Stories and Memoirs of Our Lives Essay Example For Students

Stories and Memoirs of Our Lives Essay My grandpa is currently writing his memoir and he tells me that many seniors in our community are also writing theirs. My grandpa tells me about the difficulties and confusions he encounters when writing his memoir, and asks me for some advices. I am currently in UCI’s writing class and learn argumentative writings, and I also learned personal narrative writing before. With my several years of writing experience and one year’s writing training in college, I conclude some writing principle in personal narrative writing. However, through my discussions and conversations with my grandpa and observations of some other seniors in our community who are also writing memoirs, I find some common mistakes they make that dont follow these principles. Im very pleased to give some suggestions to the seniors in our community on improving their memoir writing. But besides telling some specific rules about writing, I also want to discuss that why do we share our stories of our lives. We have to know that what memoir writing can bring us, rather than blindly start writing. We will write a custom essay on Stories and Memoirs of Our Lives specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Memoirs can benefit us because by writing the history of ourselves in the memoirs, both writers and readers can learn lessons from the mistakes the writers made, and in a larger scale, the mistakes of the whole society. We can learn lessons from history, and avoid making the same mistakes. An important principle of writing memoir is to be honest. Being honest means that you need to tell the truth about your own real story and feelings. Making up a fake story, or denying something that really happened are not acceptable in memoir writing. Honesty help you present readers a real scenario of things happened in the old days. For example, my grandpa has been through so many historical events in Chinese history, and an important one is the devastating Cultural Revolution. During the period of the Cultural Revolution, almost all the people in China went crazy and totally believed in the principles that Chairman Mao Zedong said, which were mostly wrong. People began to ruin valuable historical relics, participated in public humiliation and seized some people’s property. And my grandpa also was part of these people. This catastrophe causes heaviest losses in Chinese history. Some people try to justify their behaviors, or deny the fact that their behaviors cause lots of pain to other people in their memoir. They are not honest about their faults and lie about what happened in the past. This is not the right way to write a memoir because these people won’t be trusted by the readers. In â€Å"Rules for the Much Maligned Form† written by Katie Roiphe, she says, â€Å"If the reader senses the writer is lying even to himself, or using the essay as a piece of propaganda, a forwarding of his own personal mythology in too clumsy or transparent a way, she will react against it. By saying this, Roiphe points out the bad influence of not being honest in writing your own stories. If you are not honest about what happened to you, you are not trustworthy and your stories’ authenticity will also be questioned. In contrast, being honest in memoir writing leads to a different result. Readers can trust you if you are honest, and readers can actually learn the lessons if they see that you honestly point out your mistakes and their effects. My grandpa honestly admits his own faults in the Cultural Revolution, and reflects the huge bad influence of mistakes made by society in the Cultural Revolution. He successfully warns both himself and the younger generations not to make these mistakes again. Being honest can help writers earn the trustworthiness from the readers, and more importantly, being honest can help both ourselves and readers to face the truth, and learn the lessons from the past. However, although being honest is important, it’s also very difficult for writers. Firstly, people’s memories are not what really happened. .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 , .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 .postImageUrl , .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 , .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4:hover , .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4:visited , .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4:active { border:0!important; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4:active , .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4 .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u3557166c1a05c9d8a05dcccf4aadacf4:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Happee Uai EssayPeople In â€Å"But Enough About Me,† written by Daniel Mendelsohn, he says, â€Å"We always manage to turn our memories into good stories-even if those stories arent quite true. People unconsciously change their memories to the stories that they want to remember, and forget the pains and the bad parts about the stories. They dont even realize that they are telling lies. And it’s really hard for people to clearly remember things that happened a long time ago. But I believe that when people are writing memoirs, their friends are still alive and they can discuss with their friends and relatives. And people also have the diaries, which record th eir stories, and photos, which can’t be fake, to help themselves write true stories. Another principle is to turn a critical eye on yourself in memoir writing. All people have some mistakes that they made in their lives or something that they regret because no one is perfect. Criticizing yourself means that you need to bravely face some mistakes that you made in the past, and rather than blaming things to other people, you need to point out your faults. But people dont always wants to criticize themselves. Mendelsohn says, â€Å"People have been complaining about the shallowness, the opportunism, the lying, the betrayals, the narcissism. † People tend to write stories about being deceived and betrayed by other people, and stories about the unfair society. But you need to attack yourself and point out that your own mistakes. Dont take different standards when treating others and yourself, and dont try to protect yourself from faults. Criticizing yourself not only help you to rethink profoundly about your life and reflect over yourself, but also help readers think profoundly about the mistakes. A memoir with both happiness and sorrow, satisfaction and regret, and things that they were right and wrong can reflect the real history and can really move the readers. Through self-criticizing, writers can help both readers and themselves to learn the lessons.

The Hour of the Star by Claris Lispector

The Hour of the Star by Claris Lispector Introduction Whenever we encounter a book for the first time, our initial perception can so easily be colored, even distorted, by conscious or unconscious prejudices. In some moments though, we do find ourselves delving into a text with an almost open mind; with hardly the slightest inkling of what to expect.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Hour of the Star by Claris Lispector specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This specialness is most rewarding when we find ourselves surprised beyond measure; we disbelief, we exclaim, we are carried away, we are moved. I first read â€Å"The hour of the Star† in such a manner, completely bereft of expectation, and so indelible has its effect been that I’ve since invariably owned a copy. Discussion Lispector’s power over us, for me at least, lies in the characterization of the narrator and the motivation that informs the almost obsessive relationship that he ha s with his subject: Macabea. Because of her seemingly self-willed refusal to know, Macabea leads Rodrigo, along with us, to invaluable insights. Rodrigo is urbane and cosmopolitan. He is a sensitive character, one who is aware of the fundamental concerns of the present day though not overly engrossed in them. He seems to have a balanced, plausible, if not reliable, conceptualization of reality. He leads something of a contented life though unhappy with the lack of success in his writing career. But he is jolted by the coming of Macabea into his life and he is suddenly preoccupied with her obvious otherness, and because of her, the meaning of being, the existence of God and the prospects of death. Rodrigo is primarily driven to study and write about Macabea by her seeming the very antithesis of who he is. At first, it is the look of damnation on her face that got him interested in her. As he gets to know her, he is irked, irritated, by her apparent nonchalance towards reality. This i s so much so that he can only refer to her as ‘the girl from the Northeast’ at the beginning of the novella. Macabea, on the other hand, is not a retard but she seems to suffer from a thoroughly inhibited intellectual capacity. This is however not what interests Rodrigo.Advertising Looking for essay on literature languages? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More It is rather that this incapacity to engage reality in any meaningful manner seems almost self-willed. She has no ambition. She is painfully naà ¯ve. She is happy to not know. But she still manages to seem unaware of the presence happiness and consequently, its absence in her own life. Rodrigo’s eventual fascination with Macabea is not merely as a result of her being different from him but rather because he finds himself utterly incapable of comprehending her. It is part of our nature: to be obsessed with the arcane and mysterious. In giving Ma cabea a voice, Rodrigo becomes so engrossed that he begins to have softer feelings for her. He has to understand her and in doing so, he is forced to explore himself, his feelings and his beliefs. He ends up becoming so immersed in his subject that he even begins to doubt himself, whether it is actually him doing the writing or if there is possibility of the existence of another agent in him. By the end of the book, ‘the girl from the Northeast’ has become ‘Maca’ to Rodrigo (Lispector 92). Conclusion Lispector is so good at conjuring this awe for Macabea that we find ourselves getting carried away, genuinely needing to know who Macabea exactly is. But she dies and all one is eventually left with, like Rodrigo, is just self reflection. Lispector, Claris. The hour of the star. New York: New direction publishers. 1986. Print.

Annotated Bibliography/Moral development and Gender roles within the Bibliography

/Moral development and Gender roles within the dominant culture - Annotated Bibliography Example The article suggests that morality is one critical area in human development. It explains that the factors that influence a child’s morality includes his experiences at home with the family, the environment where he belongs as well as his physical, cognitive, emotional, and social skills. This article explains how morality develops in a child from infancy to adulthood and the age in which morality begins to develop in a child. It explains the factors that affect or influence the development of morality among children. It also presents the ideas of Piaget such as the Heteronomous Morality and Kohlberg’s theory of the Stages of Moral Understanding. According to Piaget, children are serious in obeying the rules set by authoritative figures such as their parents and teachers for fear of being punished. Kohlberg built his theory based on Piaget’s work and their belief in reprimanding a child as a factor in developing his morality are somewhat the same. According to him, children will strictly follow rules for their fear of being punished. roles.html. This article explains the different roles played by a male and a female and how the two genders vary depending on the kind of culture in which a man and a woman lives and this affects home, workplace, and school. It explains the factors that influence them such as the examples set by the parents that children tend to follow. It also tackles on the different stages in a child’s life wherein they will begin to develop their knowledge on the role they ought to play. http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Gender_role. This article defines the meaning of gender role and the elements that comprises it. It explains how a person’s gender role can be expressed such as in his manner of dressing, behavior, and choice of work. It also tackles how culture plays a huge part in defining and changing gender roles. The article suggests that children will most likely follow the examples set by their parents