James Song

Apparently, it’s the time for memoir. Maybe the peak of the memoir has passed, seeing that the memoir as a genre hits best-seller lists in nonfiction often.

Memoirist Vivian Gornick says the popularity of memoirs is due partly to American history. Since the sixties, we’ve been giving testimonies as a culture-as activitists for civil rights, feminism, the environment, etc.-which carried over to prose and to the personal space. This explains the tendency for memoirs to be about personal or family secrets and abuse.

This is the work sample I wrote for my MFA application, part of what I hope will one day be a memoir, one, however, that looks as much to the Other and to God as much as it does to the self.