5 Memoir Responses

Incidents in the of a Slave Girl was different. The closest thing I could compare it to is Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Both books contain a powerful condemnation of their societies. Both books are centered around female leaders who abandon their old lives. Both books are about transitions from misery to various stages of life improvement.

Where Incidents differs, however, is in the fact that it offers little in the way of subtle analysis. All conclusions are outright, all statements are explicit. Where Infidel at least offers some disputes and rationale behind Islam, excusing some of its dogmas away with the priority of religious freedom. Incidents is so matter-of-fact in its depictions and descriptions of 1800s American slavery, it's difficult to read.

There are no sprawling, introspective dialogues, no inner conflicts, no lengthy depictions of feelings and emotions. Instead, it's a completely subjective play-by-play of life as a slave girl. These are events in context of an argument. And given the monstrosity of slavery, it's perfectly understandable.

Jacobs was horribly tormented by her life as a slave and deserves her soapbox. This was a pertinent, critical depiction of the times, used to further the cause of abolition and share how things really were. Because of its status as a firebrand and emotionally engaging piece, I don't think it's a particularly good memoir.

Incidents is undoubtedly true. It's emotionally potent. It's geared to a particular point. But I still don't think it's a good example of memoir. The author's hand is so incredibly overt that it seems more like an op ed or piece of commentary than a bona fide memoir. We've discussed the importance of voice and subtlety and showing, not telling. While these are important and established in today's craft, I can excuse Incidents for not being up to our modern standards of memoir craft. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good example of memoir.

In short, I enjoyed it, I respect it, I appreciate it, but I don't think it's a good example of memoir in the modern sense.

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking was geared to inspire emotion. It was her intention to generate a strong rapport between her work and the readership, to foster her personal vision of sorrow and grief.

I wasn't feeling it. I can see the words she's using, hear the pain in her voice, but perhaps because of my own lack of personal experience (I've never lost a spouse), I couldn't feel it. All I could feel was a growing frustration that Didion was not getting over this.

Her unspoken insights on stages of grief were fascinating. Her credentials are indisputable. But I felt like I could only take so much of her self-pity and bottomless sorry before it became frustrating to me. It wasn't a self-reflection any more. It was an exhausting, repetitive, gratuitous, self-glorifying demonstration of some kind unnecessarily complicated emotional depth.

She has an outstanding grasp on figurative language and descriptive language, easily painting from one scene to the next. But while there isn't any gap in the way it the way it sounds, it's painful that the subtext isn't strong enough to reinforce the overall work.

It has a depth on the emotion, but lacks breadth. It is so heavily understated, it's overstated. There are so many themed experiences, so many sad moments, that I struggled to accept Didion as a real person. She was what she made herself—the embodiment of her own perception of grief.
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For my second memoir, I read Infidel, Ayaan Hirshi Ali's condemnation of faith and lifestyle.

Most memoirs gain their strength through their colorful descriptions of commonalities and common interests with the audience. They create such a strong rapport with their audience that everything becomes acceptable and believable.

What struck me most about Hirshi Ali's work was not her color, nor her rapport. Instead, she captivated me with her unerring, unswerving honesty. This work didn't exist to give color or flair, it wasn't an act of art or artistic license. Instead, this was a confession, a witness' testimony. It was descriptive, it was insightful, and it was honest, but more than anything else, it exists to condemn Islam.

In other works I've seen, an author will be somewhat forgiving of his/her background, will look kindly upon some aspect of it. In Infidel, Hirshi Ali has no such affection:

"Religion gave me a sense of peace only from its assurance of a life after death. It was fairly easy to follow most of the rules: good behavior, politeness, avoiding gossip and pork and usury and alcohol. But I had found that I couldn't follow the deeper rules of Islam that control sexuality and the mind. I didn't want to follow them. I wanted to be someone, to stand on my own.

Islam is submission. You submit on earth in order to earn your place in Heaven (132)."

Ultimately, the primary emotion I felt at Infidel's conclusion was curiosity. I couldn't (and still can't) quite put my finger on exactly why the book was written in the first place. At some points, it seems a rallying point for other ex-Muslims. At others, it seems to be polarizing non-Muslims against the faith. And at still others, it seems to exist to give form to her long-formulating anger. I suppose I understand (on some level) the emotions she's feeling, but I can't quite figure out why she is sharing those emotions so publicly.

This, to me, raises fascinating questions about the overall purpose of memoir. It is difficult to paint memoirists with a broad brush, assuming that they fall into categories of why they wrote, but there must be some common threads between them. Joan Didion wanted to embody her grief, Barack Obama wanted to trace and identify the ghost of his father's heritage, and Hirshi Ali's purpose was...what? To recant her earlier life? To express regret at the state of Islam? To rage against her spiritual, societal and physical captors? The title itself, Infidel, suggests that she is abundantly aware of her own pariah status. But this seems more a badge of pride than a mark of shame.

I don't know the emotion Hirshi Ali would want to convey. I don't know what category such spiritual abandonment falls under. What I do know is that the main emotion I took away from Infidel was a sense of proud infidelity to ones former beliefs. And I suppose, in the long and the short of it, that could have been the point all along.

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For my first memoir, I read Carlos Eire's excellent Waiting for Snow in Havana. Were I to rename the memoir, I would call it Carlos' Gods. The overall, commanding theme of the book seems to be identifying the "gods" of Eire's Cuban upbringing.

It's a good theme, but it could easily feel like something of a cop-out: to explore one's primary influences is hardly a new or bold concept. Where Eire succeeds, however, is developing and enunciating the love-hate (but primarily hate) relationship with his "gods.". 

First and most obvious is the constant refrain and exploration of young Carlos' present-tense connection to God. He dwells seriously on sin and repentance, but generally in the context of his childhood fears and schooling. Whether it is his experience getting his head stuck in a pew during mass (94-97) or his reflections on hell and repentance (172), this is a vulnerable Carlos, one who is unsure of the god he is asked to worship. It's also a god subject to the changes and whims of his adolescence: his suggestion that Jesus should have X-Ray vision to see through women's clothes (170) is different from the man who finds his seventh proof of god (358). He curses this god and calls on god and thinks about god and ponders god. For all his ponderings and searches for proofs, he still, near the book's conclusion, doubts whether the events towards the end of his time in Cuba were orchestrated by god. For all his insistence of faith, we are left to wonder whether his belief and faith are more than his attempts to cling to his Cuban upbringing. 

Interestingly, this god seems more similar to what I would call Carlos' second god: pop culture. Whether it's his buying American trading cards or watching Batman, James Bond and Marilyn Monroe films and TV shows, pop culture becomes a central aspect of Eire's life. Instead of thinking, "What would Jesus do," Eire finds himself considering what James T. Kirk would do in situations. Yet this kind of American envy has its problems and shortcomings. It clashes with his upbringing and eventually is renounced by his wife. 

Yet unsurprisingly, the most important and everpresent of Carlos' gods is Cuba. Whether it is the poignant depiction of Castro's rise to fame or his memories of childhood on Havana streets, Cuba is as memorable, ingrained, wanted and unwanted as god himself to Carlos. The rationale and explanation of Fidel is as real in Eire's eyes as his quest to understand hell and repentance.

This was an impassioned eulogy of a Cuba lost, of a childhood spent in regret and confusion, and an explanation of who he is now. I felt as though it was an honest, unashamed portrayal of childhood and Cuba, but beyond that, I enjoyed that it was also payed due homage to the gods that created him and made him who he is today.

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This was a complicated read.

I come from a Democrat family, a house full of liberals. My brother campaigned in Colorado for Obama before the 2012 election. Even my sweet, conservative-ish mother voted for Obama. I'm extremely aware of his speeches, his policies, his campaigning, his staff, the whole business.

As hard as I tried, I couldn't quite separate the voice of the child dealing with racism, acceptance, broken homes, poverty, loneliness and growing up from that voice that speaks about the NSA, foreign policy, and delivers the State of the Union address.

At least at first.

One thing I will say about Dreams From My Father is that it seems consistent. As I read at the beginning, it was a baffling discrepancy to hear that this man, who has become so vocal and defined on so many issues, was so confused by the world growing up. Dreams is certainly a memoir I have a close proximity to, and at first, it really affected my perception of the work. How can a man in charge of United States foreign policy morbidly ask a veteran if killing someone was bloody? How can the first African-American president not understand why black TV characters were never main characters?

As things evolve, however, a better picture of this man starts to appear. As an author, Mr. Obama is guilty of asking outright questions, of none-too-subtly exposing themes and topics. Yet in light of his future and eventual career, it seems almost excusable to spend so much time pondering about whether or not his classroom would accept his Kenyan father.

It almost seems too simplistic, for this "Barry Obama" to wonder and ponder about racism and politics and seizing the day. I was skeptical, too, of the fact that despite the people around him talking like teenagers, but Barry himself remaining somewhat aloof. Maybe he was just that good of a guy, but I feel as though the concessions he does make (such as his descriptions of drugs and alcohol) are calculated to humanize just enough.

That, then, would be my last complaint--that this is a limited-truth memoir. It isn't embarrassing; or if it is, it's just embarrassing enough to be believable. Barry (eventually Barack) is the appropriately fallible youth-turned-adolescent-turned-young man-turned-adult who eventually comes (more or less) to terms with his upbringing. It's not that he disregards his foibles, but instead he downplays them to the point of acceptable growing pains.

His writing style is strong, his memories specific, the characters authentic, and his own observations quiet at first, until culminating into a narrative that reflects his vision of the world and himself. This is not unusual for memoir, but in light of who Barry, then Obamba, then Barack, then Mr. Obama, then Irishman O'Bama, then Professor Obama will become, it seems to have a certain sheen.

It's believable. It's understandable. It's even acceptable. Perhaps my favorite structural device of  Dreams was the way that at the climax of the work, in the final quarter, when Mr. Obama could be at his political preachy best, is where the unpolitical themes of the work come home to roost. As he returns to Kenya, the book is ultimately redeemed as Hawaiian schools and Chicagoan political activism are replaced with African dust and long-lost family members.

To conclude, then, Dreams was imperfect, unrealistically idealistic, with several key details left out, yet charismatic, winning and (as I saw it) inspirational. Exactly as I see its author.