful and confusing, as it puts together many texts that really need separate treatment (studying biography is very different from studying autobiography).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      9. The general consensus on the side of authors and scholars that autobiography and memoirs needn\u2019t be truthful clashes with the common readers\u2019 perception that they should always tell the truth.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      10. By avoiding the classic chronological narrative most authors have ended up creating another tradition by which autobiographical texts are supposed to be fragmented, partial, and even disorganized. Call it post-modern, or post-post-modern.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      11. An undertheorized issue is the fact that the consumption of autobiographies and memoirs changes very much depending on whether the reader is already familiar with the author or not.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      12. Some autobiographies or memoirs are part of larger clusters, either because the author writes diverse texts, or because other persons in their circle also write books about the same events.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      13. The USA is the main producers of these genres, much above any other nation because of its religious traditions, cult of individuality and current interest in the misery memoir. Add to this the publishing industry\u2019s interest, and the proliferation of creative writing courses at all levels.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      14. To the reader the quality of the book matters more than the interest of the life narrated. A not so appealing life narrated in good prose attracts more than a very interesting life narrated in a not too well-written book.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      15. \u00a0An interest I thought was personal is actually part of a much larger phenomenon, which totally exploded in the 1990s. I believed that my interest is novels has been waning as I aged, and it turns out that everyone in seeking in life write the interesting characters we no longer find in fiction.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

                  I might write a second conclusions post in one month, when I\u2019m done marking, but, in essence, this sums up what I\u2019ve been teaching (and learning) this semester. My 40 students will have read and shared a total of 160 books, and I might eventually publish the list. Mid-semester I decided to join specific conversations rather than simply monitor all the conversations, and this means I\u2019ve directly spoken to six students every class. That has turned out to be very enjoyable (I hope it\u2019s been useful for them, too).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                  More next week\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        I\u2019m three classes away from finishing (on 28 May) my third\/fourth year BA elective subject \u2018English Prose: 21st Century Autobiographies and Memoirs\u2019 and I\u2019ve been drafting my conclusions. I have decided to share them here, together with a couple of lists.           Each class (80-90 minutes) has consisted of the following: a mini-lecture (35 minutes) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[869,1137,1093,966,799,22,34],"tags":[1261,1484,325,1485,1134],"class_list":["post-4460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-contemporary-literature","category-english-studies","category-genre","category-literary-criticism","category-literary-studies","category-teaching-tools-and-rules","tag-autobiography","tag-life-writing","tag-memoirs","tag-subject","tag-syllabus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4461,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions\/4461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}