We all have a story to tell. And more and more, we are starting to tell it, speaking into a tape recorder or writing with pen on paper or at a computer. The act of writing about our past, says Kate Hays, a Toronto clinical psychologist, offers valuable "self-reflection, exploration, continuity and discovery." Most important, memoirs are true; they tell what happened. Frank McCourt's 1996 best seller Angela's Ashes kindled interest in the memoirs of ordinary people. Says Adam Sexton, dean of New York City's Gotham Writers' Workshop: "People read McCourt and think, 'I could do that.'" Maybe everyone won't equal his success, but to your family and friends the story you write will be prized above all others.
I'm a kisser, I'm a joke teller, I'm a dancer. I'm a somewhat everything and nothing big. I'm not stuck-up. I don't have none of that thinking that you're better than anybody. I didn't go to college. I didn't have no big great job. I haven't had anything big. I was just down-to-earth and I got along fine. I'm my own person, that's what it is and I'm still moving.
These are the words of Freddie Mae Baxter, born into a poor family in the rural South 75 years ago. When her mother died, the teenage Freddie Mae left for the North, seeking work as a domestic. After a lifetime of caring for others--children and old people--she started talking into a tape recorder at the behest of a writer friend named Gloria Bley Miller, recalling what it was like to grow up in a big family in a little house with no indoor plumbing; to pick cotton; to live in "jivey" 1940s Harlem. Miller edited the reminiscences, and Baxter's unique voice so impressed editors at a major publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf, that next month it will bring out her exuberant memoirs, The Seventh Child: A Lucky Life. "I'm the seventh child, so I know I'm lucky," says Baxter. And what better proof than Knopf's literary stamp of approval? That in itself is an extraordinary tale--and a telling one.
Today, more than ever before in modern times, the era of confession is upon us. Vast numbers of people are eager to spill the most minute details of their lives on television talk shows, in poetry, in comedy clubs, in monologues for the theater and, most of all, in books. The range is astonishing, from best-selling works by the celebrated--like the just-out memoirs of Henry Kissinger--to two different views of growing up Irish by brothers Frank and Malachy McCourt, to the modest, self-published stories meant only for a handful of friends and relatives.
With so many people putting their lives on paper, workshops and college extension courses have sprung up from coast to coast to help them with the writing craft. Anyone can start. Looking at old pictures or magazines, remembering the way things tasted, sounded and smelled, and recalling a specific incident, such as the first day of school or the first family car, can bring a flood of memories. Some people write in solitude, while many prefer working with a group. Others want a gentle guide. Along their journey through the past, people discover that what may have seemed an unimportant event has value. They may write to exorcise terrible experiences, complete the grieving process or just give dignity to an everyday life. For most, there is a desire to create a permanent record of their experiences and leave a legacy for their family.